The Source of Comfort
When you find yourself in pain, it’s natural to seek comfort. Everyone wants the agony of injury, illness, or heartbreak to disappear as quickly as possible.
If you touch a hot stove, you might grab a ice for your burn. If you get caught in a rainstorm, you might immediately look for shelter. If you experience the loss of someone you love, you might do whatever you can to distract yourself from grief.
We can also seek things like food, shopping, work, drugs, alcohol, technology, or entertainment as mind-numbing agents to attempt to ease our suffering.
But only one God can truly bring us comfort:
“All praise to God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. God is our merciful Father and the source of all comfort. He comforts us in all our troubles so that we can comfort others. When they are troubled, we will be able to give them the same comfort God has given us.”
2 Corinthians 1:3-4 NLT
When Paul and Timothy use the word “comfort,” they’re describing a God who comforts, consoles, encourages, helps, strengthens, instructs, and refreshes. That’s the God He was to Paul and Timothy, and that’s the God He still is.
No matter how bad things get, God can comfort you in a way that no one else can. You can lean on Him.
And because God’s Spirit is within His people, His people can also comfort others. He works in them and through them to offer a hope that’s beyond any present or future pain.
Are you hurting physically, mentally, or emotionally? There’s a God who cares. There are people who want to help. So cry out to the source of all comfort. You can trust Him with your pain.
First Things First
There are plenty of things in life that beg for our attention. Our days are filled with relationships and responsibilities, all of which take time.
In Jesus’ famous sermon in Matthew 6, He spends some time talking about the various things we give our attention to. He explains that instead of spending all of our time and energy worrying about our basic need and desires in life, we should first seek His kingdom and His righteousness. If we do that, everything else will fall into place.
So, what does it mean to seek God’s kingdom and His righteousness?
God’s kingdom is about God’s rule and reign over all of creation. His kingdom was unleashed during Jesus’ ministry on earth, and is now growing and expanding throughout the global Church. The work of the kingdom is to continue to tell others about the hope of Jesus, and to teach everything that Jesus has commanded.
To seek God’s righteousness is to desire to live the way God intended. It's to live according to God’s...