The Ministry of Presence

The Ministry of Presence
By M.T. Clark — P-2028 | 07/29/2026 – Today’s Audio Podcast
Today’s Message on YouTube:

Today’s photo of a large reproduction of Vincent van Gogh’s “Corridor in the Asylum”, featuring a long-vaulted hallway of gray stone arches and columns, warm golden-yellow walls, and a reddish tiled floor running back toward an open door with green daylight beyond, comes to us from yours truly, as I captured this work of art at the Van Gogh Experience in Schenectady, NY, on July 25th, 2022.

Well, it’s Wednesday, and I share today’s photo featuring the humps of an asylum’s arched hallways to visually represent our arrival to another midweek summit, so happy hump day, and to remind us that even in the places of our deepest struggles, we can still find beauty in the ashes and hope for better days.  The good news about our trials is that they can be used by God to cause us to grow and possibly find the hope of a new life.

I was under the trials of a new career transition, raising children, being addicted, and having a family member on a slow walk towards death when the Lord stopped me in my tracks to wake me up. I wasn’t in an asylum when I got saved but I was living with the pain of loss, depression, and ongoing substance abuse when God showed me that life wasn’t the meaningless tragedy that I thought it was after all, and that I could find healing, forgiveness, and eternal life if I would simply accept His love and free gift of grace by putting my faith in Jesus Christ. 

I know that the God of all comfort never wastes a hard season. When you put your faith in Jesus. God uses hard seasons to teach us to do what is right, to teach us to trust in Him, and to rely on Him only. When you realize God is for you, you also learn to continually seek His help and presence. Speaking of His presence…

Our series, “Freedom Stories,” continues today with the ministry of presence.

The Ministry of Presence

Paul opens his second letter to the Corinthians with a description of how the comfort of God moves through His people, and it turns our suffering into something usable. Second Corinthians 1:3-4 (NKJV) tells us that God is “the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our tribulation, that we may be able to comfort those who are in any trouble, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God.”

Let’s trace the path of comfort in that sentence. It begins with God, the Father of mercies; it flows to us in our tribulation, and then it flows through us to others in their trouble, and the comfort we’re able to give is specifically the comfort we ourselves received. Nothing is wasted. The very comfort that met us in our pain becomes the comfort we carry and give to someone else in theirs.

This means that the ministry of presence isn’t reserved for the trained or the eloquent. It’s the natural overflow of having received comfort from God, and the only qualification it requires is that you’ve suffered through something and have been met by the Lord in it.

You don’t need to have all the answers to sit with a hurting person. In fact, the people who have been deeply comforted in their own trouble often help because they aren’t rushing in to fix or to explain things but are simply willing to be present.

They say, with their presence, what words rarely can — that you aren’t alone, and that the same God who helped me can help you. Presence often preaches more powerfully than speech.

This also redeems our worst seasons in a way that nothing else can, because it means the comfort we received in our most difficult seasons wasn’t just for us.

The God of all comfort comforts us in all our tribulation so that we may comfort others, which tells me that the very things I walked through — the grief, the addiction, the long climb out of the darkness — equipped me to sit beside people walking through the same situations.

The enemy wanted those seasons to isolate me. God turned them into the curriculum for a ministry of presence. The comfort flowed to me so that it could flow through me, and the same is true of you.

So don’t underestimate the simple act of showing up for a hurting person with the comfort you yourself received from God. You may feel you have little to offer. You may think that you have no special wisdom and no perfect words, but if God has comforted you in your trouble, then you’re carrying exactly what someone in trouble needs.

Sit with them. Be present. Let the comfort that found you become the comfort that finds them, and you’ll be doing one of the truest ministries there is.

Keep on walking and talking with God.

— M.T.

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“The views, opinions, and commentary of this publication are those of the author, M.T. Clark, only, and do not purport to reflect the opinions or views of any of the photographers, artists, ministries, or other authors of the other works that may be included in this publication, and do not necessarily reflect the views or positions of any entities the author may represent.”

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