Our Afflictions are for others COMFORT?! 2 Corinthians 1 [Daily Bible Study]

[Music] as it is written in Isaiah the from my messenger ahead of you hey everybody how you doing today welcome to another beautiful day of engaging God we do it through reading his word each day we expect him to speak to us and he often does well today our little community starts a new book we call this second Corinthians so I'm gonna give you a bit of a backstory here well there's a little bit of a complicated history between the church at Corinth and the Apostle Paul I'm just going to give you a little slice of it Paul had sent Timothy to this church on his behalf and what Timothy found was there was lots of drama this was mostly due to some of the opponents of Paul who had arrived from the east so Paul went to Corinth himself at this point but apparently this was a quote painful visit so he left there and he went back and he and he set them a scorching letter warning them of judgment now that letter we don't actually have but we know that most of the church in Corinth actually repented due to this letter this was great news that Paul found out when he interacted with Titus in Macedonia but there was still a small group that was in severe opposition to Paul and this group was influencing some to reject the gospel so this letter that we start today was written for two main reasons was written by Paul number one it was intended to strengthen the majority of faithful believers there in Corinth it was to cheer them on and number two it offered a second chance or another chance at repentance for the rebellious group causing dissension Paul cares about them too so that's the background so let's pray and then we'll read the first chapter of this book God we thank you for your word god this is a good day we were able to gather virtually and read your word God we know that you're with us wherever we are we ask God that you just show yourself to us in our lives give us eyes to see what you're doing and encourage us in our daily walk with you God I ask that you forgive us where we need forgiveness God we repent of the sin in our lives I pray that you build us up Lord where we aren't confident and we aren't strong god help us to know today that if we are believers that we are children of the king of the world and that you treat us like children at your banquet table and nothing less than that speak to us today Lord your name we pray amen second Corinthians chapter 1 Paul an apostle of Christ Jesus by God's will and Timothy our brother to the Church of God at Corinth with all the saints who are throughout akia grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ blessed be the God and father of our Lord Jesus Christ the father of mercies and the God of all comfort he comforts us in all our affliction so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any kind of affliction through the comfort we ourselves receive from God for just as the sufferings of Christ overflow to us so also through Christ our comfort overflows if we are afflicted it is for your comfort and salvation if we are comforted it is for your comfort which produces a new patient endurance of same sufferings that we suffer and our hope for you is firm because we know that as you share in the sufferings so you will also share in the comfort we don't want you to be unaware brothers and sisters of our affliction that took place in Asia we were completely overwhelmed beyond our strength so that we even despaired of life itself indeed we felt that we had received the sentence of death so that we would not trust in ourselves but in God who raises the dead he has delivered us from such a terrible death and he will deliver us we have put our hope in him that he will deliver us again while you join in helping us by your prayers then many will give thanks on our behalf for the gift that came to us through the prayers of many indeed this is our boast the testimony of our conscience is that we have conducted ourselves in the world and especially toward you with godly sincerity and purity not by human wisdom but by God's grace for we are writing nothing to you other than what you can read and also understand I hope you will understand completely just as you have partially understood us that we are your reason for pride just as you also are ours in the day of our Lord Jesus because of this confidence I planned to come to you first so that you could have a second benefit and to visit you on my way to Macedonia and then come to you again from Macedonia and be helped by you on my journey to Judea now what I planned this was I have two mines or what I plan do I plan in purely a human way so that I say yes yes and no no at the same time as God is faithful our message to you is not yes and no for the son of God Jesus Christ whom we proclaimed among you Sylvanas and i Silvanus timothy and i did not become yes in on the contrary in him it is always yes for every one of God's promises is yes in him therefore through him we also say amen to the glory of God now it is God who strengthens us together with you in Christ and who has anointed us he has also put his seal on us and given us the spirit in our hearts as a downpayment I call on God as a witness on my life that it was to spare you that I did not come to Corinth I do not mean that we lord it over your faith but we are workers with you for your joy because you stand firm in your faith okay so as I read today verse four just jumped out at me I'd like to reread it it says he comforts us in all our affliction so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any kind of affliction through the comfort we ourselves receive from God boy talk about a great perspective on having difficulties in life this really hit me today because as some of you know my wife has been dealing with a incurable illness called sarcoidosis for the last two years it came out of nowhere and put her in the hospital and left her in a wheelchair for a couple of months and since then she's been slowly and gradually responding to the medicine she's on and getting better and better so the point that as of last week she had very very very little symptoms from this disease she was doing great then this week we found one of the original symptoms seems like it may be coming back and we're not sure she has a doctor's appointment tomorrow but this is discouraging this is not the news you want to hear I'll probably share more about that in a personal video sometime soon but but reading this verse today I was instantly convicted I was taken back to the place where she was in the hospital and God gave her a supernatural comfort he gave her a piece in the middle of hell he really did it was something that didn't make sense in this human realm and from that she took that comfort that guy gave her and she gave that to others so many people over these last 24 months have been encouraged they've been built up they've been encouraged in their faith and they've been comforted through their struggles because Chris can point back to that time when she was comforted by the Lord that gives me a different perspective on the trial that my family is going through this week what does this first say to you one more thing about that Paul says just after that he says if we are afflicted it is for your comfort in your salvation that we can take our afflictions and accept them and use them as tools to bring others comfort and point them to Jesus that is a beautiful gift I want to be more like that and today as we read this my wife and I are committing to take that to heart and to be more like that to continue encouraging others with the bit of comfort that the Lord gives us alright that's all for today what's going on with you does that speak to you today leave me a comment in the in the comments below is there something else going on in your life where you see God working are you encouraged some way leave a comment for the community we want to hear those things alright god bless and we'll see you all tomorrow for chapter 2 [Music]

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Keywords: daily devotions, inductive bible study, Daily Video Bible Reading, bible study, protestant, christian, monmouth county nj, church

Id: hq4ea4Yd-6k

Length: 11min 19sec (679 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 11 2018