Our Source of Comfort
When you find yourself in pain, it’s natural to seek comfort. Everyone wants the agony of injury, illness, or heartbreak to disappear as quickly as possible.
If you touch a hot stove, you might grab ice for your burn. If you get caught in a rainstorm, you might immediately look for shelter. If you experience the loss of someone you love, you might do whatever you can to distract yourself from grief.
We can also seek things like food, shopping, work, drugs, alcohol, technology, or entertainment as mind-numbing agents to attempt to ease our suffering.
But only one God can truly bring us comfort:
“All praise to God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. God is our merciful Father and the source of all comfort. He comforts us in all our troubles so that we can comfort others. When they are troubled, we will be able to give them the same comfort God has given us.”
2 Corinthians 1:3-4 NLT
When Paul and Timothy use the word “comfort,” they’re describing a God who comforts, consoles, encourages, helps, strengthens, instructs, and refreshes. That’s the God He was to Paul and Timothy, and that’s the God He is today.
No matter how bad things get, God can comfort you in a way that no one else can. You can lean on Him.
And because God’s Spirit is within His people, His people can also comfort others. He works in them and through them to offer a hope that’s beyond any present or future pain.
Are you hurting physically, mentally, or emotionally? There’s a God who cares. There are people who want to help. So cry out to the source of all comfort. You can trust Him with your pain.
“And Jesus being full of the Holy Ghost returned from Jordan, and was led by the Spirit into the wilderness, being forty days tempted of the devil. And in those days he did eat nothing: and when they were ended, he afterward hungered. And the devil said unto him, If thou be the Son of God, command this stone that it be made bread. And Jesus answered him, saying, It is written, That man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word of God. And the devil, taking him up into an high mountain, shewed unto him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time. And the devil said unto him, All this power will I give thee, and the glory of them: for that is delivered unto me; and to whomsoever I will I give it. If thou therefore wilt worship me, all shall be thine. And Jesus answered and said unto him, Get thee behind me, Satan: for it is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve. And he brought him to Jerusalem, and set him on a pinnacle of the temple, ...
Fulfillment of God’s Promises
Hundreds of years before Jesus, the people of God were in trouble.
They were stuck in life, unable to help themselves, and perhaps beginning to doubt that God would save them. Have you ever felt the same way? If so, you might relate to the original audience of this verse—the exiles in Babylon.
The Babylonians conquered God's people and land, sending them hundreds of miles away. Maybe they thought that God had abandoned them, or that He couldn’t hear their cries. But God is always close—especially when His people call on His name.
Isaiah let his people know that God would provide a way out of Babylonian captivity. And God kept His promise, allowing His people to return home.
Generations later, many of God’s people saw themselves as being in a new exile. They were home, but all was not well. So they remembered this verse and its promise—that no matter how dark or desperate our situation might be, God is able to provide a path out of brokenness, ...