Week 1 | The God of Comfort & Consolation

Strengthening:

Nehemiah 1:1

Call to Rise:

While it may not seem like much on the surface, the opening sentence-and-a-half of Nehemiah is rich with meaning that is relevant to the times in which we live. We are told that these are “the words of Nehemiah the son of Hacaliah.”

Nehemiah means God comforts or God is consolation.

In an era of great distress, for Americans in general, and certainly for followers of Jesus Christ, these are timely, welcome concepts. These are the words of God’s comfort and consolation.

What is God’s Comfort?

We can learn a great deal about the comfort of God through the truths given in 2 Corinthians 1:3-7, a passage that contains nearly one-third of all the occurrences of the word comfort in the New Testament. The concept of comfort in this passage is “to strengthen much” and “to encourage,” especially the encouragement of one who is enduring testing. 

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God. For as we share abundantly in Christ’s sufferings, so through Christ we share abundantly in comfort too. If we are afflicted, it is for your comfort and salvation; and if we are comforted, it is for your comfort, which you experience when you patiently endure the same sufferings that we suffer. Our hope for you is unshaken, for we know that as you share in our sufferings, you will also share in our comfort. (2 Corinthians 1:3-7 ESV)

These words, inspired by the Holy Spirit, were written by Paul, one of the most afflicted heroes of our faith. Consider all he endured for the sake of the Kingdom: Beatings, stoning, imprisonment, homelessness, hunger, shipwrecks and scorn. Yet Paul tells us that in the midst of all his mistreatment and distress, he was strengthened much (comforted) by God. 

Paul experienced the strengthening of God as he experienced suffering for Christ’s sake. According to theologian R. Kent Hughes, “Paul links the Corinthians’ comfort to their patient endurance of sufferings: ‘It is for your comfort, which you experience when you patiently endure the same sufferings that we suffer’ (2 Corinthians 1:6).The phrase ‘comfort, which you experience’ is translated more literally as ‘comfort, which is energized.’”  

Righteous affliction activates and energizes “much strengthening” from God, a gift given to those who patiently endure suffering for the Kingdom. 

As if it was not kind enough that God formed this activating relationship between affliction and encouragement, He further designed His comfort to overflow. Paul was able to comfort others with the comfort he received from God because the comfort of God is always dispensed in excess of the need.

For as we share abundantly in Christ’s sufferings, so through Christ we share abundantly in comfort too. (2 Corinthians 1:5)

The word abundantly here means to “superabound” and “to be in excess; enough and to spare; to exceed a fixed number of measure; to abound, overflow.” 

Because of it’s overflowing nature, God’s comfort does not conclude with the original beneficiary. The book of 2 Corinthians is itself an illustration of this truth: God’s comfort overflowed from the Corinthians to Titus, and then from Titus to Paul, and then back to the Corinthians through Paul’s letter and prayers. The cyclical nature of God’s consolation is also demonstrated in the slightly more contemporary story of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, as told by Hughes.

[Bonhoeffer] was one of a handful of German theologians to stand up to the Nazification of the German church. He was prominent in writing the famous Barmen Declaration, which rejected the infamous Aryan clauses imposed by Nazi ideology. Bonhoeffer’s courage thrust him into the leadership of the Confessing Church along with other stalwarts like Martin Niemöller. Bonhoeffer went so far as to found an underground seminary in Finkenwald, Bavaria, which was closed by Gestapo chief Heinrich Himmler. This led to Bonhoeffer’s joining the resistance movement and his being imprisoned by the Gestapo in April 1943. Bonhoeffer’s Letters from Prison became a best seller after the war.

Among the letters is a beautiful poem written to his fiancée Maria von Wedemeyer entitled “New Year 1945.” Stanza 3 is famous:

Should it be ours to drain the cup of grieving
Even to the dregs of pain,
At thy command, we will not falter,
Thankfully receiving all that is given
By thy loving hand.

Poignant words that became more so when, three months later, just as the war was ending, Bonhoeffer was hung in Flossenbürg prison.

Fast-forward to some eighteen years later, across the Atlantic in America, when another bride-to-be was grieving the death of her fiancé and found much comfort in Bonhoeffer’s poem. Her fiancé, who died from injuries in a sledding accident, was the son of author Joseph Bayly and his wife Mary Lou. When she mailed Bonhoeffer’s poem to them, Joe and Mary Lou also found comfort in “New Year 1945.”

Twelve years after this (thirty years after Bonhoeffer’s death), Joe Bayly received a letter from a pastor-friend in Massachusetts relating that he had visited a terminally ill woman in a Boston hospital for some period of time and had given her Joe’s book of poems, Heaven, as comfort for her soul. The pastor said that the dying woman had stayed awake late the previous night to read it and told him of the comfort and help she had received from it. A few hours later she died. The woman, the pastor revealed, was Maria von Wedemeyer-Weller, Bonhoeffer’s fiancée three decades earlier!

God’s comfort circulates among his children — and sometimes it comes full circle, as it did from Dietrich Bonhoeffer to Maria von Wedemeyer in her grief to Joseph Bayly, Jr.’s grieving fiancée to Joe and Mary Lou Bayly in their grief and then back to Bonhoeffer’s one-time fiancée as comfort in her dying hours. [2 Corinthians 1:3-7] alludes to this astonishing cyclical nature of comfort — its mutuality — its overflowing nature.

The soul of America needs reviving, and that endeavor will surely come with times of sacrifice, opposition and even affliction of various kinds. As we commit to rebuilding godly culture in our nation, we can be confident that God’s comfort will not only meet us in the place of opposition, but that His encouragement and strengthening is designed to abundantly exceed our distress. In fact, it will overflow in such abundance that it’s effect will be multiplied when we extend this same comfort to those around us.

Every time Nehemaih’s name was spoken, these truths were declared. As we study Nehemiah’s words, let’s be sure to declare these truths to our own souls and our fellow believers. We must be confident of the fact that the God who gives comfort and consolation in the midst of darkness, is with us.

“So the church throughout all Judea and Galilee and Samaria had peace and was being built up. And walking in the fear of the Lord and in the comfort of the Holy Spirit, it multiplied.” (Acts 9:31).

Prayer:
^{Note | The Rise & Build Campaign prayers are meant to be read aloud since faith comes by hearing (Romans 10:17). When we all pray the same prayer, we take advantage of the power of agreement (Matthew 18:19-20). Don’t be shy – prayer this prayer out loud!}

Father, You are the source of all comfort. I am answering Your call to rise and build Your Kingdom, in America, and ultimately the world. As I encounter affliction through this work, I trust that You will strengthen me much and graciously give me abundant encouragement. I wait for You. Lend me Your confident trust when mine is insufficient. Speak to me about the good things You plan to do in me, and in America, that I may wait in ambush for your goodness with hope and joy. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

Build Assignment:
^{Note | Build Assignments will typically only involve two items, but this week is extra special with four. 🙂}

1. Meditate on the hope we have in Christ.
2. Write a list of your community’s School Board members.
3. Write a list of your County leadership (often County Commissioners).
4. When is your community’s next School Board meeting? County-level leadership meeting? Add these meetings to your schedule and commit to:
   • Attend the meeting (Note: These meetings are often virtual in 2021)
   • Ask at least one question during each meeting. Not sure what to ask? Visit our Facebook Group to ask for insight from others.