GOD’S JOY FOR MY JOURNEY – How God Can Redeem My Pain

HOW GOD CAN REDEEM MY PAIN

2 Corinthians 1:3-11

1.HE IS A GOOD GOD!

Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort. 2 Corinthians 1:3

Troubles, Paul said, help Christians shift their perspective from the external and temporal to the internal and eternal  David Lowery

2.HE WILL COMFORT ME SO I CAN COMFORT OTHERS.

Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, 4 who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God.  2 Corinthians 1:3-4

Jowett has observed that God does not comfort us to make us comfortable but to make us comforters.  David Garland

3.HE HAS PROMISED TO BRING GOOD OUT OF MY PAIN.

          A. ENDURANCE AND MATURITY

If we are distressed, it is for your comfort and salvation; if we are comforted, it is for your comfort, which produces in you patient endurance of the same sufferings we suffer.  2 Corinthians 1:6

We grow through our pain.

          B. A DEPENDENCE ON GOD AND MANIFESTATION OF HIS POWER

But this happened that we might not rely on ourselves but on God, who raises the dead.  2 Corinthians 1:9b

4.GOD (HE) ALWAYS GETS THE LAST WORD!

He has delivered us from such a deadly peril, and he will deliver us again. On him we have set our hope that he will continue to deliver us, 11 as you help us by your prayers.  2 Corinthians 1:10

When you call to me, I will answer you. I will be with you when you are in trouble. I will save you and honor you.      Psalm 91:15 (GW)

One of the many paradoxes of the Christian life is that the grace of God is most keenly experienced not in the best but in what seem to be the worst of times.   David Lowery

“As the heavens are higher than the earth, 

so are my ways higher than your ways 

and my thoughts than your thoughts. 

10 As the rain and the snow 

come down from heaven, 

and do not return to it 

without watering the earth 

and making it bud and flourish, 

so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater, 

11 so is my word that goes out from my mouth: 

It will not return to me empty, 

but will accomplish what I desire 

and achieve the purpose for which I sent it.

Isaiah 55:9-11