I don’t know about you, but memorizing Bible verses has always been tough for me. I have a master’s in English, and I’m a daily Bible reader, so people are often surprised that I have such trouble, but it’s the truth.
The same thing goes for memorizing quotes and literary pieces. Unless I turn it into a song or spend days immersing myself in the selection like an actor with a script, it’s a struggle.
You might be blessed with the ability to remember verses verbatim, or you might struggle like me. Regardless, it’s supremely helpful to have a number of Bible verses memorized.
“But I have my Bible app!” you might insist. “I don’t need to memorize anything — it’s there at the tap of my finger.”
Or perhaps you think memorizing the words isn’t important.
But I’m a living testimony that memorizing some key scriptures truly is important. I’ve been in situations where my phone doesn’t work or has run out of battery, and it’s too dark to read, yet I needed the comfort of God’s Holy Word desperately.
Other times, I’ve been in conversation with someone, my daughter particularly, and it’s been immensely helpful to offer the actual text of the Bible in that moment with words spoken from the heart.
While we know “all Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work” (2 Timothy 3:16-17), there are some verses that can be a particular source of great comfort and hope, particularly when they are committed to memory.
Here, then, are five comforting Bible verses every Christian needs to memorize.
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1. John 3:16-17
For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.
This Bible verse, spoken by Jesus to the Pharisee Nicodemus, is perhaps the most comforting in all of Scripture, for it explains the basics of salvation and assures us that we, too, can have access to this if we do the same.
In the first sentence, Jesus explains that God sent his Son into the world for a purpose: to enable us to have eternal life, and “whoever” believes in him shall share in this eternal life. These believers didn’t have to be educated or wealthy.
They didn’t need to come from a “good” family or even a God-following family. Yes, sinners are welcome! Salvation stems from authentic belief, he’s saying. The second sentence is also a balm, for it tells us much about our loving God and this extraordinary gift he has provided.
Instead of the vengeful God, we might expect, after all the ways we as a people have gone wrong, we’re told God sent Jesus not out of wrath but out of love. Instead of sending a punisher to convict us for the many, many ways we fall short, he chose to send a savior that anyone could access.
All who believe in Jesus have access to salvation, sent out of God’s love and desire to help the world. What extravagant mercy and love our Father has for us!
We humans are wildly imperfect, and we often mess up even the most magnificent of situations. But no matter what we do and no matter who rises up against us, God’s love in Christ Jesus is perfect and impenetrable, incapable of destruction. Nothing can keep it from us.
This verse reminds us of the bottom line when it comes to the Lord: Jesus is our Savior. We are saved through him — period.
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2. John 14:6
Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”
These verses, spoken by Jesus to his disciple Thomas, are a reassurance because they help us see the path to salvation is not complicated or tricky.
While it’s not an easy path, requiring us to set our sights on following God and loving others over the desires of the flesh and the temptations of the world, it’s a straightforward path.
To get to eternal life with the Father — God — we must go through Jesus. He’s “the” way to salvation, not “a” way. We don’t have to worry or wonder whether there is another way. When we pick the Jesus way, the matter is settled. Our salvation is clear.
Sometimes in life, we might convince ourselves we can be “good enough” for God and earn our ticket to heaven by how hard we work or how generous we are to others, how many Bible verses we can memorize, or how many ministries we are involved with.
But being a good or even a religious person can’t earn us salvation. Only Jesus can unite us with the Father.
Or perhaps we think as long as someone points constantly to God, singing his praises and worshipping him, they can be saved.
But this verse makes it crystal clear that no one can access God unless it’s through Jesus. Jesus was sent to be our savior, and we must not delude ourselves by imagining alternatives. He’s the only path we can follow, and his way leads to eternity.
There is no other way except through him.
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3. 2 Corinthians 5:17
“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!”
This is another supremely reassuring Bible verse, for there is no one among us who is perfect. Even those of us who were raised as Christians and are today mature and strong believers have made mistakes as we have learned and grown.
Many of us came to Christ after many years of living a sinful, self-centered lifestyle, committing grave evils against the Lord and fellow humans.
Yet this verse reminds us that we are washed clean when we commit ourselves to Christ. The past is gone. We can cast off that soiled, filthy garment and put on the pristine, pure robes of a Jesus-follower. Our new existence in Christ erases all the bad.
No one is excluded from this, and it’s something the apostle Paul — who wrote this — knew full well. See, Paul used to be known as Saul, and as a devout Jew who considered those who followed Jesus to be blasphemers against God, he played a critical role in persecuting the early church.
Scripture tells us he held the coats of those who stoned the apostle Stephen to death (Acts 7:58), and he did his best to destroy the early church, dragging Christian men and women from their homes and sending them to prison (Acts 8:3).
Indeed, he was headed to Damascus to imprison more Christians when Jesus Christ appeared to him and showed him the error of his ways (Acts 9).
His conversion and his name change indicate how deeply this notion of being a new creation in Christ influenced him. It applies to every single one of us still today. We are all new creations in Christ Jesus.
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4. Matthew 22:37-39
Jesus replied: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: Love your neighbor as yourself.”
These verses bring great comfort, for they emphasize what our priorities should be as followers of Jesus.
Many times, we choose Christ and wonder, “Now what?” Are we supposed to spend our days praying, reading the Bible, and going to church? But here, Jesus tells us to keep it simple: love God first with all we are, and next love others as we love ourselves.
In a world that can seem so complicated, with so many rules, it’s comforting to know that setting our minds on priorities will iron out the proverbial kinks and help us stay in alignment with the Lord.
See, when we love God with every aspect of our being, we automatically align ourselves with him. God embodies love and truth. Scripture tells us God “is love” (1 John 4:16). When we are utterly and completely immersed in loving the Lord, we begin to embody that love, too.
And it naturally carries over to how we care for other people. For when we love God that much, he increases within us, and we decrease. We start to see other people as extensions of us, and of God. We naturally want to tend to other people in a loving and caring manner.
We don’t hoard our food and shelter and belongings, keeping a focus on the self, but rather think of others in our midst, recognizing the light in them that is the love of God. Other people and their needs become just as important to us as our own needs.
It's the essence of unity.
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5. Matthew 6:34
“Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.”
The notion of “don’t fear” is peppered throughout the Bible, but what about Fear’s nasty little cousin, Worry?
God knows how much we humans tend to stress and fret about life, and he knows how much this practice steals our joy. That’s why this Bible verse, spoken by Jesus during his famous Sermon on the Mount, is such a relief.
Jesus tells us that the birds don’t worry about where they’ll get their food, and God provides all they need. Indeed, he even clothes the fields in gorgeous splendor, splendor even more beautiful than that possessed by King Solomon.
We, God’s children, can trust that God will take care of our needs, too. Life is filled with struggle and hardship, and we can distract and wear ourselves down when we become anxious about the future, Instead, God wants us to focus on the present and set our worries aside.
The Bible tells us that Satan is the father of lies. He sows seeds of doubt and uncertainty, and he tries his best to knock us off the path of goodness and righteousness, which is following the Lord.
He tries to drown out God’s Word and God’s truth with weeds that distract us or desires that tempt us. Worries are among those weeds. They get in the way of us being able to focus on the Lord and surrender to the Jesus Way.
Jesus wants us to set those worries aside so they don’t distract us or tempt us away from the most important thing. His words are not a suggestion but a command, for he knows his sheep and knows how easily we can be steered astray.
Don’t worry.
There are many more verses throughout the Bible that bring comfort, but these are a few of my favorites. They remind us of the fundamental aspects of our faith: Jesus is our salvation, sent by our loving Father God out of love for us. Jesus is the only way to God.
When we surrender to Jesus, we are made new. Our priority should be love — loving God and loving others as ourselves. Worry distracts us from our focus on God, weakening our faith and hurting us.
Try committing these to heart and see what happens. I know they serve me well, and I pray they do the same for you.
For further reading:
Why Is it Comforting ‘When I am Weak, He Is Strong’?
Who Is the God of All Comfort?
25 Bible Verses About Grief for Finding Comfort in Sorrow and Loss
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Originally published Friday, 05 January 2024.