What To Do When Life Hits Hard

Turn to the Word of God this morning, 2 Corinthians chapter 1.

The image of the Lord as a shepherd, and us as His sheep. The words of John 10: “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me.” The evidence that you are one of His sheep is that you follow the shepherd.

This means that wherever He leads, you will go. He may lead you into darkness, into difficulty, or into various challenges. He may bring you into the most difficult season of your life. But even then, we do not turn away from His Word. We know the sound of His voice. And we continue to rejoice in Him, no matter where He leads. It is easier said than done, but this is how we recognize the people of God.

We are in 2 Corinthians 1 this morning. This passage has been on my mind, and I trust it will be received with profit. I believe the Lord is actively guiding every aspect of our service, even in the providence of the psalm we read, the section we read, and the sense of affliction it contains.

A believer experiences affliction, and God remains faithful even when He brings affliction. “Thy faithfulness hath afflicted me.”

So let us read from 2 Corinthians 1, beginning at verse 1. Let us hear God’s Word.

“Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God, and Timothy our brother, unto the church of God which is at Corinth, with all the saints which are in all Achaia:

“Grace be to you and peace from God our Father, and from the Lord Jesus Christ.

“Blessed be God, even the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies, and the God of all comfort;

“Who comforteth us in all our tribulation, that we may be able to comfort them which are in any trouble by the comfort wherewith we ourselves are comforted of God.

“For as the sufferings of Christ abound in us, so our consolation also aboundeth by Christ.

“And whether we be afflicted, it is for your consolation and salvation, which is effectual in the enduring of the same sufferings which we also suffer: or whether we be comforted, it is for your consolation and salvation.

“And our hope of you is stedfast, knowing, that as ye are partakers of the sufferings, so shall ye be also of the consolation.

“For we would not, brethren, have you ignorant of our trouble which came to us in Asia, that we were pressed out of measure, above strength, insomuch that we despaired even of life:

“But we had the sentence of death in ourselves, that we should not trust in ourselves, but in God which raiseth the dead:

“Who delivered us from so great a death, and doth deliver: in whom we trust that he will yet deliver us;

“Ye also helping together by prayer for us, that for the gift bestowed upon us by the means of many persons, thanks may be given by many on our behalf.”

Amen.

We will end the reading at verse 11. And what you have heard, beloved, is the Word of the eternal God, which you are to receive, you are to believe, and you are to obey. And the people of God said, Amen.

Lord, we pray for help. We have already received help. Our souls have been made glad in song. We have meditated on Your love, on the endurance of Your love, that, I mean, what are we when You find us, but wretched, hell-deserving sinners? And even in our best condition, we are far from lovely in Your sight. And yet the gospel makes us lovely. The King’s daughter is all glorious within.

We thank You for such adornment as we possess by faith alone, the righteousness of Jesus Christ: a standing that is full and complete, a redemption that needs no addition, a position that will never be altered, an indissoluble union that is true for everyone who believes.

Lord, you know weary hearts today. You know the challenges. And I pray, even if I must stumble through this sermon, I would rather stumble and yet God’s voice be heard than speak with the eloquence of an angel and people not hear from God.

So we pray for the Holy Spirit. Come in power. Accomplish your purpose. Extend your kingdom. Show your glory. We pray in our Savior’s all-prevailing name. Amen.

Have you ever found yourself questioning God? Have you ever used words that express doubt, such as, “Why would God allow this to happen?” or, “What have I done to deserve this?”

At such times, even if we do not speak our complaints aloud, we may withdraw from God and prayer, give him the silent treatment, and neglect worship. Whether spoken or not, the heart may be murmuring against his providence.

We may sound like Israel in the wilderness: “Is the LORD among us, or not?” Exodus 17, just after the plagues and the crossing of the Red Sea. Or like Martha: “Lord, if thou hadst been here, my brother had not died.”

There is something beneath that statement, is there not? An implied accusation. This is your fault. We sent for you. If you had been here, this would not have happened.

The book of 2 Corinthians has been debated for years regarding the events that occurred between the first and second letters. I will not enter into all the details of this discussion, but on the surface, you will see as you read through 2 Corinthians that a clear challenge is being directed against the apostle.

Assumptions are being made as various challenges have confronted him, and these challenges and difficulties are interpreted by those who are not aligned with him or who view him unfavorably. People are interpreting God’s providence in his life and drawing conclusions.

Therefore, from the beginning of this letter, the apostle seeks to clarify the matter. There are certain things that happen in the life of a believer, and they are under God’s hand, serving a distinct purpose.

It is not necessarily judgment. It is not necessarily the kind of affliction described in Psalm 119 this morning, where the reason for suffering is that we have gone astray. But there are other forms of affliction, hardship, and difficulty that come into the life of a believer, and they may appear to be a form of divine judgment.

What Paul teaches us here is that these experiences are not always punishment, but they are part of God’s plan.

What the apostle does here is, from the outset, to direct the focus of those he is addressing upon God, helping them to understand how they should view affliction—whether it is happening to him or to them.

The focus of our attention, though there is a longer argument presented here, is found in verses 3 and 4.

“Blessed be God, even the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies, and the God of all comfort;

“Who comforteth us in all our tribulation, that we may be able to comfort them which are in any trouble by the comfort wherewith we ourselves are comforted of God.”

You can see this leading into verse 5, where the sufferings of Christ abound in them, and so on. He will return to this theme at other times in this epistle—the experience of suffering in his life, and the lessons God taught him through periods of difficulty, or through times when it seemed as though his way was blocked and God did not grant him what he desired.

What verses 3 and 4 do for us is enable us to understand, if we can simply see it, at least in part, what this passage touches on. They enable us to be better equipped for such seasons—not only those we see in the lives of others, but especially when they happen to us. The very times when we are inclined to ask why.

If you keep the language of verses 3 and 4 near you, and do what they require, you will find yourself growing through affliction, and the affliction itself accomplishing far more than peace and ease ever could.

So look with me as we consider this morning what to do when life becomes difficult. What to do when life becomes difficult.

You know what I mean by that language. You have been there. You know exactly those seasons when you are struck by something devastating—something that may change your life forever.

So what do you do? What did you do in the past? Did you lie with the Israelites and complain?

Or perhaps you became an example, and maybe, just maybe, you have already lived out what this text teaches. It is remarkable in the Lord’s providence—not amusing, but noteworthy in the way that, as I was preparing this message, later that same day I spoke with a Christian who, without any prompting related to this sermon, shared about their own season of life. It was the most difficult season they had ever experienced. Yet in time, they learned how God used that very experience to help others as a Christian who had gone through trial.

And I sat there listening, thinking, this sounds very much like what I was studying on Thursday morning.

So as we consider this, first note this: praise God for who He is. Praise God for who He is.

“Blessed be God.”

Here is a man who has been battered. You read through this epistle; he details some of that. He speaks in 2 Corinthians. I cannot take time to go over it, but if you read through the epistle, you may be aware that he speaks more personally about his own experience in 2 Corinthians than perhaps anywhere else in his writings. There are a few places, of course, where he speaks about his own experience, but 2 Corinthians places greater emphasis on the fact that he is under assault.

He is under scrutiny. There are people maligning, misrepresenting, and doing all sorts of things to undermine his ministry. He has endured a difficult season. He has intended to do certain things, but has been unable to fulfill them. God has restricted his path, preventing him. Things have not gone as he desired.

You will remember later when he speaks about the thorn in the flesh; it is simply a multiplication of hardship that has come upon the Apostle Paul. He will speak in relation to his experience, but he begins, “Blessed be God.”

Nothing he has gone through changes the worth of his God. He is worthy to be praised, worthy to be blessed, and it is good for us to remember this.

Your trial, which you may be enduring now, may change your schedule, as it did for Paul. It may affect your sleep, as it did for Paul. It may disrupt your plans, drain your strength, and shape your relationships. But it does not change God. He is not less worthy because you are suffering.

Blessed be God.

You gather in this place. This gathering on the first day of the week reminds you that you are not in control. God calls us to assemble, and through the assembly, He calls us to be present to worship Him.

If worship is rightly ordered, with each part in its proper place—prayer, praise, and the preaching of His Word—it takes us away from ourselves and directs our focus where it must be first, on God.

Like I say, His worth does not change, no matter what you are going through today or at any other time. He is still God.

And so just as Paul begins, so must we, praising God for who He is.

First of all, we see that He is the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.

“Blessed be God, even the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.”

The grammar, the way it is constructed—blessed be God, even the Father—pairs them together. This is the true and living God. This is the fatherhood of God. Paul is identifying this God as our God, as He is known in relation to the Lord Jesus Christ.

“Blessed be God, even the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.”

This communicates two important things. I am sure it communicates more. As I have been thinking on this text and meditating on it, I have seen at least two important truths that are key even in this language that he gives to us.

“Blessed be God, even the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.”

First, experientially, the Father sustained the Son in His sufferings. He is the Father of the Lord Jesus Christ. And when you go through your sufferings, you are able to, as we see again in verse 5, consider the sufferings of Christ as they abound in us. You are able to look to the One who suffered so greatly, knowing that He was sustained by the Father, upheld by the Father, supported by the Father, and comforted by the Father.

In the agony of Gethsemane, as He faced what was coming, He was so exhausted, so brought to an end of Himself in His humanity, that the Father knew the need of the Son and sent an angel to minister to Him. The Father knew what was required to sustain Him so that He could go all the way to the cross and be the sacrifice for sin, suffering in our place and dying in the most terrible agony.

He is the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Experientially, the Father sustained the Son in His sufferings.

Mediatorially, the Son is the believer’s access to the Father. The only reason we can say, “Blessed be God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,” in this sense, is that this access to the Father is made possible through the mediation of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Since He is the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, He is therefore our Father in a true sense, not in a general sense, not merely because in Him we live and move and have our being, or in the sense that we are all His offspring as creatures, but truly, truly we can look and say, He is our Father.

We have been adopted into His family. He has taken us as His own. The only means or grounds for this is because of Jesus Christ. Since we are united to Him, we have access to the Father. And we can call Him Father.

Experientially and mediatorially, this truth instructs our hearts. Apart from Christ, a person may speak of God, but cannot call Him Father with any sense of comfort.

This is the comfort of being able to call Him Father, and all that is involved in that: that He is Father to me, our Father who is in heaven, who sent His Son, who died in our place, who adopted us into His family, who has washed away our sins, who has received us, who has sent His Spirit to abide in us, who will call us to be with Himself one day. All of this is true for every believing heart.

Just as it was for the Lord Jesus Christ, even the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, His sufferings were not blind fate. It was not some hand that was merely leading and guiding without control or intent. The Father of our Lord Jesus Christ led the Son in all His steps into suffering.

You have this insight from Luke at the very beginning of His ministry, when our Lord Jesus was baptized and led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted for forty days by the devil. There you see the triune God leading, leading into suffering, leading into difficulty, leading into hardship, leading into that which strains the very fabric of our being.

He was being led. And throughout His ministry, so it was for our Lord Jesus Christ—suffering by appointment of perfect wisdom.

And so, as Paul reflects on his own suffering and considers his own circumstances, he is able to look and bless God, even the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. He led the Son. He led my Redeemer. He guided Him, supported Him, sustained Him, and all the glory is harvested through the sufferings of Christ.

We can bless God, even the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, for we do not look at the Lord Jesus and pity Him as if something awful happened that was tragic and had no redemptive quality or anything wonderful about it.

No, as I quoted earlier in prayer, God forbid that I should glory except in the cross. There is something about the sufferings of Christ that surpasses everything else and causes us to see the great plan, to marvel at the God who planned it, the Son who executed it, and the Spirit who supported Him in it.

And we worship, saying, Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.

And when you bring your mind to this truth, begin by praising God—praising God who did not make life easy for His Son, but made it difficult, with a purpose in that difficulty.

There, right there, lies the beginning of a different way of understanding our own suffering, does it not? He did not spare His own Son. He delivered Him up for us all, and in all of this, He never ceased to love Him. Our Lord Jesus was no stranger to sorrow. He was a man of sorrows, acquainted with grief by divine appointment.

Turn to Romans 8. Return to Romans 8.

The Spirit of adoption is the Spirit that belongs to every child of God. We are children. Verse 17 says, follow the logic: “And if children, then heirs.”

There are wonderful things prepared for us as children of God. We are heirs, and joint-heirs with Christ. If so, here is the part we do not like: “if so be that we suffer with him, that we may be also glorified together.”

“For I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us.”

Thus, there is this recognition: we are children, and we stand in this position through union with Jesus Christ, where we now inherit. We are heirs and joint-heirs with Christ. This means there is a certain path for us: glory, yes, but through a path of suffering. We suffer with Him so that we may also be glorified together.

Therefore, when we see the Father dealing with the Son, return again to 2 Corinthians 1: “Blessed be God, even the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.” The Father of our Lord Jesus Christ led Him through suffering, guided Him every step of the way, and loved Him in every turn.

And yet through all of this, it is not something we simply get to observe and say, “I am thankful that Jesus went that way and walked that path.” It means that we ought to be prepared for a similar path, not in the details, but in the experience, one of suffering.

He is the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, and that comfort belongs to us, knowing that as He led His Son, loved His Son, and supported His Son through suffering, so He will do for us. Yes.

He is also the source of all mercies and comfort. He is not just the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ; He is the source of all mercies and comfort. The Father of mercies and the God of all comfort.

The Father of mercies, plural. You could say He is the Father of mercy too; that would be true. But the apostle does not want us simply to think in terms of the character of God and leave it there, that He is merciful.

The Father of mercies is looking at the specific experiences of mercy. Where do we see His mercy? How do you view His mercy? Do you recognize Him as Jeremiah did? Can you see in the midst of hardship and difficulty that His mercies are new every morning and that God’s faithfulness remains intact? Are you able to say this through the challenges of life?

This is what Paul is saying. He is the Father of mercies. All that we see, all that we go through, is still undergirded by these pardoning mercies, these preserving mercies, and these mercies, as we mentioned earlier, by which He corrects us. Right?

That is Psalm 119, where the psalmist acknowledges that he has gone astray, and later speaks of how it is good that he has been afflicted, so that he might learn Your statutes.

You may not think about how good it is in the experience. When you are going through it, when God humbles you, when He brings you to a sense of awareness of the path you are on, when you have been living carelessly, when there has been spiritual indifference, when there has been carnality in your life, when there have been words spoken against your spouse, when there has been improper treatment of others, when there has been a lack of respect and love—when there have been all sorts of things going on, when you have embraced some idol in the world and justified it—then God comes in a still small voice with a message.

You know He is pointing to it, but you say, “No, no, I don’t think that applies here.” And so sin is being addressed by God gently, gently, gently, and then finally, to gain your attention, something happens. He adds something into your life that you would never wish for yourself, or He takes something away that you would never wish to lose.

And He comes. And you begin to pay attention. You start tracing your footsteps and you begin to realize.

People often misquote the language in Revelation about losing your first love. The danger of misquoting it is that you can lose something you never intended to lose. You were not intentionally losing your keys or losing whatever it may be. But when you leave something behind, when you intentionally leave it, that is what the believers did concerning the Lord. They left their first love and turned to something else.

He is the Father of mercies. All the mercies you enjoy—mercies for your body, mercies for your soul, mercies that surround your family, mercies that you take for granted—you do not mention them in prayer. You do not take time to detail them or record them. They seem insignificant.

The mercy of your spouse, which once you would have listed as a distinct mercy, has become so familiar over the years that you no longer notice all that your spouse does, all that your spouse is. You have become blind to them, and no longer list them as mercies from the Lord.

Other family members, the way you were raised—again, in this particular moment of the culture in which we live, which has a strong tendency to focus only on the negative—I am not minimizing hardship, but we are blind to the mercies. We cannot see them.

Again, what Paul is doing here is this: “Blessed be God, even the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies.”

Oh, that we would turn our eyes to God, the source of all our mercies. To do this, you must think not only about God, but about what He has done. Ponder all the mercies you have received.

This keeps us from becoming like Elijah in 1 Kings 19, who sat under a juniper tree and wanted to die. And God came to him. God came to him in mercy. God came in mercy. Oh, to see His mercies, even in that moment when He did not come to chasten him, but to sustain him and give him comfort. Father of mercies and God of all comfort. He came to him to give him rest, to give him food, to give him a message, and to re-clarify in his mind his commission.

David and Ziklag. He had to escape from all the noise and all the despair. He had to come before God. And it was there, before God, that he was able to encourage himself and strengthen himself.

See what he is doing. The village of Ziklag is in ashes. The children are missing, the wives are missing. All his men are in despair. David himself is in despair. He must go away and focus on the truth that there is One who is a source of mercy and comfort for him.

And when he turns to the Lord, he strengthens himself. He is encouraged in the Lord as God.

This is why Paul begins by blessing God. “Blessed be God, even the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies, and the God of all comfort.” This is where you must begin.

Praise God for who He is.

In the second place, trust God for what He supplies. Verse 4 follows naturally from verse 3 in its argument.

“Who comforteth us in all our tribulation.”

First, we may say that He supplies comforts that are personal. He comforts us in all our tribulation. He comes to us. He could say, He comes to me. He comes to the believer with specific comfort in my trial.

And He is the God who continually comforts. That is the grammar of the text. He continually comforts. It is not a single act. It is not looking back and saying, I can draw comfort from something He did for me long ago. Rather, when Paul speaks, God comes in the moment, personally, to comfort me. He sees, He knows, and He responds—just as we see in Exodus 3, when God saw the affliction of His people and responded.

Hagar and Ishmael in the wilderness, and she thought they were both going to die. Then we read in Genesis 21, God heard the voice of the boy. He heard, and they began to see. There was comfort brought about there.

Later in this very epistle, as I have mentioned, Paul refers to his thorn in the flesh in chapter 12. And His grace is sufficient in that moment. He comes to comfort, the One who comforts us, who comes in the moment.

Therefore, this comfort is not merely personal; it is timely. It comes at the right time. It may not come exactly when we hope it will, and He may at times allow us to go through a season of darkness, to experience the challenge of the moment, to feel the weakness of our own resources, even though we have previously overcome similar difficulties and believe we can do so again.

We have a history of being battle-worn and battle-experienced, and when we face this new difficulty, we think, “We will be able to face it; it will be fine; things will work out.” But God often sustains us through the trial, not just the event itself, but the endurance of it. It is not merely a challenge that comes, but the sustained burden over time.

You know as well as I do, it is the challenge that continues over time, the one that does not appear to end. That is the one. That is the one that brings us to the point where we are about to break, and we begin to ask, “When, Lord? Why, Lord? Have You cast us off forever?” These questions arise in such moments.

And what Paul is saying, if you fix your eyes on God, the Father of mercy is the God of all comfort. You will find that He comforts us in all our tribulation. He will come at the right time.

Remember Isaiah 43. What it does not say is, “When thou hast passed through the waters, I will be with thee.” It says, “When thou passest through the waters, I will be with thee.” This is the assurance of His presence during the trial itself.

He may allow the burden to remain. We tend to think the only way out is to remove the problem. And God looks and says, no. No, I am going to broaden your shoulders. You feel as though you are incapable of enduring this. I need you to feel that way so that you will understand that the source of your strength is not yourself, not your history, not your past, nor your accomplishments. It is I. It is the Father of mercies and the God of all comfort, who comforts us, and not anything else.

A substitute will not do.

When God is teaching you that this is who He is to His people, He will remove the other things. He will take away those things that have helped you in the past—family and friends, other circumstances, your own strength, your physical strength. You have all these things that must be accomplished, and they seem impossible.

Yet you look to your past and see the strength you have always had. Then old age, affliction, and sickness come, and you are no longer able to do them. Or others who once surrounded you are no longer present. God removes them.

He wants you to see afresh, more deeply, that the source of mercy and comfort is not friends, family, strength, or money.

We are to come in prayer and obtain mercy, to find grace to help in time of need.

So we trust God for what He supplies. We praise Him for who He is. We trust Him for what He supplies.

Yes, we go to Him for comfort. We go to Him for mercy.

But finally, we expect God to have a future purpose. We expect God to have a future purpose.

“That we may be able to comfort them which are in any trouble, by the comfort wherewith we ourselves are comforted of God.”

Now there is a strange conflict here, in which Paul is emphatically showing that the source of comfort is God. And He will want you to learn and relearn the fact that the source of comfort and mercy is God. Yet He also recognizes that He uses means—people.

“That we may be able,” we may have the power, we may be equipped to comfort those who are in any trouble by the comfort we receive. We ourselves are comforted by God.

That we may carry the lessons learned and move through that season into a time of fruitfulness that could not have occurred had we not gone through what we have experienced.

Expect that God has a future purpose.

In order to do this, a grateful memory is required. It requires a grateful memory. You must remember how God has comforted you. You need to be looking to God, thinking upon God, and recording how God has come in fresh ways to show you that He is the Father of mercies and the God of all comfort. You are to keep in mind, very clearly, those times and seasons in which He has come to you.

So that you may say, as David said in Psalm 63:7, “Because thou hast been my help, therefore in the shadow of thy wings will I rejoice.” Because You have been my help, and I know You have helped me before, so I turn to the shadow of Your wings and rejoice.

Therefore, you must remember God’s dealings with you in a positive way. Remember promises fulfilled, prayers answered, and the daily renewals of His mercies. Even in times when prayers are not answered and circumstances do not go as you initially hoped, remember how God has comforted you and shown His mercy, even when the situation did not change.

Indeed, the circumstances may have worsened. Yet we need, if we can give it a name, to be like Mr. Grateful, taking note of the events of our lives, not like Mr. Bitter. We do not need to keep a record of things that cause bitterness, but one of gratitude. We should reflect on these things for our own benefit and for the benefit of others.

This also requires an observant eye, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any trouble.

How will you know someone is in trouble unless you are observant? Unless you are paying attention?

Now this is highly relevant to our generation. I am not suggesting that preachers always fall into the temptation of saying, you know, that this is the worst generation or something like that. I believe, by and large, Ecclesiastes is correct: there is nothing new under the sun. There is nothing new under the sun.

However, screens and devices greatly reduce our attention to the world in which we live and the environment in which we are placed.

The other day, I had to replace something in our home. In order to replace it, I had to turn off the power. The children were in the middle of their schoolwork and other activities. I had turned off the power in order to replace the device. About fifteen minutes after turning off the power, I suddenly heard voices coming from downstairs.

All four children were talking to one another, and I could hear a little bit of disagreement and arguing, but they were clearly engaged in conversation. I was in the attic, listening to the sounds below, and I thought to myself, this is good. Even if they were arguing, it was still positive. They had been spending time on screens, using laptops and other devices, but now that the power was off and they could not use those devices, they were naturally drawn to each other and began to interact.

And so my wife and I are now in this discussion. There is a benefit to turning off the power for an hour or two each day. I save money, and my children interact with each other in a different way, even if they squabble. I think it is a window.

It is just like this: we are stuck in these things. We will not be able to do what this text calls us to unless we have an observant eye.

Comfort those who are in any trouble.

So look across this room. Pay attention—not just this morning, but at all times. Look across for those who may be going through something and are not talking about it, who do not want to share it, or who are afraid to mention it. Or perhaps you perceive something, or you are aware of something, and they are putting on a brave face, but you think to yourself, they look fine, yet should I not perhaps touch base with them? Grab a coffee, ask them how they are doing, pray with them.

It is not necessary to have the answers. That is not what this is saying. To comfort those who are in any trouble is to share the comfort we ourselves have received from God.

Understand this. The mistake people make with this text is assuming that because someone is going through a similar experience to what we have gone through, they must be feeling exactly as we felt, and that their situation is the same. We think we are wearing the same shoes and walking the same path.

But this is not always the case. You can do great harm by making assumptions about what someone is going through when you have no real knowledge of their situation.

What this text encourages is this: focus your eyes on what you have learned about God through your own experience. What have you learned about God?

And if you stay focused on the unchangeable truths about God, you will not make the same mistake. Like Job’s friends, who had greater influence through their silence for a week than when they spoke. Their words revealed the error of their understanding.

Do not try to place yourself in their position and say, “This is how I felt, and this is how you may be.” Instead, focus on the truth, the comfort that comes from God. What has God taught you? What verses came to your heart? What truths do we sometimes need to be reminded of?

Do not focus on where they are or the condition of their heart, but on what is true about God—what does not change. You are safe in that truth.

But this also requires a willing heart. I have already mentioned this. If you are to comfort others with the comfort you have received from God, you must be willing to do so. You must be willing to walk that path, to make the effort, to steward the knowledge and experience you have gained.

This is what Paul says: my life has become one of great suffering, yet also of great experience of God’s comfort, so that I am able to minister to others. In their affliction, trials, and difficulties, I am able to teach what is true about God.

This is what we are called to do when life becomes difficult. Praise God for who He is, trust God for what He provides, and expect God to use what you have gone through and what you have learned in the future.