Lasting Comfort for Your Soul • Knowing God and His Ways

How does God comfort us?

Because God loves you, he comforts you.

Over the last seven Sundays our church had a fasting-and-prayer meeting that followed the morning worship service. We fasted breakfast and lunch, or just lunch, prayed for about two hours, then broke the fast by eating a wonderful meal together. Each Sunday as I ate that food after fasting, I was struck by how wonderful it tasted and what a blessing it is to eat good food. I found myself numerous times saying, “This tastes so good,” and others were saying the same thing.

There was a reason for this. The food at our prayer meetings is always great, but it is especially satisfying after fasting. Fasting brings on the distress of hunger. The hungrier we are, the better food tastes and the more comforting it is not only to the body but to the soul. You probably have heard the phrase “comfort food.” Comfort food is the tasty, filling food you long to eat when your soul is hurting. Comfort is a very good thing.

The Comfort God

The Bible says the Lord is the “God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our afflictions” (2 Corinthians 1:3–4). God’s comfort is a very good thing, a very loving thing. God’s comfort is a good because life in this world is marked by affliction, pain, hardship, and grief. Bad things happen to us and the people we love. Loved ones move away. Family members die. Jobs come and go, as do the difficulties and challenges of our work, and sometimes the excessive hours. The human body suffers disease and weakness. Financial setbacks befall us. Satan and evil wage war with the saints. Life is hard, the world is often punishing, and our soul feels it.

Therefore we need comfort. At the end of a long, toiling day, our body needs to crawl into bed, pull up the covers, and sleep. At the end of a long week, we need a day of Sabbath. When the skin on your hands is dry and chapped, you long to rub in cream. When you shiver in the cold, you long for a blanket or a thick, downy jacket. When you walk a long distance on hot day, you thirst for a tall glass of water. When you endure a long season of troubles, you crave hearing good news. Comfort is good, and we need it, even if it’s just a slowly sipped cup of coffee.

The God of all comfort

Because God loves you, he delights to comfort you. He is the “God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our afflictions” (2 Cor. 1:3–4). God is like Barzillai and his two friends, who came to King David’s aid in his time of need. David’s son Absalom had betrayed him, gathering a following, turning the hearts of Israel against David, and finally gathering an army to kill David and his loyalists. David and his people hurriedly fled Jerusalem and headed into the wilderness with next to nothing. As quickly as they could, they walked for miles through the arid terrain fearing Absalom’s immediate assault.

Faint and downhearted, they needed to camp, and as they did they encountered the God of all comfort, in the faces of three men. “When David came to Mahanaim, Shobi the son of Nahash from Rabbah of the Ammonites, and Machir the son of Ammiel from Lo-debar, and Barzillai the Gileadite from Rogelim, brought beds, basins, and earthen vessels, wheat, barley, flour, parched grain, beans and lentils, honey and curds and sheep and cheese from the herd, for David and the people with him to eat, for they said, ‘The people are hungry and weary and thirsty in the wilderness.’” (2 Samuel 17:27–29)

Shobi, Machir, and Barzillai were wealthy men whose households God had enriched and whose hearts God had moved to help David and his people in their hour of affliction. They were there when David needed them because God in his love had put them there. They were the hands and feet and food and water of the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction.

How to find ultimate comfort

“Comfort, comfort my people, says your God” (Isaiah 40:1 ESV)

“I, I am he who comforts you” (Isaiah 51:12 ESV).

After a season of persecution against the church, “the church throughout all Judea and Galilee and Samaria had peace and was being built up. And walking in the fear of the Lord and in the comfort of the Holy Spirit, it multiplied.” (Acts 9:31 ESV)

God comforts us because he loves us as a mother loves her child. “As one whom his mother comforts, so I will comfort you” (Isaiah 66:13 ESV).

How does God comfort us? For starters, he provides the worldly comforts we need. “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights” (James 1:17, ESV). But our Father goes beyond that to provide the greatest, enduring comfort that any soul can experience: He gives his presence. He imparts the knowledge of God. He speaks his promises. Apart from these, there is no true and lasting comfort, and with his presence, his promises, and his revelation of who he is, our soul finds true peace. Dispelling fear, sadness, and despair, God’s Word and Spirit are the best comfort food.