2 Corinthians 1:3-4 3 All praise to God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. God is our merciful Father and the source of all comfort. 4 He comforts us in all our troubles so that we can comfort others. When they are troubled, we will be able to give them the same comfort God has given us.
Symptom – Terrible pain in my hip and a lack of flexibility.
Diagnosis by a Bone doctor – Bone on bone and need an immediate hip replacement. Daily life experiences -Constant pain and a restriction on my mobility.
Summary – I am a hippie!!! No, I don’t sing “Let the sunshine in”, no I don’t smoke weed. No, I am not living in a commune. I just need hip surgery. All my years in sports, including riding bulls for one month, are coming back to haunt me and yes, I am going to have hip surgery to fix the problem. OUCH!!
The point to me being a hippie (def- someone who needs a hip replacement) is that sometimes things are thrown at us out of the blue and we just don’t know what to do and then it happens… God shows up and He has the “comfort salve” and then you just go awe… God did that for me this morning and I give Him praise for showing up when I needed it. Verse 4 says a mouthful where it says, and I repeat. He comforts us in all our troubles. But that is the first part of the verse and here is the last part. so that we can comfort others. So we not only get comfort, but we also are in a position to comfort others as well. It’s just like God to not only be our comforter but also give us the ministry of comfort when He is comforting us. God lets us get in on the work of service by using our lives as a stepping stone to share the truth we know about first hand. 2 Corinthians 5:16-20 says 16 So we have stopped evaluating others from a human point of view. At one time we thought of Christ merely from a human point of view. How differently we know him now! 17 This means that anyone who belongs to Christ has become a new person. The old life is gone; a new life has begun! 18 And all of this is a gift from God, who brought us back to himself through Christ. And God has given us this task of reconciling people to him. 19 For God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself, no longer counting people’s sins against them. And he gave us this wonderful message of reconciliation. 20 So we are Christ’s ambassadors; God is making his appeal through us.
The next time you look at someone through human eyes, just stop for a minute and ask God to show them to you through spiritual eyes (it is possible) and then you will realize you are “part of the team.” God actually has a mission for your life and he allows us to experience things so we can more readily relate to others from a spiritual mindset. Example – I am now a hippie and I now can relate to other hippies and experience where they are coming from in their life. This translates into everything we experience, but we will only realize it through a mind-altering experience through a fresh, open encounter with God. Paul wrote a great truth to the church at Colossae in Chapter 3 where He says Since you have been raised to new life with Christ, set your sights on the realities of heaven, where Christ sits in the place of honor at God’s right hand. 2 Think about the things of heaven, not the things of earth. 3 For you died to this life, and your real life is hidden with Christ in God. We no longer think from an earthly perspective, but our perspective is from a heavenly vantage point and that changes everything. Oh, it doesn’t take away the pain of the hip, but it keeps it from defeating my brain, so God enables me to see this malady from a heavenly perspective and then I can see that He can make something good come from it. That’s just how God is… I will get back to you after I get a new hip, so keep me in your prayers, please!!
The Pilgrimage continues…..
David Warren
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