Bible verses about comfort: 19 passages for when your heart is heavy

The LORD is near to the brokenhearted; He saves the contrite in spirit.

David wrote this psalm after running for his life and hiding among his enemies. God’s nearness is promised to the crushed, not to people who have it together.

Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.

Mourning is called blessed not because grief is good, but because comfort is on its way. Jesus says this to people who are still in the middle of it.

You have taken account of my wanderings. Put my tears in Your bottle— are they not in Your book?

An ancient picture of tears kept in a bottle. Not one of them is forgotten or wasted.

Jesus wept.

The shortest verse in most English Bibles. Jesus wept at his friend’s tomb minutes before raising him, so tears are not a lack of faith.

Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for You are with me; Your rod and Your staff, they comfort me.

Up to this point David talks about God as he. In the dark valley he starts speaking to him directly: you are with me.

As a mother comforts her son, so will I comfort you, and you will be consoled over Jerusalem.”

God compares himself to a mother holding a child. Some comfort needs no words, only arms.

And I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Advocate to be with you forever— the Spirit of truth. The world cannot receive Him, because it neither sees Him nor knows Him. But you do know Him, for He abides with you and will be in you. I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you.

The word translated Advocate (Comforter in the King James) means one called alongside. Jesus promised his friends they would not be left as orphans.

For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who was tempted in every way that we are, yet was without sin. Let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.

Sympathise literally means to suffer with. Jesus is not a distant helper; he knows from the inside what weakness feels like.

In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know how we ought to pray, but the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groans too deep for words.

For the days you cannot find words to pray. The Spirit prays for you with groans deeper than language.

Why are you downcast, O my soul? Why the unease within me? Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise Him for the salvation of His presence.

The psalmist talks to his own soul, and the same line comes back twice more (Psalm 42:11, 43:5). The sadness kept returning, and he kept answering it with hope.

For the Lord will not cast us off forever. Even if He causes grief, He will show compassion according to His abundant loving devotion. For He does not willingly afflict or grieve the sons of men.

Written after Jerusalem fell. God does not afflict willingly, which in Hebrew is from his heart. Suffering is never what he delights in.

Therefore we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, yet our inner self is being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary affliction is producing for us an eternal glory that is far beyond comparison. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.

Paul calls his troubles light and momentary. He had been beaten, shipwrecked and imprisoned (2 Corinthians 11:23-25), so this is not a man who had it easy.

Though You have shown me many troubles and misfortunes, You will revive me once again. Even from the depths of the earth You will bring me back up. You will increase my honor and comfort me once again.

The prayer of someone who has grown old (Psalm 71:9). They have seen many troubles, and they still expect to be comforted once again.

This is my comfort in affliction, that Your promise has given me life.

The longest psalm returns again and again to God’s word. Here, the promise itself is what keeps the writer alive in affliction.

Brothers, we do not want you to be uninformed about those who sleep in death, so that you will not grieve like the rest, who are without hope. For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, we also believe that God will bring with Jesus those who have fallen asleep in Him.

Paul does not tell the grieving not to grieve. He says grieve, but not like those who have no hope.

‘He will wipe away every tear from their eyes,’ and there will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the former things have passed away.”

God himself wipes the tears. The last word on grief in the Bible is not an explanation but a personal act of tenderness.

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received from God.

The word comfort appears again and again in these few verses. What God gives us in our trouble is meant to be passed on.

Then they sat on the ground with him for seven days and seven nights, but no one spoke a word to him because they saw how intense his suffering was.

Job’s friends did their best work in the first seven days, when they sat with him and said nothing. The trouble started when they began to explain.

“Comfort, comfort My people,” says your God. “Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and proclaim to her that her forced labor has been completed; her iniquity has been pardoned. For she has received from the hand of the LORD double for all her sins.”

Speak tenderly is literally speak to the heart. Comfort is not a lecture; it is words aimed gently at the place that hurts.