If you have experienced grief, then you’ll remember a time when you had to search for a form of comfort that helped you get through it. Many women say they have comfort food, and they will binge eat when the day feels a little heavier or stressed. Then other women will say they turned to shopping as a form of therapy, otherwise known as “retail therapy,” which is fine as long as you don’t go broke shopping. These are just ways we cope physically or keep our minds occupied. What is most important is our spiritual comfort.
2 Corinthians 1:3-4,
“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction so that we will be able to comfort those who are in any affliction with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God.”
In this section of text you’ll notice a recurrence of the words “comfort” and “suffering”, “affliction” or “tribulation” depending on your translation. Based on these two words, we can break this down into two themes: comfort and suffering.
Paul wrote this letter because there were false teachers in Corinth that were trying to corrupt everything he had taught the Christians in Corinth. They did this by attempting to tear down Paul’s character in order to win the Christians over.
Paul starts this letter by speaking about suffering because he knows what it’s like to suffer. He had been attacked by dogs, imprisoned, and almost died, but Paul could have comfort because he trusted in God so much. He had assurance of hope no matter what his circumstances were.
The way God works to comfort us in our afflictions is through the endurance and progress of our faith (1Thessalonians 3:2,3,6,7). With that comfort, you can help others who have experienced similar trials and grief.
While you work on finding ways to manage grief, look to Paul as an example of how he managed the trials of life. He looked to God above anything else. If you’re in a trial now, a few ways you can work toward trusting God more are to start a Bible study, a prayer journal, and read a chapter a day out of the Bible. Make God come before anything else and then everything else will fall into place.
Heather Jones
Heather Jones, is a 2019 Graduate of Bear Valley Bible Institute with a Bachelors of Biblical Studies. Her and her husband and family live in Vance, Al where her husband, Matt Jones is the pulpit minister at the Mercedes Drive church of Christ. Heather has a book, Good Grief through Kaio publications. Her hobbies include photography, drinking coffee and hand embroidery.
