What is a life verse anyway? This is from an article on Dayspring: Simply put, a “life verse” is a Bible verse or even a small passage of inspirational Scripture, which speaks to your heart directly. It’s one of those verses that you feel was written just for you and jumps off the page whenever you read it.
This is how I start my prayer time with God every morning.
“Search me, God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me and lead me in the way everlasting.”
Psalm 139: 23-24
Here are the footnotes in the NIV Life Application Study Bible (I love this Kindle version) on this verse:
David asked God to search for sin and point it out, even to the level of testing his thoughts. This is exploratory surgery for sin. How are we to recognize sin unless God points it out? Then, when God shows us, we can repent and be forgiven. Make this verse your prayer. If you ask the Lord to search your heart and your thoughts and to reveal your sin, you will be continuing God’s “way everlasting.”
My friend Ernie told me about this verse when I was battling depression and anxiety. I had to totally surrender to God and ask Him to point out everything in MY heart that was causing my emotional struggle. God did just that. It was ugly, but it was healing. It led me to recognize my own sin, confess it, and repent. It’s a daily struggle and prayer.
Then there is this one:
“He says, “Be still, and know that I am God. I will be honored among the nations. I will be honored in the earth.””
Psalm 46:10
Little did my son and his wife know that this was the verse God reminded me of when I was going through a tough season of anxiety and depression.
They gave me this sign that Christmas. It was my mantra and I still to this day remind myself of this when I try to play God. As someone has said, “There is a God, and I am not Him!
“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and the God of all comfort. He comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any kind of affliction, through the comfort we ourselves receive from God. For just as the sufferings of Christ overflow to us, so also through Christ our comfort overflows. If we are afflicted, it is for your comfort and salvation. If we are comforted, it is for your comfort, which produces in you patient endurance of the same sufferings that we suffer. And our hope for you is firm, because we know that as you share in the sufferings, so you will also share in the comfort.”
2 Corinthians 1:3-7 CSB
This is the purpose of our pain. When we have gone through something and have grown in our faith, in our long-suffering, and perseverance, we are equipped to come alongside someone else who is going through the same trial.