There are times in life when we go through pain. When we mourn a loss. When we're lonely and afraid. What we need is someone to comfort us – but it seems that nothing anybody does or says can make it better.

I want to spend some time talking about comfort today. Not about the sort of comfort you get from sitting in a comfortable armchair but comfort in times of distress. It's an interesting concept. comfort. You know when we're children we fall over and we hurt ourselves and our Mum or our Dad picks us up, brushes off the dirt, holds us close while we sob and we wail.

What they're doing is they're comforting us and when we grow up, we still need comforting. I think it's about, well when you're going through pain or suffering, it's about knowing there's someone who cares, who empathises. Someone who feels our pain with us, someone who's not there to judge us or lecture us, just to hold us.

I think we've all felt that sense in our hearts when we see someone we love suffering, of wanting to hug them so hard that we can take their pain away even if it meant bearing their pain for them. That's comfort, my hunch is it comes from God, all good things inevitably do but sometimes, when we're hurting, it seems like there's no-one there to comfort us or we're hurting so deeply that nothing anyone says or does seems to make any difference.

I remember a time like that in my life, about 13 years ago. It was a time of deep distress and my whole being wept and I was completely alone on this earth. It was black, dark, fearful, lonely and the thing about the inky blackness is that it's like an impenetrable emotional barrier, a brick wall 3 foot deep. And no matter what friends and loved ones tried to say or do, nothing seems to be able to take the hurt away. Now the question is; what do we do in a place where we're desperately need to be comforted but it hurts so bad that nobody's able to comfort us?

Over the last few days and over the remainder of this week and next, on the program, we're taking a look at some of the promises that we can depend on. Promises direct from God, to you and me, ten of them in fact and today, I'm hoping to spend a few minutes with you looking at Gods promise to comfort us.

Now this word 'comfort' appears an awful lot of times through Gods word and more often than not its about God comforting us. In fact there's a promise Jesus made it during the Sermon on the Mount. He lists all the people to be blessed, 9 different groups of people and the second of those He says:

Blessed are those who mourn for they will be comforted.

And He also said,

I'm here to bind up the broken hearted.

He said that about Himself. Now when we're in pain and hurt, it's so hard for anyone else to break through but what I've discovered is that God breaks through, God, God has this amazing way of doing that. I remember when I was alone night after night after night and I just sat in my favourite armchair and prayed on and off, as best as I could and you know, somehow the Spirit of God got into my heart and I discovered how blessed we really can be when we mourn and God comforts us.

The apostle Paul got it too, he had a tough life this guy, he was in and out of prison, he was shipwrecked, he was beaten, he was starving. People rioted, people plotted to kill him, he was on death row. I mean you and I wouldn't want Paul's life for anything, ultimately he was martyred. This is what he writes to his friends in Corinth, you can read it in his second letter to the Corinthian Church, chapter 1 beginning at verse 3, he says:

Praise to God and the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. The Father of compassion and the God of all comfort who comforts us in all our troubles so that we can comfort those in any trouble with a comfort that we ourselves have received from God. For just as the sufferings of Christ flow over into our lives so also, through Christ, our comfort overflows. If we are distressed it is for your comfort and salvation; if we are comforted, it is for your comfort which produces in you patient endurance of the same sufferings that we suffer and our hope for you is firm because we know just as you share in our sufferings, so you also share in our comfort.

Now, in that short passage Paul uses the word comfort 8 times. See this promise of God is something that we learn in our experience. Paul's been through a lot and yet he is able to talk amazingly about Gods comfort because Gods comfort is something that we can rely on in those times when we need comforting. Paul discovered it in dungeons on death row and when he was on the run for his life and when he was bobbing around in a stormy ocean when his ship had been wrecked. He discovered the comfort of God in those places.

Let me try and explain what this comfort is like, well at least how I experienced it back then and how I've experienced it since then. Pain is like a dark storm, a tempest, a storm that rages in our souls. It's so deep that there simply aren't words to describe it, it consumes us and I know when I was consumed by it, it closes us off from everyone else. For me, I didn't have it in me even raise the eyes of my soul to look towards God. Over and over again I just whispered and sobbed, "God, God help me".

You know that story of when Jesus walked out on the water and the disciples were in their boat and the storm was raging and they were afraid of drowning and Jesus calmed the storm. No-one else could have helped them at that moment, no-one else on this planet could have calmed that storm, or in the universe for that matter. Only God Himself. And it was God, the Son of God, who walked into that storm and stilled it and that's what it was like for me. Now if you were to ask me, "what was it like"? I'd say it was like a warm fire on a cold night, it was like a soft light in a fearsome darkness.

Do you remember when Jesus did that, walking out on the water thing and calming the storm, Peter the apostle got out of the boat and put his trust in Jesus. But as he walked towards Jesus on the water, he got that sinking feeling because he took his eyes off Jesus and he saw the water and he realised what he was doing and he started to sink. And Jesus grabbed his hand and pulled him up.

I tell you, I had plenty of those sinking feelings but in that storm I met the God of all comfort, as Paul calls Him. You know something, as much as in those times He comes walking out on the water, right into the eye of our storm; we need to respond to that. See this is a promise, a promise to comfort those who mourn, a promise that calls us to walk out towards Jesus in faith. I'll tell you why; if we don't we just wallow in our sorrow. I've seen it over again, yes we all have sorrow and we all mourn and some people just want to stay there and be victims for the rest of their lives.

When we go through some bad stuff, for a time there will be grief and you don't have the strength but there comes a time, like Peter, where we have to step out of the boat into the middle of that ocean and walk out in faith and accept Jesus' comfort. It's not until we step out of the boat and put our trust in Him that He can reach out and grab our hand to stop us from sinking.

Here is the promise again:

Blessed are all those who mourn for they will be comforted.

It's a promise to tuck away in our hearts until one day when we need it and I'm sure, then God will bring it back to us. I want to encourage you, when He does, to step out of the boat and go and live in that promise. See, this promise is a promise that you and I can depend on.