Comfortable in This World or Comforted by God

2nd Corinthians chapter 1 verses 3 through 5. Blessed be the Lord and God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies, the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our afflictions, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction with a comfort which we ourselves are being comforted up by God. For as we share abundantly in Christ's sufferings, so through Christ we share abundantly in comfort too. When we first begin to follow Jesus, the sheer thrill of knowing him is so great that we can put up with almost any inconvenience or trouble or pain without batting an eyelash.

We'll go without sleep, without food, we'll go great distances, we'll take tremendous risks for the joy of just being near him and doing his will. It's easy for us to understand why Peter left his fishing boat and every secure thing he ever knew in order to be with Jesus was worth it to him. And many of us in this gathering right now have given up, for instance, promising futures, at least as far as the world is concerned, futures that look like they really get us someplace.

And we did this without even a quiver of a thought. And some of us have turned away from certain careers that were lying ahead of us or certain things that would have just abounded to all kinds of prosperity, perhaps wealth. And some of us have given up small fortunes, and we never thought of this as a sacrifice.

You know, this was a privilege just to be near Jesus. Glad to do it. Now when we did these things, of course our friends kind of looked at us askance and wondered if we really realized what we were doing.

They thought we'd gone off our reason and we're now, you know, living for a fantasy. And from their point of view, indeed, it looked as if we had left the warmth and comfort of our former lives to go out wandering around in the cold with nothing to hold on to but some kind of tenuous hope. See, but from our own point of view, from seeing what we see as we look at the Kingdom of God, we saw that we were doing just the opposite.

We were, in fact, coming into the most marvelous comfort we've ever known. We found a treasure hidden in the field, and we know that only a fool would be afraid to sell everything that he has to buy that field. And so we started living by faith.

We went out on the land, glad to do all kinds of crazy things, difficult things, painful things, for the joy of pleasing our Lord and being in His will. We took risks, we spent ourselves, we took our necks out, we suffered all kinds of abuse and ridicule from our friends who finally, many of them, forsook us or left us or turned away from us. And we were glad to do these things because we found that when we live up there on the razor edge of faith, for all the suffering, all the loneliness, all the hassles, all the tension, all the pain that we may have had to endure, nevertheless, there was never a moment when we were without the comfort of a living God, which comfort turned out to be the highest joy we ever tasted, the most wonderful thing we ever knew.

Walking with Him, it was as if Jesus' presence, and indeed this was so, was so close to us that we could feel Him with every breath we drew. And we knew that His Spirit was guiding the steps of our feet. And we knew that His power was burning in our hearts.

And the evidence of His presence just kind of flowed out from us in all kinds of signs and confirmations. But what happened with many of us, and happened so suddenly that we didn't even realize what was going on, was that after a while we came to a fork on this road of faith. It didn't look like a fork.

You know, here's the narrow way, and right adjacent to it is this lovely strip of green velvet. And as far as the eye can see, it just runs right alongside of the narrow path. And so we say to ourselves, why not walk on it? You know, it feels good.

It's much more comfortable. And besides, what are these words printed in the velvet? Time to settle down. Isn't that the truth? Time to settle down.

I can't keep up my former pace. I can't be a fanatic all my life. Surely I'm entitled to some of the things that make life comfortable.

The only trouble is that now, as we look back, here we are on the green strip of velvet. Very comfortable indeed, but the narrow road of faith is nowhere in sight. Somewhere on the way it branched off and we never caught it.

Now, there's nothing sinful about marrying a wife or a husband. You know, there's nothing wrong with having a decent house to live in or apartment. Who can condemn reading the newspapers or watching television? You know, what's wrong with kicking my shoes off, you know, and relaxing a little bit, having a little snack, and maybe a little more snack, a little more snack? But isn't it, isn't it strange how now that I've made myself comfortable in this world, the comfort of God, that I once knew my heart is empty and my spirit is cold.

And what happened to my faith? You know, I'm so comfortable now that I can't even find my way out of this easy chair. I can't rouse myself enough to go out and search for what I lost. Now, this is not just happening, my friend, to the odd individual.

It's also happening to whole fellowships of believers. They settle down. We settle down.

Not into God, but into the world and become self-indulgent and self-satisfied and smug and empty. And the only solution is to turn around and follow the green velvet path back to the place where it departed from the narrow way and get back on the narrow way. And my friend, this is not just a little illustration or a little story.

This is rock-bottom truth which applies to all kinds of lives in this gathering right now, and you know it. Now, the thing about the narrow way is that when we walk this way of faith, our steps are so ordered by God that we never get a chance to settle down. When we follow behind Jesus in His steps, the world begins immediately to treat us the way it treats Him.

As aliens, exiles, imposters, the world, when we follow Jesus on the narrow road, never welcomes us to settle down and get comfortable in it. Never. Any more than it did to Jesus.

He was barely born before Herod is out to kill all the male babies in Bethlehem. And all his life, he is a stranger. He is treated as an imposter.

Foxes have holes. Birds of the air have their nests. The Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.

No place ever that he can truly call his own in this world. So he made it. And when we walk with him, even though we may have our own bed and our own little house or big house, this still applies.

We still have no place that we can settle. We just don't fit. We just don't belong anywhere in this world.

We are looked upon as the scum, as the off-scouring. We are the ones that the world is going to use as scapegoats, just like they use the Jews. Get used to this.

If you're serious about walking with Jesus Christ and living in that first love He gave you, you will never in all your life of flesh and blood be able to settle down. Never. You will never find a place that you can call yours.

And the minute you think you've finally discovered a chair that's truly your chair, somebody's going to come along and snatch it away. And we say, well, why? Why does it have to be this way? Isn't this terrible? And the reason is so that denied the comforts of this world, we may then learn to experience God's comfort, the only real comfort there is. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am meek and lowly apart.

And you shall find rest for your souls. The rest for our souls that we need is nowhere else, nowhere, but under that yoke with Him. Nowhere else.

See, now I can ask God to give me peace and He will. I can pray for an answer to my prayer and He'll give it to me. I can ask God to come and somehow touch me and He will.

But if I want God's comfort, then I have to, there's only one way, I have to call for that yoke to come down and rest on my shoulders alongside of Jesus. I'm going to take that heavy cross of my Lord on myself with Him and I'm going to work side by side with my Master under the yoke of that cross and under that burden and with that heartache and with all the troubles that come along with that as I walk side by side with my meek and lowly and laboring Lord. I then begin to experience the easiest mind, the most free and joyful heart, and the most wonderful rest I have ever in my life known.

See, the rest is not found on a soft bed or a comfortable couch or a full stomach or a gratified body or an indulged flesh or a stimulated mind, but it is found and only found under the yoke with the Lamb of God. And if we want to, we can get under that yoke afresh right now. All we have to do is, you know, make an act of will and ask the Lord to come down on us with that yoke and walk by our side and teach us, and He will.

Moreover, Jesus not only promises us the rest that we need, but He promises to give us the Comforter who will go with us and abide with us forever. If you love me, you will keep my commandments. And I will pray the Father, and He will send you another Comforter to be with you forever, even the Spirit of Truth, whom the world cannot receive because it neither sees Him nor knows Him.

You know Him, for He is with you and shall be in you. Notice how simple this promise is. We don't have to learn some, you know, involved technique how to receive the Holy Spirit.

We don't have to take a course. We don't have to learn some very difficult and mysterious teaching. All we have to do is love Jesus.

And if we love Jesus, we will obey His commands. Don't say you love Jesus if you don't do what He says. And as we obey His commands, as we even begin to try to do the things He tells us to do, and they're simple and clear.

As we do this, Jesus prays the Father, and the Father sends the Holy Spirit. And when the Spirit comes, there is no guessing about this. We won't have to sit here and wonder, did the Spirit come or didn't He? Was that the Holy Spirit or wasn't it? There will be no doubt in any of our minds that the Spirit has come in answer to our Lord's Prayer, to us, because He will bring with Him, to us, the Comfort of Heaven that you can't counterfeit in any way.

No devil can counterfeit. The Comfort of Heaven that will make us know that in the midst of all the heartache and trouble and turmoil and confusion and mess that we may be in, He, the Spirit of God, is in us. When they were loading up that ship for Italy, the most unlikely looking person, the most uncomfortable looking person, was this little man with shackles around his wrists that were connected with chains named Paul.

When Paul tries to warn them that there's going to be a storm, and they better not set sail, nobody pays attention. Who does he think he is? The prisoner. But when they're out at sea, and the storm comes, and all those lives are in danger, and all hope is given up, and all the tackle is thrown overboard, the one Comfort amid those 276 souls is Paul, because Paul's Comfort.

Now you and I, if we're in any way following Jesus with any genuineness at all, are in the same position now. We are also boarding a ship, in fact we're on a ship, which is heading into a storm. And if we are indeed following Jesus, we'll get the same kind of response from the world that Paul got.

They'll laugh at us, and they'll ridicule us, and they'll scoff at us, as we warn of the storm. But when the storm hits, and my friend, it hasn't hit yet. You know, you can talk about a depression and people will listen, and you can talk about war and people will listen, but you talk about the judgment of God, and they'll still, most of them, laugh.

But when it hits, and all other forms of Comfort have been demolished, we will then still be able to offer, as we do now, the one Comfort that really lasts. But the question is, are we, right now, really standing in Paul's shoes? Are we, in fact, right now, under Paul's feet? Are we, in fact, standing in Paul's feet? Are we, in fact, standing in Paul's feet? Are we, in fact, standing in Paul's feet? Are we, in fact, standing in Paul's feet? Are we, in fact, standing in Paul's feet? Are we, in fact, standing in Paul's feet? Are we, in fact, standing in Paul's feet? Are we, in fact, standing in Paul's feet? Are we, in fact, standing in Paul's feet? Are we, in fact, under the yoke with our Master? And is the Holy Spirit of God truly our Comfort? Or have we, in one subtle way or another, settled down and become comfortable in this world? God help us to get off the green velvet path and back on the narrow way. God help us to get under the yoke with the lowliest one who ever walked this earth and learn from him and receive from his hands the gift of the Holy Spirit.

The only Comfort there is. Heavenly Father, you know where we are at. Every one of us, you know our hearts inside out.

And you know where we've been pretending to ourselves. And you know where we've been deceiving ourselves. And you know the cause of the dryness of soul and the anxiety of heart and the irritation and the resentment and the criticism and the hardness and the lack of compassion and the lack of patience and the fear and all these things that have confused our minds and corrupted our wills.

And we pray, Lord Jesus, right now, that as we open our hearts to you and let that light come back in, that you'd also by the power of your Holy Spirit help us to step out of the darkness into the light. Help us, Lord Jesus, to choose between being comfortable or being comforted by your Spirit. This day and every day until you come in glory.