How to receive Gods comfort in my life today
We serve a mighty God, who longs to comfort His children.
Listen to the words of Isaiah in the 40th chapter,
“Comfort, yes, comfort My people, say’s your God.
“With gentle words, tender and kind,
Assure Jerusalem, this chosen city from long ago that her battles are over that her hard service has been completed,
That her sin has been paid for, that she has received from the Lord’s hand double for all her sins.
A voice of one calling:
“In the wilderness prepare the way for the Lord; make straight in the desert a highway for our God.
Every valley shall be raised up, every mountain and hill made low; the rough ground shall become level, the rugged places a plain. And the glory of the Lord will be revealed, and all people will see it together.
For the mouth of the Lord has spoken…
He tends his flock like a shepherd:
He gathers the lambs in his arms
and carries them close to his heart;
he gently leads those that have young…”
Jesus You paid it all
The sacrifice of Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ has paid this for us sister. The hope we now have in Christ is unlike anything we could have ever imagined or hoped for.
In Christ our pain is never wasted. Our sorrow is never spent alone. Fathers comfort and presence are often the most tangible in the middle of the fiercest battles we are walking through, and especially loss.
The Lord Jesus Christ understands our sorrow, His Word tells us later on in Isaiah that He has bore our sorrows, our grief He has carried in His own body.
Sister, if you are struggling to receive The Lord Jesus’ comfort today I pray that you will sit in the pages of His word, and read again and again in the middle of your own hard battle that He cares for you.
Don’t stop there, as you read, begin to declare His Word, if through tears, then through tears, if it takes you a long time to get through a passage, than it does. There is no hurry, because our hearts desire is to abide with Abba, Our Father, Our God of all comfort.
When I sit and receive Fathers compassion and tender mercy I never want to get up from that place, I want to linger, soak it all in.
Life is quite difficult sometimes and some seasons would completely overwhelm and consume us, were it not for the kindness and mercy of The Lord.
I remind myself, “Is the arm of The Lord too short that He cannot help?” Sister, if it was important for Jesus to know Gods Word, how much more important do you think it is for us?
In this post I share steps that I take to hide Gods Word in my heart.
The truth is. He loves us. He will never leave us nor forsake us. This is good news.
Fathers heart YEARNS for us
He years for His children to come to Him, for us to believe Him, to take Him at His word.
The word Yearn found in Isaiah 31:20 is hamah: to murmur, growl, roar, be boisterous. Some descriptions of this word speak of this inner war, a longing so deep.
We read in Romans 8:26 that Gods Spirit, Himself, He prays for us because we do not know what to pray, He prays with groanings too deep for words.
Even as I am sitting here writing these words to you, violent sobs overcome my body, can you feel His love for you and I?
This is more than my frame can bear. We are deeply loved, this ought to change everything. Even if not our circumstances, right away, or on this side of Heaven.
His right hand will strengthen, He will uphold.
Gods comfort is for you, today
As I was sharing Gods comfort with a dear friend the picture I saw was of a child running to their Father with open arms.
The child had just heard something that they didn’t know whether to believe or not, it seemed true enough.
But what did Father have to say?
Sister, it is my sincerest prayer that we would live our lives in such a way that we will behold as truth and treasure what God has to say.
What He has already written in His Word, and what His Spirit may reveal within our own spirits.
For where the Spirit of The Lord is, there is freedom.
Freedom to receive from Gods hand, freedom to rejoice over Gods goodness and yes, even freedom to weep.
Freedom to lament when life doesn’t look like what we thought it would.
Wherever you find yourself today I pray you find comfort in these words I find myself praying,
Father, is there anywhere that we can go that you are not? Anywhere that your mighty hand cannot uphold me, this feels like more than I can bear, yet you know my frame, lead me in all truth Abba and comfort and hold me close.”
Let’s look at Psalms 139
“O Lord, you have searched me and known me!
You know when I sit down and when I rise up, you discern my thoughts from afar.
You search out my path and my lying down and are acquainted with all of my ways.
Even before a word is on my tongue, behold, O LORD, you know it altogether.
You hem me in, behind and before, and lay your hand upon me.
Such knowledge is too wonderful for me: it is high, I cannot attain it.
Where can I go from your spirit, where can I flee from your presence?
If I ascend to Heaven, you are there!
If I make my bed in sheol/ the depths, you are there!
If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there your hand shall lead/guide me.
If I say, “Surely the darkness shall cover me, and the light about me be night,” even there the darkness is not dark to you, the night is bright as the day, for darkness is as light with you….”
You know me Lord
He who has formed us from our mother’s wombs does He not know our form? Our frame?
Does He not know exactly what we need in the moment in which we need it?
Sister, will you extend your hands and receive from His mercy and loving kindness.
This week, I lay to rest another precious friend, a sister, I love and miss dearly.
She was like the big sister I always wanted, my Lesley.
Even as we grieve her loss, I have felt the comfort and the compassion of a Father who never lets go.
His tender mercies have not left me. Surely they have been new every morning.
Hear me, tender mercies can be filled with tears, and inner mingled with even the deepest of sorrow.
He is not ashamed of our pain. He welcomes us fully and with open arms.
How do I know this, let’s look at the passage in John Lazarus has just died, he has come into the presence of Mary and Martha, Jesus is moved to compassion for his beloved sisters.
Lazarus Raised from the Dead
33 …Therefore, when Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who came with her weeping, He groaned in the spirit and was troubled. 34 And He said, “Where have you laid him?”
They said to Him, “Lord, come and see.”
35 Jesus wept. 36 Then the Jews said, “See how He loved him!”
37 And some of them said, “Could not this Man, who opened the eyes of the blind, also have kept this man from dying?”
38 Then Jesus, again groaning in Himself, came to the tomb. It was a cave, and a stone lay against it. 39 Jesus said, “Take away the stone.”
Martha, the sister of him who was dead, said to Him, “Lord, by this time there is a stench, for he has been dead four days.”
40 Jesus said to her, “Did I not say to you that if you would believe you would see the glory of God?” 41 Then they took away the stone [d]from the place where the dead man was lying. And Jesus lifted up His eyes and said, “Father, I thank You that You have heard Me. 42 And I know that You always hear Me, but because of the people who are standing by I said this, that they may believe that You sent Me.” 43 Now when He had said these things, He cried with a loud voice, “Lazarus, come forth!” 44 And he who had died came out bound hand and foot with graveclothes, and his face was wrapped with a cloth. Jesus said to them, “Loose him, and let him go.”
He knows exactly what He’s about to do. He knows Lazarus will not stay dead and yet, He doesn’t say, hold back your tears.
He doesn’t say, why are you crying. He doesn’t say anything of that, instead, He weeps with them. Did you notice how many times the word “groan” is used? Go back and read it.
Groaning, comes from the Greek word embrimaomai, which means to be “deeply moved,” “indignant,” or “sternly enjoined”.
Who is Jesus indignant with?
Sister, it isn’t Mary and Martha and the other grieving Jewish people,.
It is with death, his final enemy, who came into the world through sin.
So often in our western part of the world we want to be polite and courteous even with The Lord, believing that our tears, our lament, will somehow be too much for Our God.
That somehow I need to keep myself together before I enter into His Presence.
Sister, Father wants us to know He is Our ABBA Father, He wants us to run to Him, in our anguish, in our despair, in the deepest of sorrow, unkept, most raw vulnerable self.
I am not suggesting you go online and do this, please don’t do that, only Father can handle the weight of what we are carrying, in this post I shared more about giving our cares over to Our God who loves us and cares for us deeply.
If you have cares that are overwhelming your heart today, let Him have those cares, they are not for you to keep.
I cannot encourage you enough to let Him have all that weighs you down. We are not meant to carry the weight of our problems or the problems of the people we love. Only God can.
The gift of receiving Gods comfort and love and giving Him our pain is that He will take it, yoke us to Himself and hand in hand show us how we can partner with Him to bring beauty in the midst of the pain we are carrying.
I have seen Him do it in my life over and over again. I have no doubt He will do it again, even as I wonder how He does it all.
Sister, He is faithful. I have lost more than I could have ever imagined I would have. Each time my heart is completely broken and I wonder how in the world I will ever be able to love again.
How can I let myself love like that again, I don’t want to hurt.
There is a truth that is greater than all of my pain, and that is that to love is far greater than to live alone. He has not made us for isolation. He has made us for Himself and for one another.
Let us allow Him to keep pouring us out as a living sacrifice, because we know The Potter loves us, we are the clay, the work of His hands, and He is a good, good Father who delights in us.
We are so loved.
I pray this weeks post was a blessing for your heart. Every week I am humbled by Gods ability to help me write even in the fullness of this season of life. I will keep trusting Him to be the faithful God He said He is. You too, please?
I would love for you to consider subscribing. It is such a gift from me to get to hear your thoughts, if this post encouraged and blessed you, would you let me know in the comments please?
This song blessed my heart tremendously this week, Ellie Holcomb’s Psalms 139, and guess what? When you learn the song, you’ve learned a huge portion of Psalms 139, win, win!
And this beautiful one I heard tonight while writing this message. Phil Wickham, Hymn of Heaven.
