How marvellous, how wonderful is my Saviour’s love for me.
”My love’s depth, height, length and breadth have never been fully tested. It is so much larger than the whole of what can be seen and experienced by mankind. Every word, every act every relationship I have is governed by my love which covers everything. So much is happening in the world that seems to deny that. But even the worst things are curbed and governed by my love – which I demonstrated by sending my Son to die on the cross as the way of redemption and restoration. So allow my love to surround you all and keep you till you come to be with me.”
As we continue to look at the effect of suffering on the believer and God’s remedy, we come to another dimension. The work of God’s Spirit to help us deal with suffering. Please read Romans 8:26, 27.
We have been looking at how suffering can make us feel, separated from God. Paul has focused so far on two things. Suffering is both universal and then there is also the expectation that the Christian will suffer in some way as part of His/her relationship with Jesus and His suffering.
The second point is that overall the way to deal with suffering is to see it in the perspective of the big picture. The glory that awaits us far outweighs the present pain of suffering and suffering is therefore a positive force that. God uses to expand our hope and get our focus in the right area.
But there is an additional practical help, which we see in the reading today. Jesus called the Spirit who He would send to take over His ministry on earth the “Paraclete”. That means the “One who comes by your side to comfort you” often just known as the Comforter. But how does He do that?
In two ways. Firstly the Greek word in vs 26 translated as “helps” in the NIV is sunantilambino. It is a difficult word to translate to give its full meaning, but it means much more than helps. It describes something like the action of drawing two parties together who have been separated. This is so meaningful, since it recognises that God is aware of the tendency that suffering has in separating us from Him and His love. So this is the first act that the Spirit is doing for each one of us on our behalf when we are facing suffering to act by drawing us back to God and restoring our relationship with Him
The second act is what we all understand when we read these verses, that when we are so overwhelmed by suffering that we don’t know what to pray or how, the Spirit takes over on our behalf and speaks the right words to the Father. Words of intercession and love. What many readers may miss is the sense of vs 27. What Paul is saying is that this act of intercession is so meaningful because the Spirit knows the very depths of our thoughts and emotions, so we don’t have to describe or explain them to Him before He can intercede. And He aligns His prayers on our behalf with the will of the Father making them most effective.
So in our universal experience of suffering we have this immense comfort that the very “Comforter” is actively engaged in coming alongside us and drawing even closed the deeper our suffering goes, helping us in ways we often can not imagine. The big challenge is to believe this and entrust ourselves to His work on our behalf.
God bless till next week.