Getting Comfort by Prayer

One of the most comprehensive, suggestive, and satisfying descriptions of the God of love, as given in the Bible, is that he is the “God of all comfort; who comforteth us in all our affliction, that we may be able to comfort them that are in any affliction, through the comfort wherewith we ourselves are comforted of God.” Comfort is what every one of us needs, and what every one of us values. Others also need and value comfort. To be able to get comfort and to give comfort, makes us blessed and a blessing.

Comfort is a great deal more than is ordinarily understood by it. To comfort is to give solace, soothing, cheer, sympathy, refreshing, to brace up, to support, to impart strength, to make courageous, to guide, to instruct, to inspire. A comforter

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other’s cause his own. All this and more is included in the idea of the comfort which the God of all comfort gives to us, and enables us to give to others; the various words in the Old Testament and the New which are translated “comfort” combine to indicate this. As prayer in its widest sense is communion with God, prayer is the means of comfort to us whenever we need comfort of any sort for ourselves or for others. And this is the comfort of prayer to the God of all comfort.

No one of us can say at all times that he is so strong, so capable, so well furnished, and so independent, that comfort from another is not essential to his happiness and efficiency. Emergencies are sure to come to every one of us, when he needs comfort, and when he would welcome it gratefully. In sickness a physician within call is a comfort. In loneliness or sorrow a sympathizing friend is a comfort. In time of doubt or bewilderment a sure guide Cs a,

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Getting Comfort by Prayer

isa comfort. In peril from enemies, or from the elements, a strong helper is a comfort. Even at the best, it is a comfort to be inspired to higher, better achieving, through the example, the encouragement, and the wise counsel, of one whose superiority we cannot but recognize and rejoice in.

In every sphere of human thought or action there comes a time when “two are better than one,” and when it is “woe to him that is alone when he falleth, and hath not another to lift him up.” As on the lower plane of our human needs, so on the higher plane of our spiritual possibilities, He who is in loving communion by prayer with the God of all comfort, is superior to the trials and necessities of life, and never knows the wo of being alone in any trouble.

There are in the Bible special promises, from God, of comfort in response to prayer, in every emergency in which we find ourselves; and the testing of those promises brings the comfort we need. In sickness, or other bodily infirmity, the best human Brayer

physician knows that he cannot give health or help except by God’s blessing; but God is the Great Physician. His word is explicit, “I am the Lord that healeth thee;” and when we cry to him in faith, “Heal me, O Lord, and I shall be healed,’ we may know that just when and as it is best for us the answer to that prayer will come, and will cause us to say in gratitude, “OQ Lord my God, I cried unto thee, and thou hast healed me.” Meantime, the praying sick one is assured that “the Lord will support him upon the couch of languishing,’ and make “all his bed in his sickness.” There is comfort to the sick, and to the friends of the sick, in faith-filled prayer under circumstances like these. There are times in our human experience when no earthly friend or helper can be to us all that we need, and when we seem utterly to lack the comprehension and sympathy which we must have, or despair. We dare not hope for a full understanding of our innermost self by any human heart, or 132

any ministry to our uttermost wants. The cry of the sinking soul is: “If all the gentlest-hearted friends I know Concentred in one heart their gentleness,

- That still grew gentler, till its pulse was less

For life than pity, I should yet be slow

To bring my own heart nakedly below

The palm of such a friend, that he should press

Motive, condition, means, appliances,

My false ideal joy and fickle wo,

Out full to light and knowledge. I should fear Some plait between the brows, — some rougher

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In the free voice.”

Yet he who made us understands us, and we need not fear to have our hearts open to his loving look. “The Lord is full of pity, and merciful,” His love for us is

not because of our lovableness, but because of his lovingness. There is comfort in this

thought, as we turn restfully to him before whom “all things are naked and laid open,” and confidently ask his sympathy.

In some hour of sad bereavement we feel that no sorrow was ever like our sorrow, and that in our loneliness we cannot be com-Prayer

forted. Then the gentle voice of our Father comes with its matchless assurance of tender ministry in our grief: “As one whom his mother comforteth, so will I comfort you; and yeshall be comforted.” And that promise is made good to us as we rest on it.

Disappointed in the failure or betrayal of one on whom we had leaned without the shadow of a doubt, it seems to us that no one can ever again be trusted, and we are ready to give up even faith itself, and to despair. A gracious whisper speaks comfortingly to our souls: “I the Lord change

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not.” “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and to-day, yea and forever.”

When tempted and tried beyond our conscious strength, and our fear is that we cannot bear up against the terrible pressure, the one word of comfort that is sufficient for us is: “There hath no temptation taken you but such as man can bear; but God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able; but will with the temptation make also the Getting Comfort by Prayer

way of escape, that ye may be able to endure it.”

When we find ourselves incompetent for any work we have to do, or feel ourselves weak in any contest to which we have been summoned, we are entitled to call confidently on God for courage and strength and support, and the comforting answer will come back to us: “Fear thou not, for I am with thee; be not dismayed, for I am thy God: I will strengthen thee; yea, I will help thee; yea, I will uphold thee with the right hand of my righteousness.”

When we are at our wits’ end as to our duty, and long to know just what to do and how to do it, the divinely authorized message comes to us: “If any of you lacketh wisdom, let him ask of God, who giveth to all liberally and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him. But let him ask in faith, nothing doubting.” And thus the way is clear to comfort in prayer for any discouraged or perplexed soul.

So all the way along in our human life Brayer

course. No man need be without comfort / while the gates of prayer are open to him. He who enters within those gates can have comfort in all things and always. God has comfort for him in his every hour of need, if he will but call for it, and accept it as proffered. No human friend can get so near to us as God. We cannot find such sympathy from any human heart as he gives to us freely. There is no such comfort on earth as that which comes in and through prayer. No man can know what real comfort is if he refrains from prayerful communion with the God of all comfort.

Take comfort, then, daily, in constant prayer. In such communion with God “We kneel, how weak! We rise, how full of

prayer! Why, therefore, should we do ourselves this wrong,

Or others — that we are not always strong;

That we are ever overborne with care;

That we should ever weak or heartless be,

Anxious or troubled, when with us is prayer, —

And joy, and strength, and courage, are with
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