Comfort my people

Yahweh, then, not only blasts Assyria’s pride (vv. 20-29) but is careful to quiet his people’s fears (vv. 29-31, 32-34). The latter is as essential as the former and Yahweh does not forget to do so. I occasionally have heard from friends who attend staunchly evangelistic churches. Every service, apparently for worship, is pitched to call the lost to repentance. Most every sermon targets the unsaved (at least at the end). The never-missed ‘invitation’ calls unbelievers to faith. No need to debate the merits or demerits of this – except to say that such ministries are neglecting a whole ‘audience.’ They seek the lost but fail to feed the sheep. They want to bring conviction to sinners but never bring encouragement to believers. They try to disturb the unrepentant but seldom comfort the saints. Yahweh is not like that. He deals with Sennacherib but never forges the fears and tremblings of his people. he has a word for the reprobate but is always eager to console his church.

Dale Ralph Davis, pages 283-4 in 2 Kings: the Power and the Fury

Being comforted

Psalm 119: 153. — Consider mine affliction. These prayers of David are penned with such heavenly wisdom that they are convenient for the state of the whole church, and every member thereof. The church is the bush that burns with fire, but cannot be consumed; every member thereof bears a part of the cross of Christ; they are never without some affliction, for which they have need to pray with David, "Behold mine affliction."

We know that in afflictions it is some comfort to us to have our crosses known to those of whom we are assured that they love us: it mitigates our dolour when they mourn with us, albeit they be not able to help us. But the Christian has a more solid comfort; to wit, that in all his troubles the Lord beholds him; like a king, rejoicing to see his own servant wrestle with the enemy. He looks on with a merciful eye, pitying the infirmity of his own, when he sees it; and with a powerful hand ready to help them. But because many a time the cloud of our corruption comes between the Lord and us, and lets us not see his helping hand, nor his loving face looking upon us, we have need to pray at such times with David, "Behold mine affliction." — William Cowper.

From the additional notes to Charles Spurgeon's The Treasury of David. 

1 Corinthians 4 seems apt to this:

Who comforteth us in all our tribulation, that we may be able to comfort them which are in any trouble, by the comfort wherewith we ourselves are comforted of God. [I love the way this line seems to revolve in on itself...]

Comfort

From the additional notes to Charles Spurgeon's The Treasury of David, on Psalm 119, verse 82

When wilt thou comfort me? The people of God are sometimes very disconsolate, and need comforting, through the prevalence of sin, the power of Satan's temptations, the hiding of God's face, and a variety of afflictions, when they apply to God for comfort, who only can comfort them, and who has set times to do it; but they are apt to think it long, and inquire, as David here, when it will be. — JohnGill.

Uncomfortable Bible

There is, in a word, nothing comfortable about the Bible -- until we manage to get so used to it that we make it comfortable for ourselves. But then we are perhaps too used to it and too at home in it. Let us not be too sure we know the Bible ... just because we have learned not to have problems with it. Have we perhaps learned ... not to really pay attention to it? Have we ceased to question the book and be questioned by it?

- Thomas Merton
from his book Opening the Bible