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“Finding Hope and Comfort”
Categories: Consider This“Finding Hope and Comfort”
Ps 119:49-56, ESV
49 Remember your word to your servant, in which you have made me hope.
50 This is my comfort in my affliction, that your promise gives me life.
51 The insolent utterly deride me, but I do not turn away from your law.
52 When I think of your rules from of old, I take comfort, O Lord.
53 Hot indignation seizes me because of the wicked, who forsake your law.
54 Your statutes have been my songs in the house of my sojourning.
55 I remember your name in the night, O Lord, and keep your law.
56 This blessing has fallen to me, that I have kept your precepts.
In the beginning, God created a perfect world which included man. In fact, the relationship man had with God was perfect until such time as man decided to disobey God’s will. From that point, and because of his disobedience, man began to experience the consequences of sin. Among many, two of the consequences include the hopelessness of knowing we are eternally lost without a remedy, and the realization that life can often times be very miserable. However, God does not want His people to be without hope and to live an existence without some relief from feeling afflicted. As the writer to the Hebrews said, the hope (of living in a city that has foundations, whose maker is God) Abraham had was the thing that enabled him to leave his home without knowing where he was going and to live as a sojourner in a foreign land (see Heb 11:8-10). He was heaven-bound!
Consider this: The psalmist indicates we have to look no further than the word of God to find hope and comfort. So many times we look to our own intellect, or to advice of other men, when the solution to our hopelessness and misery is at our fingertips—in the word of God. Part of God’s very intentions for His scriptures is to provide man hope and to build him up to withstand hardships and temptations. Paul wrote, “For whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction, that through endurance and through the encouragement of the scriptures we might have hope” (Rom 15:4). Right there Paul says God’s words will give us a reason to hope and will uplift us to endure any hardship we may face.
We are forgetful creatures, and God knows this. The psalmist says, “Remember your word to your servant.” God has given us such reminders. After describing qualities that will keep disciples from being ineffective or unfruitful, Peter said, “Therefore I intend always to remind you of these qualities, though you know them and are established in the truth that you have. I think it right, as long as I am in this body, to stir you up by way of reminder” (2 Peter 1:12,13). Paul told Timothy he would be a “good servant of Christ Jesus” if he reminded the brethren of things taught in the word of God. If we fail to remember the word of God, the hope of salvation and a heavenly home will fade from our hearts, and all that will remain is the misery of an existence on earth.
Lance Bowman
