What It Means For The Father Of Mercies And God Of All Comfort To Be My God And My Father Who Comforts Me
2 Corinthians 1:3-5
(Children’s Sheet for Sermon Interaction is at bottom. Notes for young children to answer are throughout sermon)Pastor Kerry Kinchen, Bridgeway Bible Church
Please turn to 2 Corinthians 1. 2 Corinthians 1:3-5 is our primary section under study this morning. As you are finding 2 Corinthians 1:3-5, I want to get us oriented with important contextual information. It will help us with understanding what the Spirit is saying through Paul. In writing 2 Corinthians, Paul has sensed a need to defend his apostleship. He had to do this more than once in respect to the Corinthian church. He had to do this even though he purposely walked on egg shells (so to speak) to keep from offending people with some his own personal attributes. Paul was wise with the wisdom of God; so he ran his ministry race in such a way as not to be disqualified by each individual affinity group he ministered to. In his own words, he ran in such a way as to win more people in receiving the prize of effective ministry. But apparently Paul’s unimpressiveness, along with the growing popularity of other more dynamic Christian teachers in Corinth, plus Paul’s sharp confrontation of sin (especially immorality, pride, arrogance, lack of manifesting the love of Christ, and divisiveness) all contributed to Paul being ridiculed and maligned by certain people in Corinth. Some were even rejecting him outright. This down-grading scrutiny of Paul was not merely coming from the lost which was Paul’s typical experience everywhere else. In Corinth, it unfortunately was coming from Christians. Any minister of God knows how horrible this kind of infection is in the body. It was doubly horrible for God’s apostle to the gentiles. On top of this, Paul was constantly being persecuted by authorities everywhere he went. He ran into problems in every city he preached the gospel. The gospel is offensive to the perishing, so they react to the message. They usually attack the messenger while attacking the message. Paul was the messenger. But, the epistles indicate that the reports of Paul’s hardships and persecutions became another source of contempt for certain people in Corinth. Fleshly people among the church in Corinth, liked to evaluate others from worldly standards. Like a lot of people who are standard bearers, they have a kind of box which exists in their heart. That box can have many labels. But any of us can know what its purpose is for. It is the data-base that is there of the mistakes, the shortcomings, and the irritations of others. Those who create the box in their hearts, begin stacking negative criteria in it. Why? Because they are building their own case concerning someone they are trying to find reasons to disqualify. They want to justify their unloving ways by pointing to their unloving box of failures and shortcomings. The judgmental boxes of the carnal Christians in Corinth were overflowing with contempt. From Paul’s words in 1 Corinthians and 2 Corinthians, we can deduce that his continuous state of suffering and hardship seemed to some of his critics that God did not favor Paul. They thought that Paul’s suffering and hardship meant that God had something against Paul. They also had a hard time accepting the seeming commonness and lowliness that Paul conveyed socially, monetarily, and physically--especially in comparison to other less offensive apostles who were considered to be super-apostles. They even considered Paul’s speaking ability to be contemptible. Some took this kind of negativity to the level of despising Paul and his ministry. Ironically, in pointing to Paul’s persecution and suffering as some kind of negative in their boxes, their carnal prejudices only served to become part of Paul’s overall persecution and suffering. But there was not only the comparison going on with the celebrity apostles that were winning the ears of the church Paul had planted. There were also false apostles infiltrating the church (probably judaizers). The false apostle’s message was wrong. But part of the false apostle’s message was to attack Paul and his message too. All of these things form a kind of contextual backdrop for understanding various layers of Paul’s persecution, pain, and problems that he had to deal with. So, as we examine what Paul wrote in his epistle to the Corinthians, we need to keep all of this in mind in respect to his suffering. In all of it, we need to learn from what Paul taught, and also from what Paul did. What did he do? Paul looked to the God of all comfort as his refuge in the midst of it all. We are going to explore this same principle in respect to our own lives. We are going to look at hardship, suffering, persecution, and affliction, but as we do, we are going to look past it all--to our Father who loves us in the midst of it all. Please read 2 Corinthians 1:3-5 with me at this time,
“3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, 4 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. 5 For just as the sufferings of Christ are ours in abundance, so also our comfort is abundant through Christ.” 2 Corinthians 1:3-5
Please prepare your heart to learn along with me in this sermon with the theme,
What It Means For The Father Of Mercies And God Of All Comfort To Be My God And My Father Who Comforts Me
[prayer]
/1/
The first principle that I want us to glean from our text has to do with the fact that we can, and must, trust in God and receive His comfort knowing that He is not surprised, confused, overwhelmed, or anxious concerning anything. Life can be tough for us. We know this every day after we wake up to face the world. We even know this at night when we can not sleep, or we are in pain, or we are dealing with an emergency. We experience the toughness of life up until the day we die. But life is not tough for God. This is the case; and though life is tough for you while life is not tough for God, it actually matters to God that life is tough for you. I’ll repeat that;
Even though life is not tough for God, it actually matters to God (in a loving way of perfect understanding) that life is tough for you.
The Spirit wants you to recognize this fact and embrace it. We need to embrace the fact that it matters to God that life is tough for us in the same way that He embraces us with loving arms through the toughness. In other words, the Spirit wants you to know this in your heart to such an extent that it is part of you. But we must also do this, recognizing that though your lot in life matters to God, and though He embraces you with love through it all, it does not mean that God is going to make the toughness go away while we pass through this world. Yes, someday God will make sure the toughness will be gone forever. It will disappear when we experience the next stage of our spiritual salvation that He has for us. That time will be your perfected existence in resurrected glory with your Lord forever. This is your promised future in Christ. But God cares about everything that happens in His created universe. So everything matters to God; especially with His children in Christ--even the fact that life is tough for you (His child) at this time. It really does matter to God that life can seem so overwhelming to you that you think you can’t go on one more moment. I want us all to think about this as we recognize certain ways that the world and the curse of the world, matters to God. Think for a moment about the fact that God is God. What I mean is that we need to consider that God is not like us. His essential being is vastly different from us. To put such a huge thought together in as simple a way that I can, God is beyond huge in all ways. As a consequence of the immense hugeness that He is, His understanding of everything is vastly different than ours. It is deeper. It is perfect. It is more complete. When life is tough for us in our little sphere of the grand scheme of things, we may think we are looking at it with full understanding, but we are not. We are not big enough to fully grasp all the details of why things are the way they are in God’s creation. We are small, finite, created beings. As such, we find it hard to understand God’s comprehensive design, function, and purpose for everything He has ordained into existence. Our IQ’s are miniscule compared to God’s intelligence. Even the geniuses among us are feeble know-nothings compared to the God who made them and everything around them. Only God has the full understanding of everything, including one of the things that perplexes our little minds the most, which is what?--why He allowed sin and suffering to come into the world in the first place. But He understands how all of it is according to His perfect plan and why it was, and is, essentially, and amazingly important in the perfection of the plan. In fact, it is one of God’s huge attributes to always have full understanding all the time in comprehensive control all the time. So we must recognize that God relates to everything much differently than we do; and one important way is that God understands it all differently than we do which means that He understands it all differently than you do. So in this respect, it does not matter how chaotic and out of control the world seems to you, or me, or to anyone else. It is not that way to God because He understands why and how it all must happen the way that it does. Now think about this. In respect to God’s understanding, it is not clouded by how horrifying or depressing it is for us to go through whatever drama it is we go through. A good example is the rejection, humiliation, torture, judgement, and execution of Jesus. Through it all, God’s mind was not clouded by how horrifying or depressing it was for His Son to go through the ordained drama He went through. God saw the purpose for it all in crystal clear clarity. At our level, it does not matter so much how cursed you think your life is, or cursed the environment is around you. It does not matter how out of control you may feel. Sure you matter, and sure your circumstances matter, but follow what I am saying--Even when there is a dizzying storm of confused and scary thoughts in your mind, and you cannot seem to get your thoughts together in stability, God’s thoughts are always together in the most perfect understanding of it all, and this is the important foundation of this principle. God is always stable. The God--our God--your God--is always blessed. This is the point, and we need to embrace it early on so that we know and are assured of Who we are relying upon in the midst of the grand scheme of things. Notice how Paul starts out what he says here,
“3 Blessed be the God ...” 2 Corinthians 1:3
Look at this with the eyes of the Spirit and see the stability. “The” God is your God. The God is the One and only true living God of the universe. But notice that Paul says that the God is blessed. When Paul says God is blessed, Paul is describing something which is an intrinsic attribute with God that we are supposed to recognize and then acknowledge. I know it sounds so fundamental, but this is where our faith starts on this principle. It is the faith platform for what it means for the Father of mercies and God of all comfort to be your God and your Father Who comforts you. Paul recognized and acknowledged this foundational aspect of God when he referred to God in 1 Timothy 1:11 as,
“... the blessed God,” 1 Timothy 1:11
We would say it is indicative of what God is. So even though God’s creation feels the stinging, hurting, results of the curse of sin and death; and even though God’s creation experiences decay, pain, and confusion in its cursed state, God is blessed, and He is always blessed. Peter said the same thing about God in 1 Peter 1:3,
“3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to His great mercy has caused us [true Christians] to be regenerated [re-conceived] to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead,” 1 Peter 1:3
Paul repeated the same fact in Ephesians 1:3,
"Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us [true Christians] with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ," Ephesians 1:3
@1 God who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, is the ________________ God. Ephesians 1:3 (blessed)
Each time the apostles started out their epistles with this very important truth (that God is blessed) they did so to build upon it with What they went on to say through the rest of their teaching. So, no matter what you and I go through, we must always start with the fact that is unbendable. God is blessed, which in language that we can relate to, means:
God is happy, God is content, and God is satisfied--God always exists in a status of favor and benefit.
It is all part of His intrinsic being. As we look at this attribute of God, we must consider the fact that there are other scholars who see the difficult Greek construction in this passage as meaning that Paul is honoring God by praising Him. This is why you will find the NIV translation team putting Paul's introductory comment as,
"3 Praise be to the God ...” 2 Corinthians 1:3 NIV
The translators with the NIV thought that Paul was saying that God is to be praised. This way of looking at the Greek reflects a truth found in Hebrews 13:15, where we read the writer encouraging praise to God,
"15 Through Him [which is Christ] then, let us continually offer up a sacrifice of praise to God, that is, the fruit of lips that give thanks to His name." Hebrews 13:15
@2 The Spirit wants us to continually offer up _______________________ to God in giving thanks to Him. Hebrews 13:15 (praise)
No matter which interpretation of the Greek one goes with, there is a connective thread to both. God is the blessed one, and God is the One to be praised. But I go with the first one. To me, it is as the Greek Scholar Dr. Wallace explains with more insight. Essentially Paul’s typical writing style is to generally move from making statements such as the fact that God is blessed, and then from there, to move to obligations, like for example, praising God for who He is, or by blessing God even more with our lives. In other words, when Paul says things like this in the Greek, he usually expresses the reality first, and then the expected response is what Paul moves on to next. With this in mind, Paul’s general style argues for the fact that Paul is making an indicative statement that the One true God is blessed even in the midst of Paul’s suffering. It is from God’s attribute of being blessed, that we, His creations who have been recreated in Christ, are supposed to respond to Him accordingly, like for example, in praise, in thanks, and in receiving His comfort and so forth. But the point is that this is your God. So, when it comes to embracing what it means for the Father of mercies and God of all comfort to be our God and our father who comforts us, we need to know that our God is already comforted Himself. Foundationally, we must be comforted in knowing this fact. When we are hit with the fist of life to such an extent that we do not think we are blessed, we need to know that the very God who created everything, is always blessed. This means that He is blessed in His understanding of everything, including the pain and confusion that you and I go through. Okay?--so that is the fundamental faith issue to embrace.
/2/
It leads us to the next principle that we must recognize concerning the father of mercies and God of all comfort being your God and father who comforts you. Essentially, it has to do with God’s own personal, experiential understanding of the pain and suffering that you go through in the fact that He is the Father of the ultimate Son. Notice what Paul says,
“3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, 4 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. 5 For just as the sufferings of Christ are ours in abundance, so also our comfort is abundant through Christ.” 2 Corinthians 1:3-5
@3 God is our __________________ of mercies who gives us abundant comfort through Christ. 2 Corinthians 1:2-5 (Father)
When Paul described himself and the other apostles of His missionary network (like Timothy) as having the sufferings of Christ Jesus Himself as their own in abundance, Paul means as he explained to the Colossians in 1:24,
“Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I do my share on behalf of His body, which is the church, in filling up what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions.” Colossians 1:24
Notice how Paul explained how the apostles identified with Christ in serving the elect in ministry. In being members of the spiritual body of Christ, the apostles carried on Christ’s ministry. In doing so, in a certain sense, the sufferings of Christ were the apostle’s in abundance. They did their share in filling up what was lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the church which came later after Christ was crucified and resurrected. This point is amazing. It is beautiful, and I could take a whole sermon to expound on it, but right now I am wanting us to see something else that is part of it. Essentially, it is the stark fact that Christ, the God-man, suffered. In the midst of anything we go through--no matter how horrifying, disturbing, depressing, and uncomfortable, we must keep this reality at the forefront. At the proper time which is at God’s ordained time that He knew He would accomplish, He came in the flesh to be the God manifested in bodily form,
“9 For in Him [Christ Jesus] all the fullness of Deity dwells in bodily form,” Colossians 2:9
Then God the Son, manifested in the flesh, experienced intense suffering magnified in the fact of being the God who humbled Himself for it, Philippians 2:5-8,
“5 ... Christ Jesus, 6 who, although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, 7 but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of men. 8 Being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.” Philippians 2:5-8
As 100% God and 100% man, our Lord experienced the most humble condescension we can imagine. Our blessed God momentarily, according to His intense wisdom and understanding of everything (Remember He is huge. He knows more about pain and suffering than you do)--so according to His intense wisdom and understanding of everything in His immense hugeness, He literally became a curse to actually experience being a curse. Yes God became a curse because He ordained to experience the whole process,
“Christ redeemed us from the curse of the Law, having become a curse for us” Galatians 3:13
@4 Christ purchased us from the _________________ of the Mosaic Law, having become a curse for us. Galatians 3:13 (curse)
The point is that the God who is the blessed God, knows what it is like to experience the curse of the world by becoming a curse for us. Think about how the huge God of the universe Who created everything, condescended to intentionally, purposely, become part of His own creation. It was His plan all along. As such, He humbly allowed His creation to reject Him, torture Him, and then crucify Him on an execution stake with a crossbeam as the ordained curse that was also the blessing of atonement. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit--these three are One. I think the Biblically recognized Trinitarian nature of the One God is difficult to articulate to where we can completely wrap our minds around it; but it is real, and it is understandable to the point that God wants us to understand it; and in its reality, we understand that the blessed God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, experienced human suffering in His only begotten Son. So God can relate to your temporary suffering in a personal way through actual experience in Christ, and still be the blessed God. But we can not forget that God understands everything from another aspect. It has to do with plan, design, function, and purpose. God knew that His suffering in the body of Christ was necessary. God knew that without suffering there would be no salvation of souls. You say,
“Why did it have to be this way?”
Because this is the way the huge God created the universe to exist in the way that best pleases Him. God also knew that one of the principles that God ordained is that suffering precedes glory. There is comfort in this principle of suffering preceding glory. But God knows the principle better than we do. He also knows about what you are going through by ordaining it ultimately for glory. And the big point in this second principle, is that God knows what you are going through by personally experiencing the hurt of being rejected and crucified in physical pain and mental anguish in Christ.
/3/
This leads to the third principle. It has to do with the fact that God is your loving Father who is very concerned with comforting you through your experiences in this brief time that you are in this world. I want us to notice the fatherhood language as it relates to Christ and mercies. He is
“3 ... the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, 4 who comforts us [as the Father of mercies] 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 [the Father]. 5 ... through Christ [the Son].” 2 Corinthians 1:2-5
Then a little later in explaining that the Christians need to separate themselves from fellowship with unbelievers, Paul explains the father-children relationship in chapter 6,
16 ... we are the temple of the living God; just as God said, ‘I will dwell in them and walk among them; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. 17 ... And I will welcome you. 18 And I will be a father to you, And you shall be sons and daughters to Me,’ Says the Lord Almighty.” 2 Corinthians 6:16-18
There is nothing more secure than the fact that the One true God is your Father. The security is found in the foundational cornerstone. He is the Father of Christ Jesus. We are made to be His children spiritually in Christ Jesus. When it comes to our Father being the Father of mercies, this means, as a first principle, that there would be no such thing as mercy and there is no such thing as mercy and comfort aside from God. Actually without God there would be nothing--at least philosophically; because there can not possibly be a reality that is without the eternal God. But the point is that you are a child of your merciful God. Even when you are depressed, and downcast, you are still a child of God. This is why Paul describes the Father later in chapter 7, as,
“God, who comforts the depressed, ...” 2 Corinthians 7:6
There are a lot of depressed children of God in this world. And they all have a blessed God and Father who is there to comfort them in their depression. He is your Father who is always there to comfort you in your depression. He does it according to His word by His Spirit. He does it by using other members of the body to be the body for the body. This is the unique privilege that we have as children of the most loving, understanding Father in existence. So, your Father wants you to seek Him, in faith, for His comfort and mercy in time of need. But there is more to this. God is not the Father of mercies and God of all comfort for those whom He does not spiritually save. He is their judge who condemns them to eternal destruction in which they perish forever, John 3:16. But God is the Father of Christ Jesus, and our Father (since we are in Christ Jesus) is the Father of mercies and God of all comfort for His elect. Think about this beautiful relationship. It started with the mercy that God has on you--a wretched sinner--in coming to be the curse for you. Everyone deserves death and separation from God in sin. But God the Father had mercy on you while you were in this state. I think of that great chapter from Paul describing God’s mercy where Paul begins it by first quoting God speaking to Moses. As I read, notice how many times Paul emphasizes God’s mercy,
“15 ... ‘I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.’ 16 So then it does not depend on the man who wills or the man who runs, but on God who has mercy. ... 18 So then He has mercy on whom He desires, and He hardens whom He desires.19 You will say to me then, ‘Why does He still find fault? For who resists His determination?’ 20 On the contrary, who are you, O man, who answers back to God? The thing molded will not say to the molder, ‘Why did you make me like this,’ will it? 21 Or does not the potter have a right over the clay, to make from the same lump one vessel for honorable use and another for common use? 22 What if God, although willing to demonstrate His wrath and to make His power known, endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction? 23 And He did so to make known the riches of His glory upon vessels of mercy, which He prepared beforehand for glory, 24 even us, whom He also called, not from among Jews only, but also from among Gentiles.” Romans 9:15-24
@5 God has endured vessels of wrath prepared for destruction with much patience, to make known the riches of His glory upon us vessels of _____________________ He has called from among Jews and Gentiles. Romans 9:15-24 (mercy)
What Paul describes in Romans 9 is how God is the true father of mercy and compassion for His vessels of honor. This is you if you have received Christ as your Lord and Savior in faith. God is your loving, merciful, graceful, compassionate Father. He loves you so much that He died for you in His incarnation, in mercy for you. He knows what you are going through. He knows that you can hardly bear up under sorrows. But He wants you to know that He is there in your life to comfort you through the temporary trials and afflictions. The comfort that Paul is talking about here is encouragement comfort. To bestow this encouragement kind of comfort, God wants to remind you that in Christ you have a special meaning and value. Christ in you is the precious deposit that gives you the value. Your heavenly Father hears your prayers. And as your directing Father, He wants you to always be reminded of the revelation--you are His vessel of honor in this world in which Christ gets all the glory. He wants you to be comforted in the fact that whatever you go through, you are experiencing it for a higher reason. You are actually glorifying God in it. You are a living demonstration of experiencing the curse of the fall, but you are doing so as a blessing work of God Himself. What you are going through is like birth pains. They seem like they will last forever. They seem unbearable. But they are temporary discomforts before the fuller everlasting prize comes. This is one of the main things that your loving Father wants to comfort you with. You can be in the midst of the most perplexing, and even the most horrifying situation, and while you are there, you have the assurance that you are a child of the Father. You are truly spiritually saved which means that whatever it is that you are going through is really merely only momentary light affliction. But you are an everlasting child of the King. You are in His royal priesthood. The King went through the afflictions of the curse too before he was glorified. Think about that time in the garden when Jesus was pacing back and forth in prayer. The Scriptures explain that His inner turmoil was so great that He was grieved to a point that actually has a medical classification. The Spirit says that He was literally grieved to “the point of death,” Matthew 26:38. So the anxiety of grief was so great that His physical body was experiencing so much trauma that He was on the edge of dying. The condition was so bad that Jesus sweat drops of blood, Luke 22:44. We read in the gospel accounts, that He prayed three different times that the cup of intense anguish and point of death manifestation would pass from Him. Finally an angel came down in the Father’s mercy upon the Son. The angel strengthened Jesus to go on with the next phase of rejection, torture, humiliation, and the excruciating execution in more, and more pain, Luke 22:41-47. But then after all that, Christ resurrected into His future glorification. God is the Father of mercy. God will also strengthen you through your trials and tribulations, but it is a faith issue. After you have suffered for a little while God will exalt you. This is something that is difficult to accept when we are in the midst of trials and tribulations. But remember that it is a faith issue. The scriptures explain that the testing of our faith produces endurance. The principle is real, and so we must believe it. But our faith gets tested, and when it does, there is a tough ordeal. The proper response is to keep looking to God. Trust the Father. This is the fertile ground in which your faith grows. It grows because it is being practiced. Like Jesus, what we need to do is in faith, cast all our anxiety upon the Father of mercies and God of all comfort. Peter says in 1 Peter 5:7 that we need to be casting all our anxiety upon God. But it really is a relentless faith issue to do this. You may have to keep on casting, and casting, and casting, but the principle is that you must cast it upon God in faith. Give your situation to the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, and let Him take care of it. He will do one of two things;
a--He will either deliver you out of the difficulty and affliction, or
b--He will encourage you and strengthen you in the midst of it all.
Think about how Paul explained the situation that occurred with Epaphroditus in Philippians 2,
“25 ... Epaphroditus, my brother and fellow worker and fellow soldier, ... 27 ... indeed he was sick to the point of death, but God had mercy on him, and not on him only but also on me, so that I would not have sorrow upon sorrow. ... 30 ... he came close to death for the work of Christ,” Philippians 2:25-27
Like Jesus had been in the garden, Epaphroditus was also sick to that point of almost dying. But notice what Paul says in respect to God’s mercy. God had mercy on Epaphroditus, which means that God actually healed him. This is provision, but God has multifaceted purposes in the things He does. God also healed Epaphroditus so that Paul would not have another layer of sorrow stacked upon the sorrows that Paul already had while being in prison. So God delivers us when deliverance is in His plan. But God also strengthens us and encourages us too. This is what Paul means in praying for the Thessalonians,
“5 Now may the God who gives perseverance and encouragement grant you to be of the same mind with one another according to Christ Jesus,” Romans 15:5
What is the underlying word in respect to this? Again, it is trust. God wants us to go to Him for perseverance and encouragement in time of need, and trust Him. This brings further blessing to Him in pure worship. And then God wants us to share perseverance and encouragement with others. This blesses them and helps them to worship and bless God too.
Now I want to recap all of this; In times of intense hardship, we must remember that we can, and must, trust in God and receive His comfort knowing that He is not surprised, confused, overwhelmed, or anxious concerning anything. Our God is blessed in His stable, strength, and understanding. He is blessed in His love for us in Christ in the midst of what we go through. We must also realize that God has personal, experiential understanding of pain and suffering. He understands how it is for you to exist in the curse of the world around you. God manifested in bodily form, purposely became a tortured and executed curse for you to be blessed with the ultimate privilege. The immense pain that Christ went through, is pain that God experienced according to His own creative purpose. So God understands pain. He understands your pain, and He loves you in, and through, the pain of this temporal world. He will comfort you through your experiences in this brief time that you are in this world. He is truly your Loving Father. And so He wants to have a special relationship with you. He is your Father of mercies, so embrace Him in this as He embraces you through what you are going through. He is your God of all comfort in strengthening you in your faith. The testing of your faith produces endurance, but God is not leaving you alone to toughen up. God is there producing the endurance in you, as He lovingly holds you through the midst of it all.
[Amen]
@1 God who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, is the ________________ God. Ephesians 1:3 (blessed)
@2 The Spirit wants us to continually offer up _______________________ to God in giving thanks to Him. Hebrews 13:15 (praise)
@3 God is our __________________ of mercies who gives us abundant comfort through Christ. 2 Corinthians 1:2-5 (Father)
@4 Christ purchased us from the _________________ of the Mosaic Law, having become a curse for us. Galatians 3:13 (curse)
@5 God has endured vessels of wrath prepared for destruction with much patience, to make known the riches of His glory upon us vessels of _____________________ He has called from among Jews and Gentiles. Romans 9:15-24 (mercy)
