A mother said, “We are so devastated with our daughter, age 28, married 5 years. She left her husband with their one-year-old. We are fractured, wounded, convulsing as her parents.”

The apostle Paul wrote of a particular “present distress” in his letter to the Corinthian church:

1 Corinthians 7:26, 28: “I think then that this is good in view of the present distress. . . . But if you marry, you have not sinned. . . . Yet such will have trouble in this life.” 

We all have experienced distress, and will continue to do so. Are you in round-the-clock adversity and anguish, with no end in sight? Do you feel like you are living in Narnia, where it is said to be “always winter but never Christmas”?

What Is Your Distress?

Are you . . .

• Underfoot and going crazy?
• Unemployed and floundering about the future?
• Controlled by fear of the unknown?
• A restricted caregiver, watching aging parents or the vulnerable suffer?
• Annoyed at your spouse’s unchangeable temperament?
• Isolated and alone as a single?
• With reduced or no income?
• Binging too much and feeling horrible about yourself?
• Threatening or being threatened yourself with divorce?

Take heart! Because . . .

1) Even Jesus experienced distress:

Mark 14:33: “And [Jesus] took with Him Peter and James and John, and began to be very distressed and troubled.”

2) Jesus has compassion on those in distress:

Matthew 9:36: “Seeing the people, He felt compassion for them, because they were distressed and dispirited like sheep without a shepherd.”

3) Nothing can separate us from Christ’s love during distress:

Romans 8:35: “Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?”

What does God expect us to do during distress?

When in distress, God expects us to embrace His call and His comfort on our life.

1) Embracing God’s Call

In Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians, his intended “marriage chapter” is chapter 7, not chapter 13. Nine times in this chapter, Paul uses the word “called”!

1 Corinthians 7:17: “Only, as the Lord has assigned to each one, as God has called each, in this manner let him walk. And so I direct in all the churches.”

In other words, despite the “present distress” the Corinthian believers were in (v. 26), God has still given them an assignment. There is something He intends them to do, even in their distress. 

Many believers know they are called. Over the years, I have heard things like:

• “I know that God has joined us together.”
• “God has joined us together for life.”
• “It is my desire to live as God intended when He joined us together all those years ago.”

But then life’s distresses throw us curveballs and we can be derailed from what we had once felt so confident about concerning God’s call on our life and our marriage.

But God has called us despite the condition. The condition doesn’t restrict God’s purpose for our life.

Though you may be experiencing unexplained tragedy, material loss, or life-threatening events, God’s call on your life includes these distresses!

When Paul was a prisoner of Rome, continuing to write letters to believers, he did not identify himself as a prisoner of Rome but as a prisoner of Christ!

Ephesians 3:1: “For this reason I, Paul, the prisoner of Christ Jesus for the sake of you Gentiles . . .”

Ephesians 4:1: “Therefore I, the prisoner of the Lord, implore you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling with which you have been called.”

Philemon v. 1: “Paul, a prisoner of Christ Jesus . . .”

Are you, like Paul, embracing God’s call, even in your distress?

2) Embracing God’s Comfort

2 Corinthians 1:3-10: “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction so that we will be able to comfort those who are in any affliction with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God. For just as the sufferings of Christ are ours in abundance, so also our comfort is abundant through Christ. But if we are afflicted, it is for your comfort and salvation; or if we are comforted, it is for your comfort, which is effective in the patient enduring of the same sufferings which we also suffer; and our hope for you is firmly grounded, knowing that as you are sharers of our sufferings, so also you are sharers of our comfort. For we do not want you to be unaware, brethren, of our affliction which came to us in Asia, that we were burdened excessively, beyond our strength, so that we despaired even of life; indeed, we had the sentence of death within ourselves so that we would not trust in ourselves, but in God who raises the dead; who delivered us from so great a peril of death, and will deliver us, He on whom we have set our hope. And He will yet deliver us.”

God comforts us so that we may be able to comfort others.

This is exactly what He did with Paul! In Acts 18, Paul traveled to Corinth:

Acts 18:9-11: “And the Lord said to Paul in the night by a vision, ‘Do not be afraid any longer, but go on speaking and do not be silent; for I am with you, and no man will attack you in order to harm you, for I have many people in this city.’ And he settled there a year and six months, teaching the word of God among them.”

God comforted Paul so that he may be able to comfort the Corinthians. God intends to comfort you too in your time of distress!

Have you experienced God’s comfort? Have curveballs and distresses kept you from drawing close to God’s comfort? Have they kept you from believing in God’s call for your life?