Sharing Your Comfort

In my daily encounter with God in the Scriptures, I recently read these words from Paul (2 Cor 1:3-4):

Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of all compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God.

Paul goes on to say that both his sufferings and his comfort is for the comfort of the believers in Corinth. Regardless of what he faces, it is for the good of others.

This reminded me of how throughout the Scriptures you see that God’s purposes in life is that we would be blessed by Him in order to be a blessing to others.

To put it in more earthy terms, all we face in life is really for the good of others.

I was pondering this and realized that I really don’t view life this way, particularly the times of suffering. My sufferings are not simply mine. In Christ, they are ‘for others’. In fact, our lives are entirely ‘for others’ in Christ.

As Paul says elsewhere (1 Cor 6:19-20)

You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your bodies.

How do we approach life?

For ourselves alone?

Or do we enter into each day with the conviction that we are not our own, but first of all we are Christ’s and, through Him, we are everyone else’s so that the goodness of God might enter into their lives?