A Kingdom of Comfort, Part 2

I often encounter a single passage of scripture that, simply put, wrecks my entire day with its implications. It’s a good kind of wrecking, though, like when you wreck the deceiver’s plans or when your plans fall through only to allow you to hang out with a friend who really needed someone. This time, the passage is Genesis 24:67. It’s the very end of the discussion of Isaac and Rebekah. There’s a sentence in there that simply blows my mind: “So Isaac was comforted after his mother’s death.”

WHAT?

You think that’s epic? Check out 2 Corinthians 1:3-5: “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God. For as we share abundantly in Christ’s sufferings, so through Christ we share abundantly in comfort too.” (ESV)

Clearly, from these passages, there is more to our healing and comfort than simply God healing us through the Holy Spirit. We know that our salvation comes with a call to action, and we know that the Gospel was never intended to save one soul; it was intended to be spread. But how amazing is this? Seriously! So that we might be able to comfort those who are in any affliction…

In the realm of relationships, God must be our primary healer and comforter. When we find that our love for someone has been rejected, or gone to waste, He is there to comfort us…and yet, I wonder if one of the beautiful things about the marriage relationship is its amazing ability to show us the closest thing to a divine relationship as we are likely to see this side of the Parousia. There is a certain type of redemption that a new relationship brings – the chance to not make the same mistakes, the chance to honor someone the way we were meant to. This is a rather exciting thing! I think we get way too wrapped up in being “in a place with the Lord” where we are somehow mystically able to date, as if we could somehow correct the problem of our disordered loves by a simple matter of will, once and for all, and never have to deal with such a problem ever again. I think this equates God with a level-up system in a video game, as if at some point we are suddenly able to date, so long as we’ve trained to Level 80 and mastered casting fire spells. Rather, I think God places people in our path for very specific reasons, at a very specific time, regardless of our perceived “readiness” or not. He then prepares us as we walk forward in faith. This is not to say that we date every single person we encounter and are interested in. Rather, it means that, if we find ourselves attracted to someone, but are afraid of our past hurts or failures getting in the way, we trust the Lord to deal with such things, and pray to know His will on how to act. For all we know, He could be preparing to use a new relationship to bring healing for the things that hurt us in the past. I have experienced this, as have many of my friends, especially my friends who are married.

Ultimately, when we come into such a place, we must remember two things: first, that it is about learning to love, about making love a verb that we act on, not about being loved and seeking our own good. And second, it is about approaching every relationship from a standpoint of seeking to glorify the Lord and not ourselves. For all we know, the Lord could be leading us to pursue someone in order to accomplish His will for their lives, or to give them a better understanding of Him. I had an experience like that a number of years ago, where I felt called to pursue a girl, only to realize that my purpose in her life at that time was not to be in a relationship with her, but to encourage her that she was still WORTH being pursued, even after a painful breakup. Since then, my affection for her has been strictly platonic, and that was my call, because that is where I felt the Lord leading. However, had I held myself back from acting on my attraction to her, who knows if she would have remembered how precious she was to the Lord?

Every relationship consists of two people who are broken, regardless of how recently the breaking took place. Besides that, automatically holding ourselves back from a relationship simply because we fear we are not in a place for it is, to a certain degree, a potentially selfish act. If our outlook is about receiving, then this makes sense; however, if our standpoint is to love someone else, then our focus is removed from our own hearts. We must always ask, “Lord, how am I to best represent You in my relationship with this person?” Ultimately, that is the point: incarnating Jesus in each of our relationships. I think it’s very clear from the story of Isaac that, in some circumstances, God provides us with relationships in order for us to be His arms for one another. In this way, we spread the Kingdom of God: not the Kingdom that will come at Parousia, but the one that has already arrived, and is continually arriving – a Kingdom marked by mercy, comfort, and fresh starts. Few things are as powerful for the Kingdom of God as the love of a righteous, God-honoring marriage.

Obviously, all this comes with a very special qualifying statement: this is an observation, and we must be exceedingly, exceedingly careful with our hearts and with the hearts of others. We must always consult the Holy Spirit and trust His leading when it comes to our relationships. This is not at all meant to justify every dating scenario, nor am I trying to claim that this is primarily meant for dating. This all plays itself out in friendships and other platonic relationships in exactly the same terms, and can be interpreted exactly the same for such situations. We also cannot assume that we are always in a place to date, for we often are not; and if you aren’t, don’t try to be in one! This is something that you have to take to the Lord and trust His leading for you individually. This is merely the thoughts of a 22 year-old male, and I am by no means the wisest 22 year-old that has ever lived. Far from it. I simply find that this principle could radically change our attitude about dating relationships into something more resembling bold trust in the Lord and a desire to love others as He wishes for us to.

So we see that God uses others to comfort us, both in romantic relationships and in platonic ones. We were made for one another. God is eternally in community as the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Our humanity emboldens us toward community with one another: between male and female, as both friends and also as marriage partners; and as the same gender, as brothers (or sisters)-in-arms for the sake of the Kingdom.

But does God heal us fully?

Let us examine that and find out for ourselves in part 3!