Written by Pastor Jack Wellman– Samuel Rutherford
God Is the Source of All Comfort
It’s too easy to define comfort in terms of physical things. One would naturally get a sense of comfort if one comes from money, or has a lot of money in the bank. One also would feel a lot of comfort if a person is naturally good looking or charismatic. Also, comfort flows from power and status. As interesting as these definitions of comfort are, they really are all superficial.
The reality is that wealth comes and goes. All it takes is a bad stock market crash, a real estate crash, uprising, revolution, you name it, and there goes your wealth. Your looks are totally dependent on your health. All it takes is a lengthy illness, and say goodbye to your looks. Almost all comfort that humans naturally gravitate towards is fairly shallow, superficial, and transitory. They are temporary. They are like bubbles on a boiling sea. It’s not going to last too long.
Unfortunately, we keep grasping for these things. We keep defining our comfort this way. And it truly is too sad and too bad, because throughout all these, there is one source of comfort that we are often neglecting—God.
God Is the Source of All Good Things
As God said in Deuteronomy, “I have given you the power to earn money.” In other words, if we are so prideful in the stuff we could buy with our money, it’s always a good idea to do a reality check and figure out where that ability came from—God. If we are proud of how we look, again, who is it that formed our first parent from clay? God.
When God created the world, He said at the end of each creation day, “It was good.” Meaning, God is the source of all good things. He is the alpha and the omega of all blessings.
Different Kinds of Comfort
As mentioned above, most humans tend to define comfort in terms of things that pass away and in terms of things that are temporary. At the end of the day, they are all things that really don’t matter.
The good news is that there is a different kind of comfort that you might want to make the center of your life. The comfort is that God gives you meaning. It doesn’t mean God gives you pleasure all the time; it doesn’t mean that God frees you from all sorts of trouble all the time. But he gives you meaning, which is something infinitely more important.
There’s a misconception that when people accept Christ as their Lord and Savior, their lives will instantly turn out for the better. In fact, it’s a test of faith when things actually become worse. The bills keep coming in and you’re running out of money, you become sick; all sorts of bad things happen.
This actually is an opportunity to really test your faith. If you are going to draw close to God because you’re looking for goodies and benefits, it’s really not much different from believing in genies. God is not a genie; the Bible is not a set of magical incantations that you claim and good things happen, no.
God wants a relationship with you because He wants to lead you to a different kind of comfort. That comfort is meaning. And when you make God the source of your meaning, all life’s ups and downs don’t matter.
What matters is the relationship. What matters is that your character is growing and changing each and every moment that you abide in Him. What matters is the image that God has given you from the beginning becomes restored in the likeness of Jesus Christ. That is the ultimate meaning. Because at the end of the day, it’s not about us. It’s all about Him.
When you understand this, you would completely understand the truth in the quote from Samuel Rutherford. He writes, “Of all creative comforts, God is the leader. You are the borrower, not the owner.”
Our time on this Earth is limited. We can all die tomorrow. What’s important is we understand who our source of meaning is, and choose accordingly.
