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Jan 20, 2019

Blessings of Comfort

Passage: Matthew 5:4

Speaker: Brian Land

Series: Sermon on the Mount

Category: Grace Brevard

Keywords: comfort, grace, hardships, loss, mourning, sin, trials

ORDER of Worship

CALL TO WORSHIP:  Psalm 34:2-4,18 ESV

MUSIC:

  • When I Die I’ll Live Again
  • Come As You Are
  • It Is Well
  • No Longer Slaves
  • Band: Randy Johnson, Owen Grooms, Josh Carter, Emily Jones

READING: 2 Corinthians 1:3-5

PRAYER: Grace In Trials

LEADER: Join me in this prayer The Valley of Vision.

ALL:  O Father of Mercies, and Giver of all graces. We look to you for strength for it can be hard to practice what we believe

LEADER:   Give us assurance that in Christ we died and in Him we rise

ALL:  In His life we live, through His sufferings we are healed and His victory we triumph

LEADER:  May Your Spirit continually preserve and increase Your good works in us, walking humbly in dependence upon You.

ALL:  Your death is our life. Your resurrection our peace. Your ascension our hope and Your prayers our comfort.  In Christ. Amen.

MESSAGE: Blessings of Comfort

CENTRAL TEXT: Matthew 5:4 ESV

4 “Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.

RESPONSE: Communion

BENEDICTION: Revelation 21:3-5

ADDITIONAL SCRIPTURES:

  • Psalm 51:17
  • 1 Thessalonians 4:13-14
  • John 14:25-27
  • Ecclesiastes 7:1-4
  • Psalm 13
  • Psalm 30
  • Psalm 137:1-3
  • Isaiah 53:3
  • Isaiah 61:1-4
  • John 16:33
  • Romans 7:13-29
  • Romans 8:37-39
  • 1 Corinthians 7:29-30
  • 2 Corinthians 7:9-11

MEDIA:

1.20.19 GBV Album

DISCUSSIONS QUESTIONS:

  1. How have these different kinds of “losses” impacted you?
    1. ...death
    2. ...finances
    3. ...relationships
    4. ...“innocence”
    5. ...comfort
    6. ...what else...?    
  2. How have you (do you) deal with these?
  3. Where do you look for comfort in the “mourning”?
  4. Compare and contrast “being comforted” with “being comfortable”
    1. Do you tend to equate the two?
  5. Explain the two greatest “comforts” we need in life:
    1. Presence - we need others to be with us
    2. Hope - that everything “will be ok” (Read Rev 21:3-5 -- how does this promise assure us that things will “be ok”?)
  6. How is God perfectly offering both of these?
  7. How can we be God’s voice and presence for each other?
  8. How is God’s comfort both for later (heaven) AND now?
  9. How does Jesus’ sacrifice give us hope in today’s mourning?

QUOTES:

  • “How often -- will it be for always? -- how often will the vast emptiness astonish me like a complete novelty and make me say, "I never realized my loss till this moment"? The same leg is cut off time after time.” ― C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed
  • “We were promised sufferings. They were part of the program. We were even told, 'Blessed are they that mourn,' and I accept it. I've got nothing that I hadn't bargained for. Of course it is different when the thing happens to oneself, not to others, and in reality, not imagination.” ― C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed
  • “You never know how much you really believe anything until its truth of falsehood becomes a matter of life and death to you. It is easy to say you believe a rope to be strong and sound as long as you are merely using it to cord a box. But suppose you had to hang by that rope over a precipice. Wouldn't you then first discover how much you really trusted it?” ― C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed
  • “In religion, as in war and everything else, comfort is the one thing you cannot get by looking for it. If you look for truth, you may find comfort in the end: if you look for comfort you will not get either comfort or truth -- only soft soap and wishful thinking to begin with and, in the end, despair.” - C.S. Lewis
  • “For some reason, the most vocal Christians among us never mention the Beatitudes. But, often with tears in their eyes, the demand that the Ten Commandments be posted in public buildings. And of course, that’s Moses, not Jesus. I haven’t heard one of them demand that the Sermon on the Mount, the Beatitudes, be posted anywhere.” - Kurt Vonnegut
  • “I once read the sentence 'I lay awake all night with a toothache, thinking about the toothache an about lying awake.' That's true to life. Part of every misery is, so to speak, the misery's shadow or reflection: the fact that you don't merely suffer but have to keep on thinking about the fact that you suffer. I not only live each endless day in grief, but live each day thinking about living each day in grief.” ― C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed
  • . . .simply begin to be a Christian, and you will soon find out what it means to mourn and to be sorrowful.” - Martin Luther

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