Faith in Focus is a weekly reflection on what God has been teaching me throughout the week regarding my faith. Whether it’s personal interactions, reading, or the Sunday sermon, God speaks through it all, and I hope this helps you focus on His mission.
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Sermon Reflection
Paul begins 2 Corinthians by refusing to separate suffering from comfort. God doesn’t promise to wait for our affliction to end before meeting us there. He comforts us in it, then uses what we have endured to become a source of comfort for someone else.
Based on the sermon by Jonathan Land, Connection Church Sioux Falls, September 6, 2026.
Comfort in the Middle of the Storm
There’s something striking about the way Paul begins 2 Corinthians.
After spending the summer walking through the Psalms, our church has returned to the Corinthian letters, beginning what Jonathan described as our next step into 2 Corinthians. Whether we call it the second letter to the Corinthians or acknowledge the possibility that Paul’s correspondence with Corinth was more extensive than the letters preserved in our Bibles, the canonical text in front of us begins with a remarkably personal subject of suffering.
More specifically, it begins with comfort.
In just eleven verses, Paul repeatedly returns to the language of comfort. The repetition is impossible to miss. He’s not offering the Corinthians a quick inspirational thought about getting through difficult circumstances. He’s establishing something much deeper about the character of God and the purpose of Christian community.
God is the God of all comfort.
And that comfort doesn’t necessarily arrive after the suffering. It meets us in the middle of it.
Our natural instinct is often to think of comfort as something that comes once the hard part is over.
We get through the diagnosis, then we can breathe.
We survive the breakup, then we can begin healing.
The financial crisis passes, then we can finally feel secure.
The grief becomes less sharp, then we can talk about it.
But Paul doesn’t describe God’s comfort that way.
He begins by blessing God as “the Father of mercies and God of all comfort” (2 Corinthians 1:3). Then he immediately explains what that comfort looks like. God “comforts us in all our affliction” (2 Corinthians 1:4).
Not after all our affliction. In all our affliction.
Christianity doesn’t promise that following Jesus will remove us from every painful circumstance. Scripture repeatedly presents suffering as part of life in a broken world and, in particular, part of the Christian experience. Jesus Himself told His disciples that they would have trouble in the world (John 16:33). Paul told Timothy that “all who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted” (2 Timothy 3:12).
The promise isn’t that Christians will avoid suffering. The promise is that suffering doesn’t mean God has abandoned us.
The World Behind the Text
Paul wasn’t writing these words from a comfortable distance.
The opening of the letter quickly becomes personal. In 2 Corinthians 1:8, Paul tells the Corinthians about an affliction he and his companions experienced in Asia. He says they were burdened beyond their strength and that they “despaired of life itself.”
That’s remarkably honest language.
Paul doesn’t sanitize his suffering for the sake of appearing spiritually impressive. He doesn’t pretend that faith means never feeling overwhelmed. He doesn’t turn his testimony into a story about how strong he was.
Instead, he tells the Corinthians that there was a point when he and those with him felt as though death itself had become their expectation.
And then Paul explains why God allowed him to reach the end of his own perceived strength.
“So that we would not rely on ourselves but on God who raises the dead” (2 Corinthians 1:9).
Self-reliance says, “I can handle this.” The gospel says, “I can’t, but God can.”
That doesn’t mean responsibility disappears. It doesn’t mean Christians should refuse practical help or pretend weakness is inherently virtuous. Paul himself asks the Corinthians to participate by praying for him (2 Corinthians 1:11).
Rather, Paul is dismantling the illusion that human strength is sufficient. There’re circumstances where our own strength simply runs out.
And sometimes that’s precisely where God teaches us where our hope actually belongs.
Walking the Passage
The movement of these eleven verses is beautiful.
God comforts Paul.
Paul is then equipped to comfort others. Those people endure their own suffering. Their endurance becomes connected to the suffering and comfort of the wider Christian community.
The pattern isn’t suffering for suffering’s sake. It’s suffering transformed by God’s presence into something that can serve another person.
Paul writes that God comforts us in affliction “so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction” (2 Corinthians 1:4).
Our suffering isn’t automatically meaningful simply because we suffer. But suffering placed into the hands of God is never beyond His ability to redeem.
The person who has sat in grief can sit with someone else in grief.
The person who has experienced failure can remind someone else that failure doesn’t have the final word.
The person who’s felt abandoned can recognize the loneliness in someone else’s eyes.
The person who has discovered that their own strength was insufficient can point another person toward the God who raises the dead.
This is where Christian comfort becomes more than encouragement.
It becomes ministry.
And this is why Paul can say in verse 6 that his affliction was “for your comfort and salvation.” His suffering wasn’t merely his private experience. God was working through it for the good of other believers.
A Fair Counter-Reading
Paul’s not saying that every painful event has an obvious explanation that we should immediately discover.
That can become a dangerous way of talking about suffering.
Someone experiencing grief doesn’t need another Christian confidently explaining why God caused it. Someone enduring trauma doesn’t need to hear that their pain happened so they could eventually help somebody else. There’re moments when faithful Christianity looks less like explaining suffering and more like sitting beside the person who is suffering.
Paul’s words also don’t mean that we should seek suffering because suffering automatically makes us spiritually mature.
The emphasis of the passage is elsewhere.
God is the source of comfort.
Christ is the means through whom comfort abounds.
And Christian community becomes one of the places where that comfort is carried from one person to another.
We don’t worship suffering.
We worship the God who meets His people in it.
The Turn
Perhaps the most challenging sentence in this opening section comes in verse 9.
Paul says his suffering happened so that he wouldn’t rely on himself but on God who raises the dead.
That’s a difficult lesson because self reliance often looks like strength.
Our culture celebrates independence. We’re taught to solve our own problems, keep our emotions contained, handle our business, and avoid becoming a burden to anyone else.
Some of that can be healthy.
But taken too far, self reliance becomes a refusal to receive grace. Grace, by definition, isn’t something we earn. It’s something we receive.
And Paul’s showing us that there’re moments when God allows us to reach the limits of ourselves so that we discover the limitless nature of Him.
The God Paul points us toward isn’t merely the God who makes difficult circumstances slightly more manageable.
He’s the God who raises the dead.
That’s where Christian hope ultimately rests.
Paul can say in verse 10 that God delivered them, that He will deliver them, and that their hope is set on Him for future deliverance.
Past deliverance becomes evidence of God’s faithfulness.
Present dependence becomes an act of worship.
Future hope becomes confidence in God’s character.
The Christian doesn’t have to pretend everything is fine.
The Christian can say, “I’m not fine, but God is faithful.”
Carry It Into the Week
There’s another layer to this passage that Jonathan connected to the larger body of Christ.
Paul doesn’t write as an isolated Christian talking to other isolated Christians.
He writes to a church.
The comfort of God moves through His people.
This is true of the universal Church, the worldwide body of believers united to Christ, and it’s true of the local church gathered in a particular place.
We need both.
The universal Church reminds us that God’s kingdom is larger than our congregation, our city, or our particular Christian tradition. There’re believers worshiping Jesus in places we‘ll never visit, enduring persecution we may never experience, translating Scripture into languages we’ll never speak, planting churches, raising children, caring for the poor, proclaiming the gospel, and praying for the advancement of Christ’s kingdom around the world.
But the local church is where much of that universal reality becomes tangible.
It’s where someone can actually sit beside you.
It’s where someone can notice when you’re hurting.
It’s where a meal can be delivered, a prayer can be offered, a phone call can be made, and a burden can be carried.
Connection Church describes its Gospel Communities as a place where people seek to live life together, extend grace, and comfort one another through difficult seasons.
That’s not a side project of Christianity.
It’s part of what Christianity looks like.
Hebrews 10:24-25 calls believers to consider how to stir one another toward love and good works and not neglect gathering together. Galatians 6:2 tells believers to bear one another’s burdens. Romans 12:15 calls us to rejoice with those who rejoice and weep with those who weep.
Community isn’t optional in the kingdom of God.
We were never designed to follow Jesus completely alone.
That means joining a local church. It also means praying for the Church beyond our local congregation matters.
The two realities belong together.
We need the people sitting next to us on Sunday, and we need to remember that the kingdom of God extends far beyond the walls of our own church building.
And perhaps that’s one of the most beautiful things about Paul’s opening words.
The comfort he received wasn’t intended to stop with him.
It moved outward.
God comforted Paul.
Paul comforted the Corinthians.
The Corinthians endured.
Their endurance strengthened others.
And the cycle continued.
The suffering was real.
The comfort was real.
And neither existed in isolation.
Maybe the difficult season we’re walking through isn’t something God will simply erase from our story.
Maybe, in time, it becomes part of the story through which He teaches us dependence, deepens our compassion, and equips us to sit beside someone else who’s hurting.
We should be careful not to rush to explain someone’s pain.
But we can trust the God who meets His people in it.
Because Paul doesn’t point us toward ourselves. He points us toward the God who raises the dead.
And when our own strength runs out, that’s exactly where our hope needs to be.
Song of the Week: No Survivors - Jeremy Camp
A song title like “No Survivors” can make you think of several things, but Jeremy Camp’s song from 2024 points us to a very different kind of death. This isn’t about acts of violence or physical destruction. It’s about the spiritual death of the things within us that keep us from fully surrendering to Christ. The battle cry of the song, because we are in a spiritual war, resounds like we’re standing on a battlefield, “‘Cause if I’m gonna live, then there’s some things that need to die.”
That idea is deeply rooted in Scripture. Paul repeatedly reminds us that following Christ means putting our old selves to death. Romans 6:6 tells us that our old self was crucified with Christ so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin. In 2 Corinthians 5:17, Paul tells us that anyone who’s in Christ is a new creation, because the old has passed away and the new has come. There’s a necessary connection between dying to who we once were and living as the people Christ has called us to be. We can’t cling tightly to our old life while simultaneously claiming the fullness of the new life Christ gives us.
Camp speaks into that struggle by calling out the things we often have the hardest time surrendering. Our ego, our pride, our control, and our desire to have life operate according to our own plans. Those things can be incredibly difficult to recognize because they don’t always look sinful on the surface. Sometimes our desire for control disguises itself as responsibility. Pride can look like confidence. Ego can look like self worth. But when those things become more important than obedience to God, they become idols of the heart.
That’s why the imagery of being open palmed before God is so powerful. When our hands are closed, we’re holding onto something. We’re saying, whether intentionally or not, “This belongs to me.” But when we open our hands, we acknowledge that everything we have ultimately belongs to God. Our plans, our ambitions, our relationships, our reputation, our comforts, and even our understanding of what comes next are things we have to be willing to place before Him.
There’re things in each of us that need to die if we’re going to live fully for Christ. The desire to be noticed needs to die. The need to always be right needs to die. The pride that refuses to admit weakness needs to die. The bitterness we continue to carry needs to die. The secret sins we protect need to die. The need to control every outcome needs to die. Not because God wants to destroy us, but because He wants to destroy the things that’re destroying us.
Jesus doesn’t call us to make ourselves slightly better versions of our old selves. He calls us to die to ourselves and follow Him. Galatians 2:20 captures this beautifully, “It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.” That’s the goal. Less of me and more of Christ. Less of my control and more of His lordship. Less of my pride and more of His humility.
So perhaps “No Survivors” is a fitting battle cry for the Christian life. We should leave no survivors when it comes to the parts of our old nature that keep pulling us away from God. We should be willing to throw the garbage into the fire rather than continually dragging it back out. We should stop negotiating with the very things Christ is calling us to surrender.
The beautiful part is that death isn’t the end of the story. In Christ, death leads to life. What needs to die in us makes room for something new. As we surrender our pride, Christ produces humility. As we surrender control, we learn to trust. As we surrender our selfishness, we learn to love. As we surrender our old ways, we become increasingly transformed to the image of Christ.
The goal isn’t simply to have fewer bad things in our lives. The goal is to become more like Jesus.
So let the battle cry continue, “‘Cause if I’m gonna live, then there’s some things that need to die.” Let there be no survivors among the things that compete with Christ for the throne of our hearts. Open our hands. Empty ourselves of what doesn’t belong. Give God everything we’ve been trying to hold onto. And then trust Him to do what only He can do. Make all things new.
Week in Reflection
This week marked Labor Day weekend, which for many people means a usual three day weekend and one last opportunity to squeeze in some summer fun before the unofficial end of the season. But here in Sioux Falls, Labor Day weekend also means the annual LifeLight Christian festival. This year, I had the pleasure of covering the festival in a much more professional capacity, and experiencing it from behind a camera lens gave me an entirely different perspective. There’s something powerful about watching thousands of people gather together with one common purpose of worshiping Jesus.
And then, of course, there was the rain. A lot of it. Weather has a funny way of exposing how committed we really are to our plans. It would have been easy to let the rain become the story of the day, but instead, worship persisted. The weather could interrupt a set, change the schedule, or make the ground muddy, but it couldn’t stop people from worshiping. From behind the lens, I was able to capture moments of worship happening in less than ideal circumstances, and honestly, those moments may have been some of the most meaningful to photograph. It was a reminder that worship isn’t dependent on perfect circumstances. We don’t worship because everything is going according to plan. We worship because God is worthy regardless of what’s happening around us.
That lesson seems especially fitting as we transition from summer into fall. Life is constantly moving into different seasons, and each season brings its own challenges, opportunities, and rhythms. Sometimes we want to hold onto the comfortable seasons, while other times we’re eager for something new. But God remains faithful through all of them. Whether the sun is shining or the rain is falling, whether things are busy or quiet, He remains worthy of our worship.
This week also marked the beginning of the Fall semester for our Gospel Community. I’ve been pretty vocal about my belief that these long summer breaks can be detrimental to us spiritually. I also understand why they happen, and I absolutely acknowledge the need for our leaders to have time to rest and recharge. Serving people isn’t something we can sustain indefinitely without rest. Even Jesus withdrew from the crowds and made time for solitude. Rest is good and necessary.
At the same time, there’s something special about the consistency of gathering together every week. Community is built through repetition. Relationships deepen when we continue showing up for one another. We can’t expect deep spiritual community if we only gather when it’s convenient. There’s something about sitting around the same table, opening God’s Word together, praying together, laughing together, and walking through life together that can’t be replicated through occasional gatherings.
So while I’m grateful that our leaders had the opportunity to rest over the summer, I’m also incredibly excited that we’re back. A new semester feels like a fresh opportunity. We’ve no idea exactly what God has planned for our group over the coming months, but that’s part of the excitement. I want to see people grow. I want to see deeper relationships formed. I want to see people become more comfortable sharing their struggles and pointing one another back toward Christ. Most importantly, I want to see God use our little community for His purposes.
LifeLight reminded me that worship doesn’t stop because the circumstances become inconvenient. The return of our Gospel Community reminds me that following Jesus was never meant to be a solo endeavor. We need both a heart that continues to worship regardless of the weather and a community that continues to show up for one another regardless of the season.
As fall begins, I’m excited to see what God does. The summer break is over. The gathering begins again. And whatever this next season brings, my prayer is that we enter it with open hands, willing hearts, and our eyes fixed on Christ.
And always remember, God loves you, and so do I.
Connection Church in Sioux Falls is a gospel-centered community committed to helping people follow Jesus through authentic relationships, biblical teaching, and everyday mission. Rooted in historic Christian belief and aligned with gospel renewal movements, the church exists to see lives transformed by Jesus. Learn more: https://siouxfallsconnection.com/who-we-are
