Grace Fellowship Church - Saturday Main Conference Session 3

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March 8/2025 | Main conference session 2| Expository sermon by Mack Tomlinson. This is the second main session of the conference hosted on Saturday.

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The following recording is from our Grace Fellowship Church Conference 2025. Please visit us at graceedmonton .ca
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to learn more about us. You can also find us on Instagram, Grace Church, Y -E -G, all one word, or on Facebook.
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You can also find us on YouTube, Spotify, or wherever else you listen to your favorite podcasts. Please enjoy the following recording.
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2 Corinthians chapter 1 is the text for the sermon as we close this conference.
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And as Michael was speaking this morning, I was stirred to realize that I didn't know what he was going to preach this morning.
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He didn't know really what I was going to preach. And I think if you could plan a follow -up message to his this morning that fits
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Christ's great sufferings and endurance, because He is our model.
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He's our pattern. The, this text in 2
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Corinthians chapter 1 is what Christians need to understand in terms of how do we view suffering.
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So I want to speak, God helping me on the theology of suffering in the
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Christian in life, both the Christian's sufferings and God's comforts in and through our sufferings.
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So, I'm reading from the New King James Version. 2 Corinthians 1, we'll read verses 3 -10 and then we will pray.
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Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies, and the
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God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our tribulation, that we may be able to comfort those who are in any trouble with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God.
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For as the sufferings of Christ abound in us, so our consolation also abounds through Christ.
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Now, if we are afflicted, it is for your consolation and salvation, which is effective for enduring the same sufferings which we also suffer.
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Or if we are comforted, it is for your consolation and salvation.
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And our hope for you is steadfast, because we know that as you are partakers of the sufferings, so also you will partake of the consolation.
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For we do not want you to be ignorant, brethren, of our trouble which came to us in Asia, that we were burdened beyond measure, above strength, so that we despaired even of life.
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Yes, we had the sentence of death in ourselves, that we should not trust in ourselves, but in God who raises the dead, who delivered us from so great a death, and does deliver us, in whom we trust that He will still deliver us.
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Join me in prayer. Father, in all that it means, we pray the words from that hymn that is so loved today.
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Speak, O Lord, as we come to You to receive the truth of Your holy
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Word. Take Your truth. Plant it deep in us. We pray
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You'd do that in this hour. Make this passage, Lord, come alive for us.
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Holy Spirit, You speak it. I'm insufficient. You know that.
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I know that. Lord, we need to hear from You and not just from a man.
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So, take this time. Take this text. Take my inadequate and imperfect words.
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Enable me to speak, Lord, so as to please You and set
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Your seal of blessing and encouragement on the close of this conference.
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Lord, we would be amiss in not thanking You for the dear church here with Pastor Shane and Sam and the servants, the ladies, who labored so beautifully, wonderfully to serve us these days.
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We pray You'd bless the church abundantly for it. And may the ripple effects of this conference be long -lasting across,
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Lord, the provinces of Canada and further and beyond. Lord, thank
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You that You're building Your kingdom. And we're glad to be a part. So bless us now,
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Father, in Your Word, for Jesus' sake. Amen. I love these words.
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I walked a mile with pleasure. She chattered all the way, but left me none the wiser for all she had to say.
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I walked a mile with sorrow, and never a word said she, but oh, the things
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I learned from her when sorrow walked with me. We learn more.
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We receive more. We are transformed more through the hard things we go through and through the sorrows and sufferings of life than in any other way in the
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Christian life. So here's a question to begin by way of introduction.
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And I want you to think about it. And I want you to go away thinking about it. I hope six months from now when you're going through a hard thing, this question will come to your mind.
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How well do you handle suffering as a Christian? Meaning, do you collapse?
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Do you become self -centered? Do you throw a pity party? Do you become introverted?
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Do you isolate? Do you just get bitter? Are you questioning
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God? Is it just horrible experience when you go through suffering? How well do you handle it?
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Because you've all been through suffering, right? You all go through hard things.
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Unexpected things. The deepest things. And we cannot escape it, can we?
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No way. Troubles come, Paul said here.
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I don't want you to be ignorant of the trouble that came to us in Asia. So, how do we handle suffering?
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This has been real to me in recent months because last
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May, I was preaching near San Antonio, Texas, and I was scheduled to leave for the
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British Isles for six weeks of ministry in England, Wales, and other places.
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And I was excited about it. And I get home from that trip in mid -May, and three days later,
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I wake up in the middle of the night, and my back is bad.
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And meaning I couldn't sit in a chair for five months.
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From mid -May, do the math, whatever it comes out to, October. Five months.
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I couldn't sit in a chair for more than two or three minutes. Two discs had herniated.
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And all my calendar, providentially, is wiped clean. Not by the devil, but by my heavenly
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Father who had something different. Michael walked with me closely through this time.
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My elders did. All our deacons came over one day for an hour and a half and sat in our bedroom, staring at me on the bed.
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And it was sweet. It was sweet. And so, the first,
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I'll be brief on this, but the first two or three weeks,
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I was cast down. And what's the normal question that we come, one -word question we come out with when something interrupts our life?
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Why? It's not what. It's not who. It's not how.
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It's not when. It's why? As if God could make a mistake with our lives.
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But that's it. We don't like interruptions of suffering. Nobody wants to suffer.
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But here's the issue. We have to learn how to respond to suffering.
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And I want you to hear carefully my words here.
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Suffering is always hard. It always knocks the breath out of us.
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Mentally, emotionally, psychologically. It's hard. It's always going to be hard.
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But it can become easier for us to handle it and face it. In learning about suffering, now listen close to my words.
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We must learn about suffering, understanding what the Bible says about it. Learning about it.
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Responding to it better. Accepting it when it comes.
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Submitting to it. Submitting unto the mighty hand of God in it.
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And managing. I think it was John Owen used the word managing. Meaning, you process it and you learn to respond rightly to it.
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You're managing your sufferings. Because suffering is not a foe, it's a friend.
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Suffering is not an enemy, it's an ally. Suffering is not an opponent.
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It is a servant of Christians and employee of Christians to produce for you a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory.
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So there's nothing about suffering that is bad for the
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Christian who submitted to their
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Lord. He will cause it to work for good. Seem like the
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Bible says that somewhere, right? So, a theology of suffering.
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2 Corinthians is a, in my opinion, an underappreciated book of the
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New Testament. I'll give you an example. Most of what you know about the
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Corinthian church, you got from which epistle? 1 Corinthians, right?
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Some of you could walk through the contents of 1 Corinthians. Can you walk through the contents of 2
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Corinthians? What do you know about 2 Corinthians? Probably very little.
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It's a neglected book. It is an unappreciated book. We're not nearly as familiar with it as we should be.
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We don't know much of the content of it. But you know, it is a marvelous book.
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It is the most autobiographical book Paul wrote by far. In 2
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Corinthians, he's very transparent. He's brutally honest. He is real about his sufferings and his hardships.
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And so I just commend to you the fresh reading and studying of 2
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Corinthians more. Pastors, if you've never preached through it, it would be a marvelous experience.
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Even if you just preach some of the great stand -alone passages in 2 Corinthians, like some of these.
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The testimony of our conscience is that we lived in this world with simplicity and godly sincerity.
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That's a marvelous verse. What if you, as a Christian, are just living in this world with godly simplicity and godly sincerity?
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Do you know what a powerful vessel you would be in the lives of those around you if Jesus lived that way?
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Or how about this stand -alone verse? For all the promises of God are yes and amen in Christ Jesus.
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And we all with unveiled face beholding the glory of the Lord are being transformed into the same image by the
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Spirit of the Lord. We preach not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord.
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These great stand -alone texts in 2 Corinthians scattered throughout them.
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I love this one. God who commended light to shine out of darkness has shone into our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.
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Therefore, we do not lose heart. For even though our outward man is decaying, our inner man is being renewed day by day.
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Now somebody finish this one for me. For we walk by faith and not by sight.
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2 Corinthians. Christ died for all in order that those who live should live no longer for themselves, but for Him who died and rose again.
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2 Corinthians. I like this book. I want you to like it more.
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Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, new creation, old things are passed away, behold, all has become new.
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You are the temple of the living God. As God has said, I will dwell in them and walk among them.
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I will be their God and they shall be My people. I could keep going.
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I will. A couple more. For you know the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, that though He was rich, yet for your sakes
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He became poor, that you through His poverty might be made rich.
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That's Gospel. I love this one. For the suffering person.
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And He said to me, My grace is sufficient for you, for My strength is perfected in what?
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Weakness. The last verse in 2 Corinthians is a glorious benediction.
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The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the communion of the
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Holy Spirit be with you all. Amen. Paul said. What a glorious epistle.
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And chapter 1 may be the greatest portion in the
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New Testament about the theology of suffering, but also
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God's comforts in our suffering. What if you just suffered and God never comforted you?
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Pretty dismal picture, right? But as a Christian, whenever you've suffered, has the
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Lord genuinely, normally, brought comfort finally? Yes, He does.
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So, 2 Corinthians is about the glories and trials of the Christian ministry, but also the glories and trials of the
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Christian life. And the glories and trials of the Christian life can be summed up in God's comforts when we need it as a result of our sufferings.
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Paul shares all of his sufferings in this epistle. And in doing so, he makes himself a pattern to the church at Corinth and to all the readers of the
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New Testament in the future right up to March of 2025 here in Edmonton.
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Paul is a pattern for us to teach us to understand a proper theology of suffering and to encourage us about what comforts are available to us when we are going through a time of suffering.
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In order that we would have a correct biblical theology about suffering, we must do something.
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Michael has talked about in the Q &A about we're responsible. And you know, the modern, passive view of sanctification, you let go and you let
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God, whatever that means, that's not a biblical theology of our responsibility in the
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Christian life. We're very responsible to mortify sin and to grow in the grace and knowledge of Jesus Christ.
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But we're responsible also to get our minds renewed to the truth of how we view suffering.
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You know why this is so important to you? Because suffering is on the menu for you as a
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Christian. And God orders it up for you to eat. It doesn't taste good.
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It gives you food poisoning. You feel like spiritually, man, this doesn't, this isn't, this is hard.
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But we must have this theology developed.
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How do we do that? By going from the micro view of our little struggles and our personal battles to the macro view of God's divine purpose for every
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Christian in their suffering. And the Lord Jesus Christ, He is the primary example of suffering as a human being more than anyone ever suffered in human history.
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And so, suffering has been man's experience throughout all of history since the
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Garden of Eden. Living under the sun means you're going to suffer in life.
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To Eve, God said after the fall, I will greatly multiply your sorrow. To Adam, He then said, cursed is the ground because of you.
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So suffering has been happening since the Garden. Man is born crying.
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Have you ever seen a baby the first five minutes come out of the womb laughing and smiling?
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No, they're crying. Life begins with crying and it often ends with crying on the deathbed.
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Because all of life involves suffering and sorrow, pain, loss, and grief.
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Now, in a group this number, however many there are in here, many of you are going through hard things right now.
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Some of you are going through very difficult things. You have heartbreak over extended family and children and grandchildren.
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You have heartbreak over things with churches. Stresses and pressures and anxiety and health issues that aren't going away and managing life.
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And my wife and I are both 71 years old.
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And life is hard for us. It's hard. But God will teach us if we're teachable to dive deep and come to be shaped by a proper view of suffering and what that means.
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Because all of life for everyone involves periodic suffering because of sin.
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And the beginning place of getting in the theology about this right is to accept the fact
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I'm going to suffer and I don't need to be afraid of it. I need to see that my
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Father in Heaven has brought this for good reason, so I'm going to submit to Him in this condition, whatever it may be,
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I'm going to receive this as from His hand. And Lord, I want to benefit fully from what
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You have for me through the hardness of this. So, to the text, two points.
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Our sufferings is point number one. And then point number two, our comforts. Number one, the
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Christian life is a life of tribulation. Verses 3 -8.
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The Christian life is always going to be a life of tribulation. It is not high mountaintop experiences where you get greatly lifted up always.
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Conferences will do that to you. And praise God for the encouragements that come. But the
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Christian life is not highs, it is lows. And it involves consistently various types of suffering.
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Trials. Paul mentions suffering in some form ten times in our text.
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And various words. Tribulation, affliction, trouble, being crushed, being in despair, being burdened beyond measure.
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These are affliction terms. Verse 4, all of our affliction. Verse 4, in any trouble.
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Verse 5, we share abundantly in Christ's sufferings. Verse 6, if we are afflicted.
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Verse 7, we're partakers of the sufferings. So, suffering is not theoretical.
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It's always experiential, right? We experience it. In case
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I forget to say it later, I'll say it now and you can inject it to come in later. Comfort is never theoretical either.
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Comfort is always an experience. You're sorrowful.
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You feel sad. You get comforted. You feel better.
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It's always a feeling. Whether suffering or comfort.
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Paul said, in fact, these two words summarize what happens to the
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Christian regarding suffering. Paul says in verse 8, the trouble that came to me.
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Troubles come. They always do. Because you're under the sun.
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Because we're in a fallen world. And there's sin and evil and suffering all around.
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He said the afflictions we experienced in Asia. Troubles come. Paul affirmed this to the
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Philippian church in chapter 1 when he said, it has been granted to you for the sake of Christ that you should not only believe on Him, but also suffer for His sake.
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Two gifts of grace come when a person becomes a Christian. Saving faith and suffering.
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God grants them both of those. I must show Paul what great things he must suffer for my sake.
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There is no Christian life. There is no church. There is no ministry. There's no experience.
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There's no pastor. There's no Christian that does not have suffering mixed into the fabric of that identity.
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Why? Because Jesus suffered to accomplish redemption.
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And He suffered to reign. And every believer will therefore suffer to become like Him and in order that they might reign with Him.
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Suffering is the path to Christlikeness and reigning as more than a conqueror with Him.
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Here's why it's so important to view this properly. Johnny Erickson taught us. I think she knows a little bit about suffering.
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Listen to her quote. It's awesome. Without a doubt, Johnny says, what helps us most in accepting and dealing with suffering is an adequate and proper view of God.
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Learning who He truly is. What He's truly like. Knowing He's in control.
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And learning to trust Him through anything. End quote. Now let me give for you note takers that can't even write fast enough to follow a slow -talking
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Texan. Let me just give you that one again. Quote, without a doubt, what helps us most in accepting and dealing with suffering is an adequate and proper view of God.
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Learning who He truly is. What He's truly like. Knowing that He's in control.
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And learning to trust Him through anything. If that becomes real to you, my brother and sister as a sufferer, and you just say that quote and you pray over that and you process that, that will begin to cause you to respond properly to the trials that come from above.
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There's a hymn that says, every joy or trial fallen from above, traced upon the dial by the
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Son of Love. Nothing can come to your life, but that God has brought it with a loving purpose to make you like the
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Lord Jesus Christ. It's not going to hurt you or destroy you. So, our problem is, we have a problem.
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We don't want to accept or deal with suffering. Too painful. But it's a very shallow view of God in the
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Christian life to always be praying and asking God to eliminate suffering.
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When we pray, our church has three prayer meetings every Wednesday. And I said recently to the church on a
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Sunday morning, you know, I think we often pray in a very shallow way when hardships come. We just pray,
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Lord, just heal them and encourage them. Or Lord, just don't let that baby who's having to have these tests, just spare them all the pain.
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Make a hardship cease. Lord, just make things easier. And when we pray that way, we're praying at a very shallow level.
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Should we pray that way? Yes, certainly. But not just that way.
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When we pray just that way, we're virtually treating God like an
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Uber driver or a problem fixer. Deeper though are the issues that God wants to work through suffering.
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Rather than just pray, Lord, please fix it and take my pain away, we should also pray,
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Lord, cause this that I'm going through to produce deeply in me a more of a love for You.
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More of a love treasuring Your Word. More of a tender heart. More of an eternal perspective.
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Make me more like Jesus through this. I remember that September morning on my bed.
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It just came to me. I had this moment. And it was as if the
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Lord was near. He was near. It came to me a sense of contentment and a sense of resignation.
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And I remember praying, Father, OK, I don't know how long this is going to last, but I yield to You.
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You have good things for me and I trust You. So, Lord, let's just go.
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You lead and I'll follow. You make every day what You want. You make every night what You want. And Michael could tell you, but I'll tell you instead.
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The next four months became a revival. I had such nearness of the presence of God that His Word became delightful.
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That prayer became wonderful. I felt like at times, whether 4 a .m.
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or 10 a .m., I could just reach out and touch the Lord's presence because He had drawn near because I needed it.
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And He wanted to begin to bring comfort. And I had four months of greatly enjoying the grace of God.
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And I was dreading it ending. I really was.
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And it ended. And the Lord began to raise me up. And, well,
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I don't have those... I don't have every week now times like that.
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But God meant it for good. But it came because I submitted to the suffering.
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Brethren, don't be afraid of submitting to God with your suffering.
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There's nothing to fear in that. If you ask Him for bread, will He give you a stone? No.
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So, it's an unbiblical view of Christianity to just want
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God to solve the problems. Let me hurry on. It's often only when we're suffering that the beauty and power of Scripture comes alive to us.
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It's often when we're suffering that we would never see the sweetness or taste the sweetness of Christ like when we're going through hardships and periods of sickness.
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God becomes more real. And He means to become more real because He's getting your attention.
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You've been too busy and too much not needing Him. You handle everything well, okay, boop, touch your thigh, touch your back.
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He's got your attention. And you ain't going anywhere. You're not escaping God's great working.
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So, only suffering often drives us to deeper prayer or to deeper, more desperate dependence on God.
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And when we learn to respond to it, that's when the sweetness comes.
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And that's when you won't fear suffering as much when you go through it. Remember the verse that says,
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I will not fear evil tidings, but trust in the Lord. Well, that's a summary really of the theology of suffering.
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That's just the hem of the garment really. But brethren, regarding suffering, let your takeaway be that you learn to manage your suffering well.
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That you respond to it when God brings it. You submit to Him in it. You get your mind renewed to what the
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Bible says about suffering. And you begin to manage it where you respond to Him in worship.
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And you redeem. If you go through a difficult time, God has not only reasons,
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He has ways He wants you to respond to Him to get grace from Him, to help in time of need.
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All right, secondly, God's comforts. Major truths briefly in the text about God's comforts to us.
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But before I go there, brethren, is comfort just theoretical and doctrinal, or is it an experience that involves true emotions?
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I've already said it earlier. The deepest things you feel, whether sorrow or joy, are
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God -given. And those are meant to cause you to worship
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God and draw closer to Him. So don't quench them. So here's major truths relative to God's comforts of us in our suffering.
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Number one, Michael was on it this morning. Number one, you have a truly human and divine heavenly sympathizer who is with you in every human experience of suffering.
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You have as a Christian, a truly human and divine heavenly sympathizer who is with you in every human experience of suffering.
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Where do I borrow that word sympathizer from in the New Testament? Someone tell me.
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Hebrews 4, right? For we have not a high priest who cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities, but he was in all points tempted and tested, but without sin.
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Therefore, let us draw near to the throne of grace that we might obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need.
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Hebrews speaks about Christ being a great and sympathizing high priest.
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Now that means for you, whether your suffering is as a student and you're agonizing over something and you're an emotional wreck, or whether you've had a fractured relationship and you lost a close friend and you're heartbroken over it, or whether you've come through a marriage that fell apart, whatever your suffering is,
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Christ in heaven, His heart is towards you with sympathizing love and support in your experience.
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Brethren, do you believe that? It's true.
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It's when we are suffering the most that we all often feel like God is the most absent.
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Have you read the book Gentle and Lowly? Let me see your hands. Read that book. It might be out on the table.
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Read that book. If you're going through a hard time, just read it slowly. It's a simple book. Dane Ortlund, right?
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Gentle and Lowly. It shows the sympathizing heart of the Lord Jesus for His children.
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You have a truly human, divine, heavenly sympathizer who is with you through the hardest things.
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Christ knows personally and emotionally every experience of human sorrow you've ever had.
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Every one of them. The darkest things that no one knows about that crushed you and damaged you, the
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Lord Jesus intimately and emotionally knows what you've been through.
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That's comfort number one. That's a comfort. I said, that's a comfort.
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There we go. That's what I was waiting. It takes a Texan. Y 'all gotta loosen up up here.
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Or come down to Texas and visit us. So, comfort number two.
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His available grace to you is a comfort. My grace is sufficient for you.
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That's either true or it's not. Will you avail yourself of the grace when you need it?
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His available grace is a comfort to you. How much is grace promised in the
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New Testament to the child of God? But grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. There you're growing in grace, but many of the benedictions, may the grace of Christ, may the love of God and the grace of Christ and the communion of the
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Holy Spirit be with you all. His grace that's available to you is a comfort always.
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Comfort number three, His promises are a comfort. And it's the promises, especially the
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Psalms. When you go through the darkest times, you just pray them. Two years ago,
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I had bad insomnia for eight or nine months. It led to physical exhaustion.
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It led to mental exhaustion. It led to emotional exhaustion, which led to depression, which led to a time of spiritual darkness that I was a shell of a man.
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I thought my ministry was over. I couldn't preach. I couldn't lead prayer meetings. I couldn't relate rightly to people.
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I couldn't think clearly. And I would dread the night coming.
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I couldn't sleep on my bed because I'd lay down in the dark and I would have an anxiety attack and I'd have to get up and go to my recliner and sit in it.
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And I would sit there and all I could do at times, all that was clear enough in my mind,
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I was under a cloud of darkness and oppression. And all I could do some nights was just like a five -year -old,
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I would just say, Jesus, help me. Get me through this night.
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Lord, would you just give me, could I have a little sleep? Nine months of it. It was the hardest period of my
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Christian life. And I won't take the time to tell you, but I couldn't read the
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Bible except the Psalms. And I would pick things out to pray and I would pray it with no sense of God's presence.
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No emotions. But God drove me to know this book is true no matter what
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I feel. It's true for me because I'm His. And Lord, I believe it.
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I believe what you said here. Do it for me, please. And what turned into over a year,
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God graciously one Friday in October of that year, in 20 minutes,
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God delivered me from all of it. It was a mighty experience through the counsel of a close friend who knew, had no idea
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I was going through it. I began to open up and share. Michael helped me. My elders helped me.
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But what brought me to deliverance was I saw a friend of mine, a pastor I'd known for 40 years.
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He had no idea I was going through this. I just began to share. And I was with him.
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He was listening. He wasn't. Look, if people come, let me interject this. If people come to you who are suffering and they start sharing, do not stop talking.
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Do not give them quick answers and solutions. Just listen. Listen well.
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Because that will be a ministry to that suffering person. Just that a friend is listening.
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And in a 20 minute period of time, I would share something and I would ask a question and he would respond.
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And it was exactly what I needed to hear in that moment. And with everything he would say, a light bulb would turn on and a part of the burden would leave and part of the darkness would leave and light in my understanding would come.
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And in 20 minutes, I was set free of over a year of spiritual darkness. God has ways to deliver us if we trust
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Him. Whatever you're going through that's the hardest thing, keep trusting
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Him. Because you know what? Comfort is always the medicine for suffering. It's always the antibiotics you need for suffering is
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God's comfort. You don't need chemo if you have the flu, right?
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You don't need a strong antibiotic when you're dehydrated. You need exactly what your condition calls for.
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And God has custom made grace for you in your particular suffering and that's what you need from Him.
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Not what somebody else got. But listen, He has exactly the comforts needed that will cause us to trust
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Him. But we will never know God's comforts without suffering.
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I'm going to hurry on here. Another point about God's comforts.
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Paul here says that it is God's purpose for comfort to abound toward you in all your sufferings.
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He says, for as the sufferings of Christ abound in us, so also the consolations will abound.
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So if you're deeply suffering, here is biblical precedent for you saying,
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Lord, just let the comforts abound too. We profit from every trial we go through, every heartache we have, every tear we shed, every darkness we're in.
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And I love what your Englishman turned
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Canadian, J .I. Packer said. This is good. Quote, the weaker we feel, the harder we lean.
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And the harder we lean, the stronger we grow. The weaker we feel, the harder we lean.
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And the harder we lean, the stronger we grow. There is such an anti -biblical culture in modern
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Christianity, especially when you're young, and athletes get saved, or a real smart guy in college, and they just got it together, man.
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They read the Bible, and they're doing spiritual disciplines, and they're strong, and they don't have any weaknesses, though.
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So they don't learn to depend on Christ. And you know what God does? He comes, and like Jacob, He will just touch the thigh.
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That's all it takes. And Jacob came at sunrise, limping over the hill, and his name had been changed from Jacob to what?
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Israel, a prince with God. God makes us, and I'll close with this.
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When we receive the comforts God has for us in our sufferings, you know what that means?
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We're to be ministers of comfort. We're to be missionaries of comfort to fellow sufferers.
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Who are those fellow sufferers? Those in your sphere of relationships that are hurting in your church, in your family.
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Can you be a minister of comfort to unconverted family members? You can. By showing them the love of Christ.
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By taking them a meal. My wife, Linda, excels in this.
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She excels in ministering comfort to fellow sufferers.
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So, if you're a sufferer, if God has portioned out for you in your
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Christian life to go through hard thing after hard thing after hard thing, He is making you a special preacher and messenger and missionary to a particular kind of people, those who are suffering and hurting.
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And it's the comfort that you've received from God experientially that you'll give to others who need you as a comforter.
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The greater believer's comforts. And I will close with this and then I'll pray. Here are the greatest comforts we have.
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Michael and I have a lady in our church who has been an invalid for 35 years.
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She is like a Johnny Erickson Tata. She's an invalid. She can't move.
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And she is one of the most radiant Christians I know. And she lives on these things.
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Here are her comforts. What are the believer's comforts? The most suffering
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Christian. Sonship and peace with God. That you're a child of God.
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You could still be a child of hell. That your sins are forgiven.
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What a comfort. Don't ever get over that. That your sins were for many and have all been forgiven.
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Your church as a true family, that's a comfort. You have a
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Bible that's true and trustworthy. You have God as your Father. You have Christ as your Lord. You have the
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Holy Spirit in you, with you as the divine comforter and tutor.
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You have prayers that are answered and deliverances that come and healings that happen. You have the promises of God, the love of the brethren and eternal life.
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And a glorious, unimaginable future awaits you where there will be no suffering forever.
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That's a hallelujah. Heirs of God, and join heirs with Jesus Christ.
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We will reign with Him if we suffer with Him so that we will be glorified with Him.
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More than conquerors. But you know what? To be a conqueror means you have to conquer some things.
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And it's the suffering and the hardships of life that Christ will make you an overcomer. And He will not fail to carry you all the way, all the way, until the moment you see
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His face and you're with Him and you're like Him forever. Amen.
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Let's pray. Thank you for listening to another sermon from Grace Fellowship Church.
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If you would like to keep up with us, you can find us at Facebook at Grace Fellowship Church or our
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Instagram at Grace Church, Y -E -G, all one word. Finally, you can visit us at our website, graceedmonton .ca.