“This is my comfort in my affliction, that your promise gives me life.”
(Psalm 119:50 ESV)
We look to a lot of things to give us life. Some things, like food, water, and sleep are things we know that we need for life. Other things, like time watching TV, scrolling on our phone, shopping, intimacy, friendship, exercise, sunshine, we subconsciously pursue, believing that they will give us life.
We Look for Life When We Are in Pain
We especially long for life when we are suffering. Suffering is the result of death, or the curse that we read about in the very first chapters of the Bible. Pain and evil soak into our hearts and are squeezed out of our hearts. Whether we are suffering because of our own sin or the sin of someone else, or because we live in a sinful world marred by death of all sorts which produces sorrow, suffering hurts. It stings, like death.
And under the weight of suffering or “affliction,” as the Bible calls it, we long for life.
Where to Find Life Today
In this one verse, Psalm 119:50, we hear of where we can find life. “Your promise,” the Bible says, “gives me life.”
Pause right there. The promises of God are life-giving. This isn’t because they’re powerful like an incantation. The promises of God are life-giving because God, the promise keeper, does wonderful things for us, and as we wait on him to fulfill kind words that he has spoken to us, our hearts can fill with hope again.
The assurance that God is on his way to keep his Word to us comforts us in our affliction, encourages us in our pain.
This verse teaches us to think this way: I may be experiencing something awful, and I may live with chronic pain, whether of mind or heart or body. I may be enduring affliction—some sharp unwanted trial in my life. But I have this promise from God. He has told me something that I cling to, that comforts me, and that even brings life to me in my suffering.
Ask for a Life-Giving Promise
In this one verse, God holds out life to us. There is comfort waiting for us in “your promise.” But you are probably wondering, “what promise?”
Maybe that is the beauty of this verse. It doesn’t say.
We have a whole Bible filled with the promises of God. The promise that gives you life in your affliction may be a different promise than the one that gives me life in my particular affliction. But those who know the Lord Jesus all find comfort in his life-giving words.
Today you have the opportunity to receive life from God through his promises. What is your affliction? What’s causing you pain today?
Ask God to lead you to a specific promise from his Word that can comfort you and give you life in your affliction today.
May you experience the joy of answered prayer, God’s personal care for you, and the power of his Word as he answers you as only he can.
I write this to you today, after reading this verse, praying and asking God to lead me to a specific promise from his Word that would comfort me, I continued reading on in my Bible, and not five minutes later I was given a promise to cling to.
We have such a loving God, and his words are life.