Episode #151 Bring God Your Broken Heart – Cultivate Wonder

Hey friend, how is your heart doing? Today's episode is about bringing our hearts to God and any of the heartache or hurt that you're walking through or carrying. And so if you're hurting in any way, this episode is especially for you. And if there's someone in your life who's hurting, I encourage you to share this episode with them too.

Scripture tells us that God is close to the broken hearted. And he's not just close by, he's active. He participates in ministering to them. In Psalms 147:3, it says that “He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds.”

This imagery reminds me of a broken arm or leg where you can see tight bandages that are wrapped around it to support it while it heals. God's healing ministry to our hearts happens on the inside and helps to close up the visible wounds that are on the outside.

It's even mentioned as part of the ministry of Jesus hundreds of years before Jesus came to earth as a human, we have the prophetic message in Isaiah chapter 61 that's speaking of the coming Messiah and what he will do. And it says:

“The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me,
because the Lord has anointed me
to bring good news to the poor;
he has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted,
to proclaim liberty to the captives,
and the opening of the prison to those who are bound;
to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor,
and the day of vengeance of our God;
to comfort all who mourn;
to grant to those who mourn in Zion—
to give them a beautiful headdress instead of ashes,
the oil of gladness instead of mourning,
the garment of praise instead of a faint spirit;
that they may be called oaks of righteousness,
the planting of the Lord, that he may be glorified.” (Isaiah 61:1-3)

This is the ministry of our God, and it's carried out even still today. But we need healing because we have been wounded.

We don't need our hearts to be bound back up if they weren't ever broken.

I never want to discount the pain that you're walking through. Even knowing this is true about God because it tells us in the Bible, it can be hard to experience that in the fresh wounds that we're navigating each and every day.

Sometimes we can look back on past seasons and remember how God brought us healing or brought us through that. But it can be hard to recognize or to hold to the hope that he's going to see us through this new pain as well.

I talk about this, in the introduction letter in A Beckoning to Wonder it's called “Letter to the Beholder.” And I actually start by talking about scripture because sometimes our experiences of the Bible aren't what we thought that they would be. Sometimes it can feel like it's adding weight or pain to our circumstances, not alleviating it.

And I know many of us, because I'm included in this, have experienced Bible verses being weaponized to prod or poke us into bucking up and putting on a happy face instead of actually being used as a salve to our spirits. So I'm going to read a few stanzas for you, it says:

“These pages are for you if the Bible sometimes feels
like a dense rock from a distant age,
to bore for ancient promises
as it pummels, trips, sinks you into looming shadows
mounting obstacles against your present needs.
These pages are for you if God sometimes feels
absent and unmoved by humanity’s chaos,
slow as we scream in suffering
untouched by tear-dripped prayers
as we collapse into churches craving easy answers as advertised
and leave with hearts still broken.” (Jen Weaver, “Letter to the Beholder” in A Beckoning to Wonder)

If that's where you are today, know that you're not alone. I've been there. I am there still sometimes, and God is there with you even now. But even when we feel these ways toward God or towards his word, even when we're not sure how he's actually going to bind up this particular broken part of our hearts, he is faithful. He always follows through on his word.

And I don't come to you today to try and tell you, just think better, do better, believe more. Instead, I want to hold space for what you're walking through.

If you feel like the Bible is an obstacle against what you need.

If you feel like God is unmoved by what you're going through. Like your prayers can't reach him.

I invite you to tell God those things literally in the same words that you would use if you were telling them to me right now. Tell him how you feel. Tell him what you think. Tell him what you're going through, and then ask him to show you how he's still there.

Our thoughts and our feelings are valid, and we want to hold them up to the light so that we can stay aware of what we're feeling and thinking and what we're going through. And also so we can bring them to the Lord and have Him minister to us in the ways that we need Him to.
Even if you feel like you don't have words to use today, tell Him that too. And I'm going to offer you a question you can use in that conversation with him. I encourage you, follow the conversation with him wherever he leads.

God, you say that you heal the brokenhearted and you bind up their wounds. You know what I'm going through. And you know my broken places. What wound in my heart do you want to heal? I invite you to do it.

Have a good talk.

And if you've been encouraged by this content, please share it with a friend and help them grow in their conversational relationship with God too!

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