From: Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, and Timothy our brother
To: the church of God in Corinth with all the rest of the saints in Greece
As you read this, if you can receive it in the same spirit of faith in which it is written, you will receive a deeper revelation of grace that will either reinforce or deepen the supernatural inner peace that comes to you through God our father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
May the God and Father of our Master, Jesus Christ, be blessed. God is blessed when His creation lives in joyful harmony with Him and glorifies Him. By reading and prayerfully meditating on this letter you yourself will be a blessing to God!
Our God is so beautiful. He is the father of mercies. The very throne on which He sits is called “the mercy seat.” When Satan tempts you to believe that “surely God has lost His patience with me by now,” always remember that mercy is part of the very fabric of God’s being. Mercy is as natural to God as breathing is to you. As part of the conversion process you have said “yes” to the Lordship of Jesus Christ. While you are not able to express that in a life of perfect obedience at this point, what you can and must do is live a life of joyful admiration of the God of infinite mercy who has saved, is saving, and will continue to save you through all the days of your earthly pilgrimage and beyond.
Not only Is He the father of mercies, He is the God of all comfort. No one knows how to help you and support you in a time of need the way He does. When you are suffering, God wants to make a concrete impact on your life. At that very moment in time in which your natural reaction is fear and despair, you must respond with faith! The pressure is on! That means God is going to do something! He wants to help you in a way that is real and immediate. When He does this, He’s not just helping you, but He is giving you an experience that you can share with others in their time of need so that they too can find God’s comfort in the hour of their distress.
While God comforts us in every type of suffering and affliction we face, what I am referring to here is the suffering and persecution that come to you because you are doing the will of God. You must always keep this clearly in mind: everyone who is a faithful follower of Jesus will pay some kind of a price for that obedience.
(Now some of you may be thinking, “I haven’t suffered all that much. I don’t live in a place where you can get thrown into prison for following Christ.” But remember what the Master said. “Be happy when people insult you and slander you because you are following me. And here is why you should be happy. Even this verbal abuse is very, very important to God. It touches His heart. He will remember it and you will receive a great reward for your faithfulness in heaven.”)[1]
So understand that God takes it seriously, whether the price you are paying is emotional or physical or both. The important thing is that you must not think that this is something unusual – it’s part of the basic package. But if you have the faith to receive it, God will comfort you every step of the way as you pay that price. The cost of obedience and the comfort go together; they are inseparable.
As your mind becomes renewed your whole way of looking at life changes. Life isn’t just about you any more, it’s about the people you love and are trying to bless. If we are called to suffer, instead of just focusing on ourselves, we think about it in relationship to you. We think of it as the price we have to pay to bring you the message of salvation, and we think of how our testimony of how God helped us when the pressure was really on – we think of how our testimony will help you when the times get tough. But if you are going to enjoy God’s comfort and support you have to patiently endure the sufferings. Frequently the prayer that God answers, is not the prayer to make the suffering go away, but it is the prayer for the gifts of strength and courage and peace that you need to deal with the situation.
This is scary stuff. We are sharing a something with you that you will have to pay a price for. The only thing that gives us the courage to do this is the rock solid conviction that God will meet you in your hour of need in the same way He met us in our hour of need.
Brothers and sisters, I want to be totally honest with you. When we were in the Roman province of Asia recently, the pressure got so great that, even if I escaped from the situation alive, I thought I might have a breakdown of some sort.
Some of the people in Ephesus who made their living by manufacturing idols were concerned that our growing Christian community was going to cut into their business profits; so they started a riot that threatened to engulf the whole city. In the midst of the riot they started looking for me and when they couldn’t find me they grabbed some of my dear Christian brothers. I tried to go out to speak to the crowd and bring a calming influence on the situation, but my friends physically blocked me from going outside. They were certain that I would be torn to pieces if the crowd got their hands on me. So there I was, trapped in this house and unable to do anything, while some of my dearest friends were in danger of being torn apart by a mob in the streets. Not only that, if the situation had boiled over, hundreds and even thousands of people might have been injured or killed in the riot. And the Roman troops might have come and used violence to restore order to the city. I had visions in my head of my friends torn apart, innocents trampled in the streets, and half the city in flames, all because of me.[2]
You may be tempted to think of me as some sort of a spiritual superman, but it’s not really that simple. Every human being has limitations and you don’t really know what they are until you are pushed to your limits. But everyone has a point at which they will “fall to pieces,” as it were. Once you become a Christian, as you grow in your faith, you find you have expanded powers. In addition to your own natural strength and resiliency, you find your natural powers strengthened and augmented by the power of God as you learn to trust Him. In other words you find that you can handle things in Christ that you simply couldn’t have handled without Him.
But every time you are placed under pressure that is greater than anything you have ever experienced before, it’s like a sentence of death – in the natural you are certain you are going to fall apart. What you have to do in that new situation is trust God as you have never trusted Him before. You were able to trust Him in some easier situations in the past, but will your faith rise up in this new trial to believe that He can and will meet this new need? That is the challenge. What you are really trusting in, brothers and sisters, is nothing less than the infinite power that raised Christ from the dead.
As your mind is renewed everything must begin to revolve around Him. He is at the center of everything and you are not just part of Him, but you are part of His body along with all of your other brothers and sisters. All of my hope is in Him. He delivered me in Ephesus and He will deliver me in the days to come. And the help I received from Him at Ephesus was not just the result of my own faith; I know that many, many people were praying for me; so all of us together will join in worshiping and praising God for my deliverance.
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