2Co 7:8 – 12 I know I distressed you greatly with my letter. Although I felt awful at the time, I don't feel at all bad now that I see how it turned out. The letter upset you, but only for a while. Now I'm glad--not that you were upset, but that you were jarred into turning things around. You let the distress bring you to God, not drive you from him. The result was all gain, no loss. Distress that drives us to God does that. It turns us around. It gets us back in the way of salvation. We never regret that kind of pain. But those who let distress drive them away from God are full of regrets, end up on a deathbed of regrets. And now, isn't it wonderful all the ways in which this distress has goaded you closer to God? You're more alive, more concerned, more sensitive, more reverent, more human, more passionate, more responsible. Looked at from any angle, you've come out of this with purity of heart. And that is what I was hoping for in the first place when I wrote the letter. My primary concern was not for the one who did the wrong or even the one wronged, but for you--that you would realize and act upon the deep, deep ties between us before God.
When anyone in the Body of Christ is hurting all members suffer. The example of cutting of a thumb from the human body given by Ps Daniel explains this very brilliantly. The thumb will die if it is not connected back to the body and that is the distress the passage speaks of. As Paul explains to the Corinthians it was for the benefit of all that his first letter was written. The thumb by itself will start to decay and rot and that is the dealing we face spiritually if we are put away from the body. But if healing were to take place we need to desire to come back through God's grace with sincere repentance and then restoration becomes available to all who have gone astray.
At different seasons of our life we maybe tempted to break away and Ps Daniel related to us in his sermon over the weekend the time he did that and how God challenged him to come back to Him. Today I am proud to say we see a Pastor who is strong, restored and doing great exploits by His grace for Him whilst remaining in the Body. The bandwidth that he has has always amazed me and he is growing from one level of glory to another. Praise God for His restoring nature!
I pray in my season of distress I will turn back to God quickly in sincere repentance so that I can be restored again to His body.
Pastor Daniel is a great inspiration to me!
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