The Close Comforter

Transcript

Good morning and greetings to you in Jesus name! Welcome to this amazing beautiful morning! This is a new day and we need to be able to taste the mercies of God one more time. The mercy that God has on us today is much more sweeter, beautiful, precious than what we received from him yesterday. There are going to be different seasons in our life when we don’t understand what God is doing, why God is doing certain things. But it does require for us trust him, it does still require for us to acknowledge his sovereignty in every area of our lives. There are going to be times when we don’t even agree with God’s plans, his purposes, his ways or his manners. But, if we can just continue to trust him, yield to him, then he will bring out the best, the most beautiful outcome every single time When you study the nation of Israel and their relationship with God, it used to vary so much; there would be one day when when they are on the heights and the next day they will down in the dumps. They did have a lot of revivals. At the same time, they did have a lot of moments of breaking down and giving up on their relationship with God. Finally, the bible says God allowed them to be taken away by their enemies and they were in exile, and then they got destroyed, captured.

There was a prophet by the name Jeremiah. He was also called the “weeping prophet”. The reason was because he would just weep over the nation, children, women, all the altars that broken in the nation, all those circumstances that are completely outside of God’s desire and plan for his people. Because His plan for his people was to bless them, and yet right now he has had to take them away into captivity. So, Jeremiah would spend time weeping over the nation and some of this weeping as very prophetic, and the reason was because he was birthing something new, real, personal for the net season of the nation of Israel.

Lamentations 1:16
This is why I weep. My eye is running down with water. Because the comforter who could bring back my life has been far from me and my children are stunned for the enemy has prevailed.

When Jeremiah is making his declarations, he is not talking about his own life or his own physical children or his own property or his own family where the devil (the enemy) has prevailed. Instead, he is talking about the nation of Israel. It was nation where the enemy had prevailed, the enemy had taken away what belongs to God, the enemy had captured and captivated young people and children. It was the nation where young children were stunned. Jeremiah embraced the loss and the pain and the struggle as his own and he began to weep/cry.

This is the sign of a Jesus lover. The fact that they are not going to be so engrossed about their own struggles and their own battles, that they are willing to embrace the calling and the challenges and the struggles of their city and their nation and they are willing to pray, cry, and weep. Jeremiah says “my eyes are running down with water”. There is such an overflow of sorrow and pain concerning this particular nation. There were so many leaders, priests, prophets, kings and queens who took this exile very lightly, who took the destruction of the enemy very lightly. They didn’t take ownership for it; they didn’t mind that the nation overrun. Here is Jeremiah who says “but my eye is overrun with water, it is constantly weeping and crying because the enemy has prevailed.

He also goes on to tell us how he can overcome the pain, how his comfort can come. In the next line he says

I do have a comforter. This comforter is the one who is able to bring back my life, but right now I feel far from him. I cannot experience his nearness, his closeness, and that is a big problem for me. The only thing that can comfort me right now is the nearness of God. It is not the answered prayers, blessings, the provisions or the protection of God. The only thing that can comfort me in the midst of the pain that I am crying out with, in the midst of suffering of my people, my nation; the only thing that I am still expecting is the nearness of God. Because my comforter who could bring back my life is far from me.

This is from the Old Testament when God did not have any legal basis to come near to his people. This is before Jesus died on the cross. In the New Testament when Jesus was about to be crucified he said “I am going to give you a comforter and he is going to be in you and with you”. In fact, Jesus said even though I am leaving, he will come and he will be there with you even to the end of the age. There is not a single day in the life and the journey of a believer when he is far away from the comforter.

Let me declare this over your life this morning. “It doesn’t matter what pain you carry; it could be a personal pain or it could be a prophetic pain about a family member, it could be a pain about the city or the nation, the Lord, Jesus, is allowing the presence of the holy spirit to be a comforter. His nearness will bring you comfort, solutions, revelation and direction on what to pray, on what to do, on how to exercise your faith. His nearness, we are thankful for our comforter.”

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