Topic: The Comforter We Need — Friday December 29, 2017.
Text: Job 32:11-22
Key Verse: “I said, I will answer also my part, I also will shew mine opinion” (Job 32:17).
To soothe a grieving soul requires far more than the presence of sympathizers and their fair speeches. It takes more than the mere wisdom of man or a personal experience of loss, sorrow or death. The plight of Job reveals that his friends who came to comfort him did not help matters. Elihu, who joined the three older counsellors, equally did not succeed in alleviate the condition of Job. He called for attention as he rested on these aphorisms: “Great men are not always wise: neither do the aged understand judgment” (verse 9).
Thereafter, he also began to lash out at Job, accusing him of “drinking up scorning like water.” He also charged Job with being “in company with the workers of iniquity, and walketh with wicked men” (Job 34:7,8). This judgmental attitude is far from the teaching of Jesus on the noble ministry of comforting the grieving. When His disciples began to be sad because the Lord told them that He would soon depart from them and go back to His place in heaven, He assured them that he would send the Comforter, the Holy Spirit to console them. He told them that the Comforter would abide with them and guide them into all truth.
In John 16:33, the Lord restates His own great mission as a Comforter with this gratifying statement: “These things I have spoken unto you that in me ye might have peace. In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world” (John 16:33). Elihu failed to comfort Job.
There is obviously no peace and comfort in the world. Jesus is the Prince of peace and Source of real comfort. The world is grieving and sorrowing as a result of its disconnect from God and His laws. The believer must reach out to this world with a message of hope that all is not lost for those who can repent of their sin and come to Jesus Christ, the Prince of Peace.
Thought for the day: Jesus Christ is the Ultimate Comforter.
Bible Reading in one Year: Proverbs 24-26
DCLM Daily Manna was written by Pastor William Folorunso Kumuyi; is the founder and General Superintendent of the Deeper Life Bible Church situated at KM 42 on the busy Lagos-Ibadan Expressway, Nigeria.
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