Episode Transcript
[00:00:03] Speaker A: Welcome to the Erickson Covenant Podcast. We are so glad that you've joined us today.
We confess that we don't have all the answers, but as a community, we seek to find and follow Jesus and to discover daily the life he has always wanted for us.
We hope this message will be encouraging and will inspire you to take the next steps on your spiritual journey.
If we can help you in any way, please connect with us. The easiest way is through our website at Erickson Covenant Ca.
Let's get started
[00:00:39] Speaker B: now. We're continuing in our series of When God Speaks. And Tom asked us all to share a verse or a passage that was really special to us, that had influenced our lives and deeply touched us.
And he said that we were going to be asked to preach on those things.
So I knew immediately which verse I wanted to share with you. So this preaching time is going to be quite a bit of testimonial as well as looking at God's word.
So let's get started.
First of all, before I show you the next slide, I want to mention to you gray haired people out there that you have gotten a lot older too.
And to you younger ones, I say, you will get there.
So we went to Pakistan.
Some of you know that we lived our lives as missionaries for quite a few years. And in 1987 we went to Pakistan just under a year after we got married.
All three of our children were born there.
Now, do you know who that is?
Everybody says they recognize me and I think I've aged more graciously than my husband.
So yes, we were in Pakistan for quite a few years.
Now, traveling to a place like that, it sounds very exciting, it sounds adventurous, and certainly there's a bit of that connected to going to another country.
And although Pakistan was fascinating and the food was great, certainly it was not the easiest place to live.
I remember once being interviewed, Peter and I interviewed in front of a big church. There was probably about 1,000 people there and we had a few questions and then the interviewer turned to me and said, wow, I bet you can't wait to get back to Pakistan.
And we'd just gone through the most grueling term we'd ever faced and I was dumbfounded. I thought, how do I answer this question? So there was a little bit of silence for a bit, and then I looked at him and I said, it's not Hawaii.
So to travel for pleasure is one thing, but anyone who's committed to work in another country and culture long term understands how physically, spiritually and emotionally challenging it is.
The adventure part won't sustain you for very long.
And there were some very challenging things to learn.
We had to learn a new language. Learning it not just so we could buy food, but so we could talk about deep heart issues and pass on spiritual truth.
We had to learn a new culture.
And it was quite humbling, really.
We were in Canada, well educated, articulate to a degree, and we got there and we couldn't even explain what time it was.
It's a very humbling experience to go and live in a new country. And you wonder, will I ever have any impact?
Some of you Ukrainians understand this a little bit, what it's like to live in another country.
The culture is different. The things that you thought you knew, you don't know them anymore.
Everything is understood and interpreted in a different way.
The people think and act differently and understand things differently. And you make a lot of mistakes, and you also grow a lot in the process.
There was also the nuts and bolts of living in Pakistan.
We, for example, lived in the desert province of Sindh, where it was extremely hot most of the year.
Electricity was sometimes there, sometimes not. They rationed it, and so our fans were not so reliable to keep us cool. We often just jumped in the shower, all our clothes and got wet.
And also, as a Western woman living in a Muslim country, it meant I was quite restricted in what I could do and where I could go. With three small children at home and no family nearby, it was quite isolated.
But above all, this was the challenge of our work in general.
Although our mission ran a hospital and had several humanitarian focuses, our main focus was church planting, which meant we were bringing scriptural teaching to the Muslim community so they could understand more about Jesus.
With the goal to help them just to come to faith and together form groups of faith communities.
Under Sharia law, those that heard and accepted this kind of message faced many difficulties and were persecuted.
So you might say we lived in a physical desert, but also a spiritual one, where the ground was hard and dry.
But I have to say, it was one of the most invigorating times in my spiritual life when God was so real, it was like he was sitting next to us.
For much of that time, we really did quite well. With God's help, we managed and we learned to trust God in deep ways. And it was a growing time for both of us.
But there was one particular period, probably two years long, when Peter was a field leader where he was in charge of 40 different missionary colleagues throughout the country.
And it just seemed like on every station, it didn't seem like it was true. Every station was in major crisis.
And because of all of that difficulty, a lot of people there became.
Their infighting started and there were threats, personal threats, there was criticism, churches were splitting.
And all of these things came to our door either in person, by email or by phone. And that was coming on a daily basis.
Both Peter and I became extremely exhausted.
I could see that I was no longer functioning normally, like I was forgetting major things.
I was not sleeping as well.
I found that, you know, I would be maybe doing the dishes or something or talking to kids and the next thing I would be out in the garden wandering. I thought, why am I out here? What's going on? The mind was just racing.
And though I felt in all that time a sort of a vibrancy in my relationship with God, at the same time, right along with it was this extreme exhaustion, I'll call it that.
I decided to talk to an older missionary colleague about what was going on and how I was doing. And she immediately recommended that I go away to get a two week, at least a two week break. That's all I could manage was a two week break to try and get some rest and refreshment.
And she recommended that I use. Offered a small. She offered a small cabin in the foothills of the Karakoram Mountains near Murray, where the rest of our family were at that time spending part of the summer.
So I went, I went there for a couple weeks. Beautiful place.
During that time a couple of close friends would come by, sometimes with freshly baked muffins, sometimes with fresh coffee.
Always to pray, sometimes to sing.
Often we would discuss the verses we'd been studying and it was a precious week.
And God used those friends prayer scriptures rest to really speak to me.
The scriptures I was studying brought me comfort and gave me the ability to persevere.
So the passage I want to share today is from that two week period where I was studying.
Let's read together.
Second Corinthians 1, 3:5.
Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion, the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received from God.
For just as the sufferings of Christ flow over into our lives, so also through Christ our comfort overflows.
Lord Jesus, I ask now that you would use the words and the lessons and your word to speak, to speak to all of our hearts today and to bring about a deep and profound sense of your touch in our lives. Thank you, Jesus.
[00:10:28] Speaker A: Name?
[00:10:31] Speaker B: Well, I was studying the letter of Second Corinthians while I was away.
And that letter was written by the Apostle Paul in order to express relief because he sent a rather hard communication to the Corinthians before he's expressed relief that they receive it.
And he also wanted to affirm his authority because he was under being questioned, which was being questioned by many false teachers and critics.
Now, if anyone knew about how God brings comfort, it was Paul.
In his letters, more than anywhere in this letter, more than in any other place in Scripture, Paul mentions, albeit somewhat hesitantly, some of the things he had endured.
And this is found in chapter four and in chapter 11, and I'm just going to put it in short form, if you can do that.
He endured frequent imprisonments.
He endured floggings, beatings. He was whipped by the Jews five times with 39 lashes.
He was beaten with rods by the Romans three times.
He was stoned once and left for dead.
He was exposed to death again and again.
He was shipwrecked three times and adrift in the sea for a night and a day.
He mentions perils in the rivers, troubles from robbers, false believers, threats from both Jews and Gentiles, dangers in the city, in the country, at sea, hunger, thirst, lack of food, sleepless nights, being cold and without enough clothing.
The daily pressure and concern of the churches was always on his mind. And then there was the thorn of the flesh, which most think was probably some sort of physical ailment that healing didn't, that God didn't bring healing to.
How could anybody go through all this and keep going?
And then to write something like this in 2nd Corinthians 4:17, for our present troubles are small and won't last very long.
And I'm thinking, is this guy from another planet or something? Look what he just went through.
Our present momentary troubles, they won't last long, but they produce a glory that vastly outweighs.
Outweighs those troubles and will last forever.
So let's go back to the verse we just read.
Can we go to the next slide?
[00:13:20] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:13:23] Speaker B: It starts out with praise.
Paul is not focused on the suffering, but on praising God for the comfort that came into it.
No one who goes through suffering praises someone for the suffering. We hate the suffering.
What he's praising the Father for is his mercy and his comfort, because that's what he remembers.
The description of a merciful and compassionate father perhaps harks Back to Psalm 103, where it states, as a father has compassion on his children, so the Lord has compassion on those who fear Him. For he knows that we are formed. He knows how we are formed and remembers that we are dust.
Perhaps for those of us who feel we never measure up, that we fail God, that we're never quite enough.
It's hard to comprehend God being compassionate and caring. Not to us anyway, because we don't deserve it. It's hard to envision him looking on us with great love, looking beyond our shortcomings and being merciful.
If we have trouble seeing that, then going through suffering is a much harder experience.
We sometimes blame ourselves, we sometimes blame Him. And we have no comfort.
Knowing God is compassionate is the very foundation of us finding the comfort we need when we're in struggles.
Paul had his eyes on God, the God of compassion, when he went through suffering. And that's why he speaks words of praise.
That's why God's care for him eclipses any mention of the suffering.
Corrie Ten Boom and her family were arrested for hiding Jews in their home in Holland during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands.
She and her sister were eventually sent to Germany and were taken to a concentration camp in Ravensbruck, where thousands of Jews were being put to death.
The smoke from the crematorium was a constant, grim reminder of the cruelty of that place.
And I wanted to just give a brief clip of her testimony.
[00:15:58] Speaker C: And I will never forget a roll call. We stood there.
We had to spend three hours every morning on roll call.
And I could hardly bear that morning to see and to hear what had happened in front of me.
God was using that time to show his cruelties.
But suddenly a skylark came and started to sing in the sky.
And all the prisoners look, looked up and listened to the bird song.
And when I looked at the bird, I looked at the sky and I thought at. Psalm 103 was written as high as heaven over the earth. So high is God's mercy and love over all that fear him. And it was as if I woke up to reality.
All love of God. God, how deep and great.
Far deeper than man's deepest hate.
And God sent that skylark three weeks daily exactly during roll call time. To turn away our eyes from the cruelty of men unto the ocean of God's love.
[00:17:19] Speaker B: The comfort, comforting song of a bird.
The breadth of the sky, an upward look.
And all that suffering was somehow eclipsed by recognizing God's love.
And he sent that bird every day for the next three months.
Corrie found comfort because she saw in in it the love and mercy and comfort sent by God.
It did not Take the suffering away.
But it brought comfort into, gave her the comfort she needed to endure.
Comfort is what helps us to endure.
Likewise, Paul praises the Father of mercies and the God of all comfort.
Let's look at that little word, all, the God of all comfort.
Does this mean anything that brings comfort? Is God, Is it complete comfort that he gives? What exactly does it mean? Maybe the truth is that real comfort, the type of comfort that hits us right in the heart, is always from God.
And he has all the comfort we need.
The deep and profound kind that comes in many forms, but it is the kind that reaches down in mercy and love.
There are many false comforters out there, and we've turned to them before. We'd all be guilty of that.
False comforters, false things that we think are going to feel good for a time, and they do for a time, but they don't hit that deep need way down when we're suffering.
Only gods, the God of all comfort, can meet that need.
Let's take a look at the word comfort.
Look how many times it's in those three verses that that word is used. And actually, if we put two more verses in there and went from three to seven, we find that they use that word 10 times.
And the word is the same word.
It's the word. It's a Greek word in its noun and in its verb form, paraklesis or parakaleo, literally meaning to call near. Does that word sound familiar to you? Paraklesis, Paraclete, maybe Anyone.
When Jesus was going to Jerusalem to die, he said to his disciples, I won't leave you alone.
I'm going to send the comforter, the paraclete, to help you, to guide you, to remind you of the words that I've spoken.
The paraclete, the one that literally comes near, is called near.
It's translated in many ways. In scripture, it can be translated exhortation.
Sometimes the coming near is calling us to correct something.
It can be translated advocate someone that comes alongside to help advocating for, for your case.
But in this case, in the case of suffering, it's a coming near to comfort. And so it's translated that way. We don't really have that same sense of a word in English as this word carries the coming near.
I like to think of it as it's the calling alongside to help, whatever that's going to mean. It might mean comfort, it might mean a word of exhortation, it might mean an advocacy, but it's a coming alongside to help in our time of need. The great comforter the Paraclete.
The comfort of God.
God comforts us in all our trials.
Can we go to the next slide? Maybe there's that word again. All the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles.
Not a few, not some, not even many.
All of them.
Every kind of trouble he can comfort us in.
Even if it's a trouble I've brought on myself, he can comfort me in that trouble. He is able, the God of all comfort in all troubles, to bring comfort, sometimes through the song of the skylark, sometimes through the voice of a friend, sometimes through the kind gift of fresh, freshly baked muffins or fresh coffee.
Sometimes he shows up when we're overcome with so much trouble, we haven't even turned to him yet. He just steps in.
My dad, at the age of 65, was diagnosed with mesothelioma. That's a type of cancer that comes from asbestos contact with asbestos.
And he worked as a pipe fitter, so he was in contact with it all the time in those days.
Mesothelmioma is a cancer that it attacks the outer lining of the lung, so to speak. That slippery membrane that the lung slides on and expands and contracts on.
And with mesothelioma, what happens is that lining thickens and thickens and thickens until it squeezes that lung down and there's no capacity to breathe.
So my dad, he was a tough guy, but during that last year of his life, he turned his heart over to Jesus, and he found comfort during those times.
My mom, on the other hand, was always somewhat resistant.
I talked to her many times about faith.
One day she came to me and said, cheryl, you don't have to worry about me anymore.
And I looked at her and I said, what do you mean?
And she said, you know, last night I was with your dad, and I sat with him, and he was struggling to breathe the whole night.
And I was just beside myself with terror, with grief, with a sense of helplessness.
She said, I went up to the room and I just didn't know what to do.
And I was so overwhelmed.
She said, cheryl, there was a presence in that room.
And I felt this warmth and this sense of being so loved.
She said, that was God. You don't have to worry about me.
So sometimes he comes uninvited.
Isn't that a strange thing?
When we're so full of sorrow that we can't even speak it, he comes uninvited and he brings his comfort.
Sometimes he just shows up.
Let's move on. In the passage A bit.
The God of all comfort, who comforts us in all trials.
So that the Greek phrase here is a purpose clause.
Why is that happening?
So that we can comfort others, those in any trouble. Those words. All, all, every, any.
There it is again.
We can comfort others in any trouble.
I know sometimes when people get into hard situations, we think, well, I don't. I've never been through that. I don't know what to do. I'll just stay away.
But the truth is, when we ourselves have experienced the deep comforting of God, we can comfort others in any trial. It doesn't matter what it is, he gives an exceptional ability to help us know what to say.
When we receive God's comfort, it somehow changes us.
During my conversation with my friends during that retreat, my friend Monica said something quite profound.
She said that when someone has experienced the deep comfort of God, you can see it in their eyes, you can feel it in their touch, you can hear it in the words.
And something about that experience with God's comfort changes us and makes us able to comfort other people.
When God gives us comfort, it flows deep.
And it's not just enough for us, it spills out to meet the needs of those around us.
The next verse says, so just as the sufferings of Christ for flow over into our lives, so also through Christ, our comfort overflows.
So we're overflowing with sufferings, but then we're overflowing with comfort. We have a surplus.
It doesn't just come for us, it comes for others.
Like everything in our Christian life, all the things we learn, all the deep lessons God gives us, every gift he's given to us, it's not just for us, it's for everyone.
God wants us to use that lesson to comfort others.
In this particular verse, the sufferings of Christ, it's a bit different. It's not like every trial or everything that humanity suffers. It's very directly connected to probably suffering for the Christian message.
But still it is an overflow.
During the retreat, I wrote a song. Now I'm not going to sing it to you.
My voice is not what it used to be, nor would the song probably make any top 10.
But I will read to you one of the verses and the chorus because it comes from a deep experience of God's comfort during this time.
God of all comfort so sweet in the darkness Smothering pain with the spirit's embrace Etch your own glory deep in my sadness Building through trial your trophy of grace in the chorus, Filling my eyes with a luster from Heaven marking my words with a wisdom from God Molding my touch by the love I've been given Broken to spill out the fragrance of God well, we've had a good look at the passage and there's so much more that could be said. But let's stop for a minute and think about practical ways we can apply what we have learned from this.
The first thing is we need to know who God is.
We need to recognize him as a compassionate and loving father if we want to receive comfort for him that is so foundational.
And, yeah, sometimes we need to take a step back when we're in trial, when we're going through suffering. It's amazing what our mind does. I even read back in my journal from that time, and my goodness, I was hard on myself.
It was just one thing after the other. Oh, God. You know, I know that I've done this wrong, and I've done this wrong, and I've done this wrong. And just as your mind gets so full of all that, and it's like you need to step back from the painting, like an artist would step back and take a bigger look, get some perspective.
God loves us.
He is not punishing us with that suffering.
He loves us and cares for us. We need to step back and see the big picture. Just like the skylark. Corrie saw the sky and suddenly she recognized God's presence in that horrible place.
We also can find God's grace when we recognize that he loves us. He wants to speak into our.
And speak into our problem and help us see that he's present with you.
The same thing. Step back and see it. Sometimes we miss it altogether. When we're struggling, all we see is that stress and that sorrow that we're in. And we sometimes just miss Him. We don't see him in the picture. And we need to do that sometimes. To do that, we need to rest and get away.
Now, not everyone can get away. I was able to get away for two weeks, and that was a really special gift from God. And I needed it. Actually, I needed a much longer time later on.
But for that period, it helped me get through and persevere.
Perhaps you won't be able to get away from for a week or two weeks or a couple days.
But, you know, there's a closet at home.
There's a car you can go sit in just to get by yourself a little bit and take some time to really ask God to quiet your mind. If you can't even think of what to ask, just weep in front of Him. That's enough. He hears all that.
I don't know what kind of language he speaks really, to be honest.
He hears our hearts.
And I think talking to others is really important, too. I know talking to my friend who was a much more experienced older missionary lady, who was a very godly woman, that was so helpful. There are friends you can talk to and complain with. I'm not talking about that.
Right.
I'm talking about people that can really speak into your life. God's comfort. Not judge you, not complain with you.
But who can hear that deeper heart throb, that deeper part of God wanting to comfort.
Okay, they'll have words of comfort.
Recognize that comfort flows from some people because they've experienced a lot of suffering and they can help you. That is the voice of God speaking to you. Now, another important takeaway from this passage is the need to step into the lives of others with that overflow, the surplus of comfort that God's given you.
Think of others.
Sometimes when you're caught up in your own world, you're not even thinking about other people that are struggling with stuff.
And prayer is one of the ways that you can think and have those people brought to mind.
Don't get caught up just in your own concerns, but think about the things that are happening and the events that are happening in people's lives around you.
Step into their lives. You know, we're all nervous when someone's going through something. We think. I don't know. I don't know what to say.
Very recently, a friend of mine, her husband died suddenly with no real warning.
And I got the news in the evening.
And then I got a phone call from another person saying she doesn't want anyone to go over and talk to her. She wants to be alone.
And as I thought about it and prayed for her the next day, I thought, I'm just going to go and pop by.
And I did.
And when I came to the door, I just knocked. She came. She gave me the longest hug I think I've ever had in my life.
And sometimes it's just we have to step in even if we feel like we don't know what we're going to do or what we're going to say. And we're uncomfortable showing up and trusting the spirit.
Spirit's nudging is better than staying away because we're uncomfortable.
Give the God of comfort a chance to flow through you and comfort others and then trust in his work.
God can work through you even though you don't know what to do or what to say.
He will direct you in the moment and it may surprise you how it turns out.
I remember a family whose son had gone into the basement, lit a fire purposely to burn down the home, and the home did burn down and the son was in jail.
I went to talk to them.
I didn't know what I was going to say.
And the truth is, what happened when I got there is I had no words and I just started to cry. We cried together for 10 minutes.
And that was exactly what God wanted. That was it.
And that gave them comfort.
We don't know when it says our comfort overflows with the same comfort that we receive from God, it doesn't mean it's the exact words and the exact circumstance that you went through. Now you can share it and it's going to really help them. It doesn't mean that at all. It means something much more than that. It means that somehow that comfort that's overflowing through your life that you received it is going to speak to them. And you don't know how and you don't know what the words are going to be, but you trust him.
You step into this life and you trust God to work in those difficult situations.
After my short reprieve of two weeks from the pressures that we faced, I left that little cabin and I returned to work to the same difficult situations that I'd been sheltered from.
The comfort of friends, the rest, the refreshment, and mostly the comfort I received from God during that time returned with me to to sustain me through the next couple of years.
We carried on that work for another year, seeing some of those hard situations being resolved and others not.
Eventually, we were able to go on furlough and have a more extended break, which we needed too.
But the verses I studied and the lessons I learned in that cabin on those two weeks remained deep seated in me.
And as God later led me into a counseling role, one who comes alongside those going through difficult times, I know those times of finding God's comfort have been essential to offering it to others.
And I, with Paul Prayer Praise the God of all comfort.
May the God of mercy, Father of mercy, the God of all comfort, comfort you in all your troubles.
Overflow you with that comfort so that you in turn will comfort others with that very comfort you receive from God.
[00:38:45] Speaker A: Amen. Thanks for listening in today.
We hope you feel encouraged and challenged.
If you know someone who would benefit from what you have heard today, please share this podcast for more information or if you have questions, you can connect with us through our website, Erickson Covenant Ca.
You can also find us on Facebook by searching for Erickson Covenant Church.
