I love to read. Sadly, (depending on your perspective) I actually get my Bible reading ideas from books. Mostly, Lori Wick. That woman can write a sermon. I learn something every time I read one of her books. It was the book, "Whispers of Moonlight" that motivated me to read Isaiah and see what attributes of God were found there. (Totally changed how I view God.) "The Pursuit" inspired me to read the Psalms. I have one of Duffy's prayers from "Every Little Thing About You" printed out and framed in my dining room.
Unfortunately, I can't remember what book I recently read that a character was talking about a church congregation and said, "It's like they don't even know 2 Corinthians exists." From the context of the book I understood that the church was missing the concept of love. "Makes sense," I thought, "it does have the love chapter." Then I remembered that was 1 Corinthians.
So, I got curious, what is in 2 Corinthians that every church should know? I just finished reading the Psalms (I learned so much about trusting God from David. Amazing.) and was needing a direction to go, so why not?
I only made it to the 3rd verse of chapter 1 when I was hit with the first important truth.
3Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, 4who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received from God. 5For just as the sufferings of Christ flow over into our lives, so also through Christ our comfort overflows.
Now, granted, you have to slow down and really think about what you're reading to get the gist of this verse, but how powerful is that? God comforts us so we can comfort others. What if every person in the church lived this out? We would be the biggest support group around. The love of Christ would overflow to all.
The biggest barrier to this is that we don't share our trials with each other. We believe we have to have this perfect life. We go to church and people ask how we are doing and we say"Fine" whether we are fine or not. If we were just honest with each other, we would open ourselves up to God's comfort in a tangible way. We complain God isn't real in our lives, but whose fault is that?
I hope to share more nuggets I glean from this book with you, but as always, no guarantee that will happen.
Be real and be near to God.
P.S. I went to my virtual bookshelf on Facebook to see if I could figure out what book it was.(I have read quite a few books over Christmas break.) I think it was Nicloas Sparks' "The Last Song". I wish he would leave the sex out of his books and focus more on God. This one didn't have any sex, that was nice.
