Broken-hearted ministry

Because of the grace and mercy God has shown in giving His own Son to pay the ransom I owed, I am able to show love even though my own heart is still broken. This is because my heart is bound together with cords of thanksgiving. I wake up every morning asking God to keep me steadfastly focused on what He did to save us for all eternity. Then, when I am filled with the Spirit, I can look for opportunities God brings to encourage and minister to others who have also suffered.

Comfort that has endured

The trauma I endured can be used to comfort someone else when they are going through something similar. The comfort I received from the Holy Spirit when enduring unimaginable suffering and loss is recycled and given freely to the next person God brings my way. Then, in due time, that person will take the comfort they received and give it to the next person God brings their way. And on and on it goes.

It’s as if the genealogy of comfort were to be traced back to its spiritual roots, we would see the faces of those heroes in the Faith Hall of Fame that came before. Those brave but ordinary people, soldiers in God’s Army, whose battles we have heard about for generations and are witnesses of the same. The comfort they received in their time of need is the same comfort we receive now. It’s comfort that has endured. This comfort has waged war and come through victoriously time and again because it comes with Spirit Power.

Recycled Comfort

The same power that raised Jesus Christ from the dead is at work in us in the form of the Holy Spirit testifying the Truth to our spirit that this pain, this suffering, is not wasted. God’s purpose may not be readily evident, but our suffering will be used. The Recycled Comfort suffering brings to the next brave soul will be inhaled as the life-giving intoxicant that could only come from the holy breath of a Savior who has endured the same.

You can be sympathetic and even empathetic, even if you have not endured the same trauma. But there is something connective between two souls that suffered a similar but shocking predetermined destiny. You can see it in their eyes, the window to their soul. You hear it in their voice, the greater degree of understanding. And you can feel it in their touch when you collapse in their arms and receive a gentle but firm reassurance that you can make it. They don’t feel the need to say much and are comfortable in what normally would be awkward silence.

An instrument in the hands of God

When the time is right and I reach out while my own heart is broken, something spiritually bigger than me takes place. I get to be an instrument in the hands of an Almighty God. I feel Him doing the work through me. He lets me be a part of the process. A healing agent in the hands of the Sovereign Ruler of the universe. It’s very powerful. And my own broken heart is mended in the process.

I have become addicted to this process now; this being used by God in a miraculous way that gives real comfort and courage to the hurting. All loss touches me more deeply. I am keenly aware of the suffering the mourner is about to endure. If the loss is a child, my empathy radar is especially elevated. I feel sick. My chest and stomach physically ache with grief. I know what is about to happen, and it is miserable. They need courage to make it through the coming days. May the Lord use me to bring the same comfort I still need and receive as a balm to their hurting soul.

³Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, ⁴ 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. ⁵ For as we share abundantly in Christ’s sufferings, so through Christ we share abundantly in comfort too. ⁶ If we are afflicted, it is for your comfort and salvation; and if we are comforted, it is for your comfort, which you experience when you patiently endure the same sufferings that we suffer. ⁷ Our hope for you is unshaken, for we know that as you share in our sufferings, you will also share in our comfort.
2 Corinthians 1:3-7 ESV