Friday, February 6, 2026
Scripture Readings
- Primary Reading: 2 Corinthians 1
- Secondary Reading: Psalms 16
Key Verse
2 Corinthians 1:13 — “For we write none other things unto you, than what ye read or acknowledge; and I trust ye shall acknowledge even to the end;”
Devotional Thought
What do you do when the weight of life presses you flat—when you are, as Paul puts it, “pressed out of measure, above strength”? In February, with winter still gripping the ground and the holidays long past, many of us know something of that feeling. Paul writes to the church at Corinth not from a place of ease but from the far side of real trouble in Asia, where he “despaired even of life” and carried within himself “the sentence of death.” He does not dress it up. He tells the truth: the apostle who planted their church had come to the end of his own strength. And that, he says, was the point—”that we should not trust in ourselves, but in God which raiseth the dead.”
Notice what God does with that suffering. Paul calls Him “the Father of mercies, and the God of all comfort,” and the comfort is never meant to stop with us. It flows: God comforts us “that we may be able to comfort them which are in any trouble, by the comfort wherewith we ourselves are comforted of God.” Your hardest season is not wasted. It is being fashioned into a gift you will one day hand to someone else who is where you once were. Paul even says his afflictions were “for your consolation and salvation.” The Corinthians’ comfort was bound up with his pain, and their prayers were bound up with his deliverance—”ye also helping together by prayer for us.”
Then Paul turns to something that may seem small but is not: he defends his change of travel plans. He had said he would come, then did not. Was he fickle, saying “yea yea, and nay nay”? No—because the gospel he preached is not like that. “For all the promises of God in him are yea, and in him Amen.” When our circumstances shift and our own resolves fail, God’s promises do not wobble. He has “sealed us, and given the earnest of the Spirit in our hearts”—a down payment, a guarantee, that what He promised He will finish.
Psalm 16 sings the same confidence from another angle. David, hunted and weary, says, “The LORD is the portion of mine inheritance and of my cup… The lines are fallen unto me in pleasant places.” He sets the LORD always before him and is not moved, because even the grave cannot hold those God keeps. Peter would later preach that this psalm’s final verses looked straight through David to Christ, who would not see corruption but would rise to show us “the path of life.” So here is the shape of the Christian life in February as in any month: pressed, but not abandoned; comforted, so that we may comfort; trusting not in ourselves but in the God who raises the dead.
Reflection
- Where in your life right now are you being “pressed out of measure,” and how might God be preparing you through it to comfort someone else?
- Do you live as though God’s promises are “yea and Amen” in Christ—or do you let shifting circumstances make you doubt His faithfulness?
Prayer
Father of mercies and God of all comfort, we come to You weary and honest, as Paul did. Some of us are pressed beyond our own strength and have quietly despaired. Teach us not to trust in ourselves but in You, the God who raises the dead. Comfort us in our tribulation, and then make us comforters of others. Thank You that every promise is yea and Amen in Christ, and that You have sealed us and given the earnest of the Spirit in our hearts. You are our portion and our cup; the lines have fallen to us in pleasant places. Keep us steadfast until the day we see Your face, where there is fulness of joy forevermore. Amen.
Psalm Verse
Psalms 16:1 — “Preserve me, O God: for in thee do I put my trust.”