“This is my comfort in my affliction, that your promise gives me life.”
– Psalm 119:50
Oh, memorize that verse. This is my comfort in my affliction, Psalm 119:50.
So there’s comfort to be found in affliction, and what does that comfort? That your promise gives me life. There’s life found in God’s promises that brings comfort in affliction.
I mean, that’s an awesome thought and a heavy reality. This is affliction the psalmist was talking about, so as we’re praying for each other in the middle of this pandemic, for specific things that people are sending in to pray for each other, and it’s just so heavy and encouraging just seeing people’s faith as they’re writing in different things and sending in to Radical.net/PrayerRequest. Let me encourage you to continue to do that just for specific ways that we can pray for you, knowing that you likely represent many people who are going through similar things.
“This is my comfort in my affliction, that your promise gives me life.”
But I just want to read today. When I read about Psalm 119:50, need for comfort and affliction, I read Mabel who writes, “Please pray for my marriage to be restored and my husband to truly know and love the Lord”. My husband moved out last week and we were expecting a baby boy in August and we have a three year old daughter. My heart is aching, but I pray that in this season my faith would continually grow, that I will not walk in fear and that I will hold onto the hope that I have through Jesus.”
So God, we pray together right now for Mabel. God, we pray for your comfort in her affliction, that your promise that she, even if she writes this, she would not walk and fear, that she would hold onto the hope she has in you, that your promise would indeed give her life, like right now, your promise is to be with her, to strengthen her, to uphold her with your righteous right hand, to give her wisdom, to give her strength, to give her grace, to give her mercy, peace, like all these things that flow from your hand to supply all her needs according to your glorious riches in Christ Jesus. God, please.
We pray that your promises would give her life on a day in, day out basis as she cares for her three year old daughter, as she walks through pregnancy right now on her own, and God, we pray with her for her husband.
Psalm 119:50 Reminds Us What to Seek When Affliction Torments Us
God, I don’t know any more details, but we pray together for his salvation, for him to know you and your love, God, for your mercy in his life, for him to know your forgiveness in Jesus, for him to know what you have done to make a way for him to know you, to experience reconciliation to you, to experience joy in life with you and then flowing from you in his relationships with others and particularly with his wife. God, we pray together right now. We just join in praying for Mabel and her husband for their marriage to be restored.
Prayer For Marriages Facing Challanges
God, even as I pray for that, I know there’s others listening right now who are walking through challenges in marriage, maybe to the point of separation or on the verge of divorce. God, we pray. We pray for your power. God, please show your power to reconcile marriages. We pray for your grace. We pray for the whatever, a humbling, purifying, sanctifying work needs to happen in either spouses’, both spouses’ hearts, God, please do that work and draw them back to you. Draw them to yourself first and foremost, and then flowing from intimacy with you, may you restore intimacy with one another.
God, we pray that for Mabel and her husband. We pray for his salvation. We pray for their marriage. And then God, we pray for other marriages like it and we pray for Mabel’s children. And we pray for her daughter and we pray for this baby boy in her womb. God, we pray for his safety, and God, we pray for the flourishing of their family in a Psalm 119:50 kind of way. God, show your comfort in the middle of affliction and give life according to your promises, we pray. In Jesus name, amen.
David Platt serves as a pastor in metro Washington, D.C. He is the founder of Radical.
David received his Ph.D. from New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary and is the author of Don’t Hold Back, Radical, Follow Me, Counter Culture, Something Needs to Change, Before You Vote, as well as the multiple volumes of the Christ-Centered Exposition Commentary series.
Along with his wife and children, he lives in the Washington, D.C. metro area.
