Encouragement

I want to read with you tonight in 2 Corinthians chapter 7, 2 Corinthians chapter 7, verse 1. Having therefore these promises, dearly beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of the flesh and the spirit, perfecting holiness in the sphere of God. Verse 2. Receive us. We have wronged no man.

We have corrupted no man. We have defrauded no man. I speak not this to condemn you.

For I have said before that ye are in our hearts to die and live with you. Great is my boldness of speech towards you. Great is my glorying of you.

I am filled with comfort. I am exceeding joyful in all our tribulation. For when we were come into Masitone, our flesh had no rest.

But we were troubled on every side. Without were fightings, within were fears. Nevertheless, God that comforted those that are cast down, comforted us by the coming of Titus.

I think that's one of the sweetest verses in the Corinthian epistles. I don't think I'd have to remind you that Corinth had been very hard on the apostle Paul. I think if you read it through, and I certainly don't have all the answers to that, but just reading it through lately, he suffered a lot that he hid.

He just didn't reveal it to them what he was going through. It was a difficult time. It was a low day in his life, if you like.

And then Titus comes. Boy, he was so glad. He said, I just love the way the verse says it, comforted us by the coming of Titus.

Let me ask each one, not just the preachers here tonight. Let me ask each one, is your coming amongst the people of God a comfort? You go to any given assembly or to your own assembly. You walk through those doors back there.

Are the saints here comforted by you? I don't think there's a day when God's people need more comfort than they do today. A lot of things that break our hearts, that cast us before God. It's so nice to have someone come along that can comfort us.

They've been through that. Look at the young mother that's lost a baby, maybe. There's an older lady comes along.

She's maybe lost two of them. And she puts her arms around that dear mother and says, I sympathize with you, dear. I've been down that road.

There's a lot of Christians today that are going down roads I've never been down. Maybe I'm going down a road you've never been down. But nevertheless, God of all comfort.

I love that, the God of all comfort. God comforts us. And he makes us comforters.

He has a way of doing that. And if this conference does nothing more than to make you and I more of a comfort to the people of God, it would be a great blessing. Great blessing.

There's a lot that come, and behind those smiles are broken hearts. Behind how they might greet you is so much discouragement. I remember Jim Flanagan telling a story I never forgot.

He went to visit a family—a couple, sorry, a couple—in England. And, you know, the house had its own owners. It was not their fault.

They did the best they could. They were both blind. So Jim went to visit them in his gracious way, a very gracious man.

I only had the privilege of meeting him once when I was over there. And he's visiting them, and they were talking about their ailments. They were talking about the blessings of God.

And Jim said, I looked around and thought, what blessings could they be? So he said, I prayed with them as you would do, and I was about to read it. And they said, Jim, you're going to sing with us, aren't you? Because Jim was a good singer. Yeah, he said, I could try.

He said, what would you like to sing? He said, sing. They said, sing count your blessings. Name them one by one.

That's marvelous. Both blind. They could hardly make their way through the house.

Still came to the assembly meetings, both of them blind, both of them blind, just to be acknowledged. I go through the town of Sussex in which I live. It's just coming to my mind now.

Finally, I clued in what's going on. There's a care home, and there's often a care person there with a little boy with a white cane. That little boy wouldn't be eight or nine years old.

He's out there, and he's waving at the people. You know what he wants you to do? Just honk your horn, just acknowledge him. I followed a car the other day, and I clued in to what was going on.

They just honked the horn, and he goes, poof, little blind boy. Isn't that something? So, brethren and sisters, we think of the Apostle Paul. If there's one that could encourage, it was him.

It was easy to get discouraged. I was reading, just in my own reading, I think I was sharing it with my friend Tim Burton here, how Saul, when he's with the people, when he disobeyed the Lord, he said there was much distress amongst the people. You can search for it.

David had his moments, too, when the people were ready to leave him, but you never read of David being distressed or the people being distressed because of David, but they were because of Saul. They had to follow a wrong king. It was their choice.

It was their choice. But to be able to have this comfort. So, when I went with you to 2 Corinthians 1, back earlier, he says, Blessed be the God, even the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, he said, the Father of mercies and the God of all comfort.

So, ultimately, behind everyone that seeks to comfort us is God that comforts them. So, regardless of your circumstances in life, brothers and sisters, let us be able to comfort one another. Some of the most encouraging, comforting moments I've had in my life have been when I visited people in less than comforting circumstances.

And I walked out of there, I remember a hospital in Amherst, Nova Scotia, going to visit an overseer, didn't have long to live. So, I went with another overseer from another assembly, visited the dear man, and before, it was a nice visit with him, he said, Do you mind, man, if I pray for you? I said, Sure, you go ahead. I'll never forget that man praying for us.

We went to comfort him. We walked out of that hospital room, down that aisle, down the elevator, out the parking lot, and neither one of us said a word. We were thinking exactly the same thing.

That man gave us a lift. That man comforted us. Those meetings, we were in meetings at the time, gospel meetings, they made me know we're not going that easy.

But nevertheless, he encouraged us, and he comforted us. It's interesting that the word comfort comes from two Latin words, not that I'm any linguistic scholar. I'm not.

I only got by what I've learned and read. The word come means with, and the word fortis means strength. So, the word comfort literally means with strength.

So, you comfort someone, you're strengthening them, actually giving them strength. And so, there's much weakness today, much failure, much that can put us down. But when we get comfort, we get strength, what little it might be.

God helped us to be just that way. Those who are comforted are those who are, like I say, given strength. Someone expressed it good, something like this.

God always gives us the strength we need at the time we need it. God always gives us strength at the moment, at the time we need it. If he doesn't give it to us, if he gave it to us in advance, because if he did, we'd take the credit.

Well, he waits just until you need it. We look at what people have gone through, and I think, I could never go through that. I could never go through that.

And yet, when it comes, God gives you the grace to go through it. It's hard. You know, I'm not advertising our own.

We have much to thank God for. I may as well tell you, as I've told off other platforms, someone asked me, Shirley and I get on our knees morning and night, and we thank God for the wonderful health and strength we have. We do.

A brother called me from Toronto, called me a couple of times. His wife is 64. Shirley doesn't believe it, but she's 80.

And she tells Sarah all the time, she says, I know I'm not that old. She says, well, Bob, that's what the documents say. She says, well, I just know I'm not that old.

She says, because she feels so good. His wife is 64. She can't button her coat up to go to meetings.

Sixty-four. I know her. I know her parents.

I remember her as a young girl. He said, I put the coat on her. She doesn't know how to button it up.

Hardly can make her way around the house. He said, how do you handle it? I said, I don't think I can handle that. I said, I've never faced that.

We don't have those difficulties. Ours are very small. Crushing just to hear him speak like that.

You know, how do you comfort, how do you encourage somebody like that? You're going through it, but not in the measure that he is. Certainly not at age. But you speak what you get.

He wrote a nice text back. I give him a few things just that I've learned along that have helped us. And he wrote a very nice text back.

He says, thanks. He said that was an encouragement to me. It was very, very limited.

But come to this man, Titus, again. It is very interesting that when we find Titus, the conversion of Titus, of course, had taken likely a few years earlier than this. He was saved early in the ministry of the Apostle Paul, and then he would accompany Paul and Barnabas in their visit to Antioch, to Jerusalem, and vindicate the freedom of the Gentiles from the ceremonial law we have in Galatians chapter 1. Who do we have there? We have Titus.

Years later, when it becomes a strong issue, who is it that steps into it? Titus. You can take a lot from a man that can comfort you, okay? Somebody that's out there to knock you down or to be hard on you, that's a different story. But someone that you know has my interest at heart and wants to comfort me, I can't take anything from him.

I can't. And so could he in this situation. So we find him very prominent, if you like, in the crisis in the Apostles' ministry later on in the Acts, as Titus comes on the scene.

So let me ask you, do we have a Titus here tonight? Brethren or sisters, can I go further and ask you, would you like to be a Titus? Are you prepared to sacrifice whatever it might be in your life to be a Titus? To go and visit somebody that isn't the easiest to visit. Go and do something that is a menial task. It doesn't matter what it is.

There's picking up the garbage or sweeping the floor or whatever it might be. Do you realize what an encouragement that is to the people of God? What an encouragement it is. So I'm just going to leave that with you.

Nevertheless, the God that comforted those that are cast down, he says, comfort us by the coming of Titus. I trust—I'm speaking for all my fellow brethren here, and I think I can speak for those that will visit this conference this weekend, because I know a lot that come—I trust your coming here will be a comfort to the believers here in Stout, to the believers in Waterloo, Heightsville. Try to go around all of them in this area.

Never too much. Nobody ever died of too much comfort. Nobody ever died of too much encouragement.

Go in for it, brethren and sisters. It pays big dividends. Shall we pray?