Pressing In On the God of Comfort

Do you know this God of mine?

He’s the God of comfort I think you’ll find.

When you enter the truth of your pain in life

He promises to meet you in your strife.

“I, even I, am he who comforts you.”

— Isaiah 51:12 (NIV)

FROM everlasting to everlasting is the God of eternity; he, who has never changed and will never change, because change is underpinned by the concept of time, given that if something were to change it was what it no longer is. So God is beyond time and the eternal Word cast forth from the pen of Isaiah is wholly reliable and completely able to be trusted.

Pressing in on the God of comfort is what we are able to do if we believe that God can help. And if we believe it will help, and let’s face it we all need help. Struggling is the human condition, so God never desires us to struggle alone.

When we have God on our side – and we eternally do – because God has promised never to leave us nor forsake us – we have the capability within us for spiritual invincibility; by relying on God.

As we press in on the God of comfort, we are turning toward him, and we find, with all our faith put into God, this Lord meets us. This meeting is the most personal experience we will ever experience. Meeting God is really like meeting ourselves in a deeper way. How can it be that we tolerate not knowing ourselves as we could? Yes, as we meet God – through the agency of our pain – be it grief, loneliness, anxiety, or hurt – we are being transformed into something new. We are meeting with the God of comfort.

We cannot know true intimacy until we have met ourselves through his agency of meeting God in our peril. Indeed, it is usually the worst of experiences that open the door to the Divine being and the Divine way: the one and only true way.

And pressing in is the method – that is, to turn fully toward and into the heart of God by the fullest focus possible.

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In pain there is one way that works, and that is to press in on the God of comfort. That is to turn in and face God, and in the process we can know ourselves better than ever before. In this we somehow receive comfort, and this is beyond explanation and even need for explanation.

© 2014 S. J. Wickham.