The Gift Exchange 2 Message

Give God Your Hurts and He will give you healing

Welcome to week two of The Gift Exchange! We’re talking about the gifts God gives us in exchange for the humility of opening up to him and trusting him with our biggest hurts, habits, and hang-up’s.

Overview…

· Week One – Give God your worry and he’ll give you peace.

· Week Two – Give God your hurts and he’ll give you healing.

· Week Three – Give God your grief and he’ll give you joy.

Sometimes you have “one of those days.”

Cliff Side in Idaho Winter Storm

But seriously… you’ve probably had some really bad days in your life. You may have had one this week. The Apostle Paul had some pretty bad days…

2 Corinthians 11:23-27 NLT

2 Corinthians 11:23–27 NKJV

Are they ministers of Christ?—I speak as a fool—I am more: in labors more abundant, in stripes above measure, in prisons more frequently, in deaths often. From the Jews five times I received forty stripes minus one. Three times I was beaten with rods; once I was stoned; three times I was shipwrecked; a night and a day I have been in the deep; in journeys often, in perils of waters, in perils of robbers, in perils of my own countrymen, in perils of the Gentiles, in perils in the city, in perils in the wilderness, in perils in the sea, in perils among false brethren; in weariness and toil, in sleeplessness often, in hunger and thirst, in fastings often, in cold and nakedness—

How did Paul get through that kind of stuff?

He wrote about it at the beginning of his second letter to the Corinthians and that’s the passage I want us to look at today…

2 Corinthians 1:3-7 NLT

2 Corinthians 1:3–7 NASB95

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 will be able to comfort those who are in any affliction with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God. For just as the sufferings of Christ are ours in abundance, so also our comfort is abundant through Christ. But if we are afflicted, it is for your comfort and salvation; or if we are comforted, it is for your comfort, which is effective in the patient enduring of the same sufferings which we also suffer; and our hope for you is firmly grounded, knowing that as you are sharers of our sufferings, so also you are sharers of our comfort.

Two Big Challenges When You’re Overwhelmed with Trouble

1. When you give your problems to God, he will give you his comfort.

Paul speaks of God with a sort of title or nickname: he’s the “God of all comfort.”

And Paul says God comforts us in all of our troubles. “Troubles” is a general word for affliction, annoyance, inconvenience.

None of the problems you face are too small for God to care about.

And none of them are too big for him to handle.

He has all comfort, for all troubles.

2. When God gives you his comfort, you can give comfort to others.

When you walk through troubles and trust them to God, receiving his comfort, it’s like going to school and learning how to be a comfort to others.

If you want to know what comforting someone looks like, look at the life and ministry of Jesus.

Write your troubles down and bring them to the altar for prayer. Let’s pray for the God of all comfort to give us his healing!