How Can I Comfort Other Suffering Christians?

You're sitting in the doctor's office, you're in the hospital room, you're at the graveside, you're overwhelmed by grief again.

Or maybe it's just the mundane circumstances of life keep getting more insane, and they are just grinding you down to powder.

And like, Lord, do you see? Do you love me?

Do you care? I think we all feel that sometimes. And we need to be reminded from the

Lord's own words how He feels about us and how He sees, how He knows. Got up real early one morning and went to the top of a mountain.

In California, they really do have mountains, so it was a long climb. And I remember just sitting there up there by myself.

I think it might have been the hardest intensity of prayer I've ever had in my life that I can remember, just pleading with the

Lord, crying out to Him to save my dad. And then the

Lord, in His sovereignty and wisdom, took him home. And I can remember that feeling of, where are you?

And a dear friend and brother of mine, I could see him walking up the trail. And he got up to where I was at.

There was a little bench I was sitting on. And he just sat next to me and put his arm around me and said nothing.

He just sat there and just held me. And I just cried like a baby. Because there was almost, the

Lord sent this dear brother to me to say, John, I'm here. I'm here, son. I can see you, and I'm going to send one of my children over to love on you and care for you.

And there's something powerful, and this is just a great reminder to all of us that suffer. And if you're around someone you know who is suffering, sometimes just being there and loving them as one who has the

Spirit inside them, being next to and being compassionate. Consider how to build one another up, carry each other's burdens, love one another.

And often, you just, what do we do? We weep with those who weep, right? Which means you don't say a word.

You just weep. You weep with them. And this is what this friend of mine did, sat down and just weeped with me.

Sometimes it's just a look. Sometimes it's a hug. Sometimes it's a tear -filled, glassy -eyed conversation where we are thankful for each other and thankful for the mercy of God in Christ and for how

He loves us. And that does a lot. I think moving towards what the Lord has said in His Word, think about His love and compassion towards His own.

At the beginning of John 13, the first verse is remarkable. Now, before the feast of the

Passover, when Jesus knew that His hour had come to depart out of the world to the Father, having loved

His own who were in the world, He loved them to the end. What a Savior, right?

And then He washes their feet. He makes it plain that He's the one who has to cleanse them and redeem them.

But then He begins to talk to them and comfort them, tells them not to be afraid, tells them to believe in Him and to believe also in God and that He's going to prepare a place for them and that He's going to come and get them so that they'll be with Him where He is.

And then He tells them that He's sending a comforter. He's sending a helper. And He says, right before He prays for them and He prays for us,

John 17, He says, I've said these things to you so that in me, you may have peace.

In the world, you will have tribulation, of which, with which He was well acquainted.

And He says, but take heart, I have overcome the world. He is so concerned that His followers, that we,

His people, would trust Him and know that He understands our pain and our affliction and that in the world we're going to suffer.