264.
That’s how many days it’s been since I bought myself a little somethin’ somethin’. You know what I mean:
- You had a stressful day at work. A new pair of jeans sure would help.
- You had a fight with your husband. Maybe some new curtains and throw pillows for the living room will help cool you off.
- You don’t feel good, so you start scrolling. Someone is showing off their Amazon haul and the next thing you know, three of those same dresses are in your cart.
Little things.
Cheap things.
Harmless things.
Unless . . . like in my case, you think they can provide real comfort.
Let me explain. At the start of each new year I take time to seek the Lord and ask if there are things that need to be dealt with in my life to make me more like Him. There always are. He’s still got a lot of work to do to transform me more into His image.
This year I decided to give up shopping . . . for the entire year.
Obviously I still need to buy toilet paper and groceries. (With four sons I am always buying groceries.) But no new clothes, no jewelry, nothing extra for our house for one year. (If you’re worried that at the end of this post I’m going to call you to give up shopping, rest easy. I’m not. I hope there is a bigger and better message in store.)
You should know that I do not consider myself a shopper. I do not have a secret stash of bags hidden under the bed. I did not rack up any debt. If you give me a free Saturday, I’d much rather spend it hiking than shopping, but the Spirit has been pressing on this issue in my life. I am doing my best to listen.
So, I made the commitment. No shopping for 365 days. I got some accountability partners and God got to work. What He has spent this year exposing is that I don’t have a shopping problem; I have a comfort problem.All my life, I have been seeking comfort in all the wrong places. The question God’s Word asks is: where do you turn for comfort?
All Comfort for All Afflictions
Consider Paul’s words to the Church found in 2 Corinthians 1:3–4:
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. (ESV, emphasis mine)
Not a word is wasted in the Word of God and the double emphasis on “all” is worth paying attention to.
God is not a God of some comfort, of partial comfort, or of halfway comfort. He is the God of all comfort.His comfort is not available to us for a few afflictions or most afflictions, but for all afflictions. I’ve made enough laps around the sun to know that functionally we don’t believe this. To show you what I mean let’s finish the passage:
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 may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God. For as we share abundantly in Christ's sufferings, so through Christ we share abundantly in comfort too.If we are afflicted, it is for your comfort and salvation; and if we are comforted, it is for your comfort, which you experience when you patiently endure the same sufferings that we suffer. Our hope for you is unshaken, for we know that as you share in our sufferings, you will also share in our comfort. (vv. 3–7 ESV, emphasis mine)
That’s a lot of comfort! God knows we need it.
Our world is broken. Our systems have failed us.
Our bodies are broken. We can’t take enough supplements to get well.
Our families are broken. Our marriages aren’t what we hoped they would be.
Our parents can’t seem to understand us. Our children are making decisions we don’t want them to make.
Our friends don’t seem to want to hang out anymore . . .
And it’s worse than that. We are broken. We can’t be the people we want to be. We can’t keep all of the plates spinning anymore. We love Jesus, and yet we remain women of flesh so we don’t always live like He calls us to live.
WE NEED COMFORT!
And we forget. There is a God of all comfort who comforts us in all our affliction.
A Big God for Small Comforts
If we aren’t discerning, we will spend our lives seeking something other than Jesus for the needs only Jesus can meet. Anything we turn to for comfort, other than the God of all comfort, will fail us.
Though there is certainly addiction in the church, and porn use, and sexual sin, for those of us who are serious in our walk with the Lord and maturing in our faith, Satan isn’t typically successful at trapping us in those nets. It’s the seemingly harmless sources of comfort that keep us from running to the God of all comfort for the balm only He can deliver to our souls.
- We don’t believe God cares that we didn’t sleep well last night, so we seek comfort in a cup of coffee.
- We don’t believe He sees that we’re lonely, so we seek comfort in food.
- We don’t believe He’s noticed how stressed we are at work or school, so we scroll endlessly to try to get some mental relief.
- We tell ourselves He’s too busy dealing with geopolitics to care about what is troubling us today, so we seek comfort elsewhere.
How you cope with the pain and pressures of life reveals more about what you believe about God than it does about the pains and pressures of life. He really is the God of all comfort who longs to comfort you in all your afflictions. Nothing is too big for Him. Nothing is too small. And when we seek Him instead of every little comfort that might provide temporary relief, we find what our souls crave.
Is shopping a sin? No. Can it provide any real comfort? Also no. It’s the same with food, and achievement, and a new house, and our kid’s achievements, and a great vacation, and losing 15 pounds, and date nights, and new furniture . . .
Cheap Comfort
Just last week I started to see the buds of the fruit of my no shopping year. I went to visit my mom who is receiving hospice care. She’s at the end of a truly brutal battle with dementia. Those visits are deeply painful.
I got in the car and thought, I’m just going to run to Goodwill. I will spend a few dollars on a new shirt.
Cheap comfort really . . . but I’m learning that the problem with cheap comfort is that it can only ever give cheap comfort. Instead, I ran to the God of all comfort. I drove around and cried and prayed. I told the Lord (again) how much I hate what is happening to my mom, and it didn’t take long before I felt wrapped in the love and strength of Jesus in a way that no new shirt could ever do.
All comfort. For all my afflictions.
If you’ve been seeking something . . . anything . . . other than Jesus to comfort you, repent. The Bible calls that practice idolatry, and the thing about our idols is that they can never give us what we need. But don’t just run from false comforts. Run to Jesus. You will find Him to be the God of all comfort, willing and able to comfort you in all your afflictions.
Join the Discussion