Praise Through the Blessings || 2 Corinthians 1:3-5 || Manna for the Mind #27

Welcome to Day 27 of my “Manna for the Mind” devotional series! This series takes a passage of scripture (typically 1-3 verses) and builds its understanding through its context and connecting scripture. Doing this helps us understand what the Bible truly teaches us. 

2 Corinthians 1:3-5

3          All praise to God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. God is our merciful Father and the source of all comfort.

4          He comforts us in all our troubles so that we can comfort others. When they are troubled, we will be able to give them the same comfort God has given us.

5          For the more we suffer for Christ, the more God will shower us with his comfort through Christ.

Many of us think our troubles should disappear when God is our comfort. If comfort exists, then the troubles should not. Yet, that’s not true. God’s comfort exists within the troubles. If we only went to God to have our troubles taken away, we’d only view our mighty God as a desire to be relieved of pain. There would be no love in the relationship. It’s only a give-and-take relationship, which isn’t how a relationship with God works.

We need to remember that being comforted can also mean receiving strength, encouragement, and hope from God and others to deal with our troubles. Receiving comfort does not equate to the removal of the thing we need comfort from. Instead, receiving comfort is about treating the discomfort with God’s aid. Getting the strength from God to handle the discomfort instead of succumbing to the pain and the grief. Receiving encouragement from God to continue fighting the discomfort instead of giving up. God provides us hope to see it through to the other side. I’ve learned that God’s blessings shine the brightest during discomfort. Your tests turn into testimonies.

Paul talks about these blessings in Ephesians 1:3.

Ephesians 1:3

3          All praise to God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly realms because we are united with Christ.

When we bless or praise God, we recognize and attribute his true worth to him. We share with him our appreciation for who God has been for us. Because of who God is, we have every spiritual blessing in the heavenly realms. What does that mean? Because of our unity with Christ, we receive all the benefits of knowing God. God chose us to save. God chose us to be his lineage and continue branching out the family tree. God forgives us of all our sins. At the time when God sent Jesus to be the ultimate sacrifice for our sins, it would have been you or I on the cross, but God didn’t do that. He sacrificed his son to help build relationships with his other sons and daughters.

God gives us insight into his word, the gifts of the Spirit, the power to do his will, and the hope for eternal life. We can understand the teachings of the Bible, how to do his will through our gifts, the strength to do what he’s calling us to, and the promise that we will live on eternally. Because we have this intimate relationship with Christ, we can enjoy these eternal blessings now.

Peter also shares another way to praise God in 1 Peter 1:3.

1 Peter 1:3

3          All praise to God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. It is by his great mercy that we have been born again, because God raised Jesus Christ from the dead. Now we live with great expectation.

“Born again” refers to spiritual birth. Spiritual birth is the Holy Spirit’s bringing believers into God’s family. Jesus has a great conversation with Nicodemus in John 3 about this re-birth process. I’ve also discussed it alongside my disagreements on the UMC’s view of baptism. When we choose to be baptized, we are submerged through the waters (in various ways) and are “birthed” into our new Christ-following selves. We are no longer who we are spiritually and mentally before baptism. Still, we are now reborn into new beings who are ready and willing to submit themselves to the will of God. The question is, “Will you submit?”

Father God, thank you for the gifts and blessings from our relationship with you. When we share our acts of praise through our baptism, we share our praise for joining the family and the blessings that come with it. Help us embrace those blessings, whether we feel we deserve them. Help us to feel the blessings that we receive through our relationship together. It’s in your name, we pray. Amen.

“I, yes I, am the one who comforts you. So why are you afraid of mere humans who wither like the grass and disappear.” – Isaiah 51:12