Comfort.....as God intends - 2

2 Corinthians 1:3-4 NIV

Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of 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.

From our last thoughts, if God then allows hardships and pains, what does he intend to derive from seeing us 'suffer''? What lessons do we think he intends that we learn from our experiences? Does he not know or understand that the God that we know is a God of prosperity and not of poverty?

If there are lessons I have learnt over the past few years, it is that the sum of all our experiences is not to break us, but to mold us. What God intends for us through the experiences he brings our way is that we become more and more like the vessel he can use to bless a dying world. Is there any amongst us who has a company full of employees, and then promotes people based on sentiments like where they come from, or just how much hypocrisy they can exhibit? Don't you promote based on tested, proven and tried people, who have passed various tests of character, integrity, honesty and dedication to work? If man's standards can be this stringent, do we expect God's standards to be any different? Can we dare expect God to promote us when we run away from his school of trials? How do we get his deep blessings when we avoid his deep experiences?

I believe that ultimately, God intends that we pass through the fire so that our testimony could bless others more. He intends that through these experiences, lives are molded and encouraged. If all you need from God is earthly comfort and convenience, then you are knocking on the wrong door. Heaven does not supply that kind of comfort. What heaven gives is comfort in the midst of the most distressing of circumstances, so that at the end, there is a message to the world. Who else is better equiped to encourage a life that has lost a loved one like the man who has experienced same?  Who else will be better suited to lift someone else up like the man who has fallen several times but God has helped up?

God always uses and promotes those he has tested and proven, and such a man never graduates from this school till death. No experience is wasted, as long as we keep depending on God to use our lives to bless the world. Keep holding on, keep enduring, keep fighting, there is a lesson to be learnt and a life to be blessed. His time of favour is here.