Episode #179 Rest from Heavy Burdens – Heartbreak / Give Your Heart a Break

Hey friends, it's Jen and welcome to a new series here on Good God Talks. And I'm calling it heartbreak or give your heart a break. And the idea of this series is that I'm going to alternate between episodes that help us bring our heartbreak to God and also can give us a minute of reprieve, of rest, of enjoying something that's beautiful or admirable or praiseworthy. Still in our connection with God, but just taking a quick break away from the things that might be weighing heavily on our hearts or our minds.

And if you've been around the podcast for a little while, you already know I'm not a licensed counselor. I'm not coming as an expert in this. But I'm coming as someone who also finds my heart grieving in this season. I'm familiar with grief. I'm familiar with loss. I'm familiar with coming to God with my own heartaches.

Living in the Dallas Fort Worth area, being part of God's big global church, there have been some things revealed recently that are just incredibly painful, and my heart is, mourning for the state of the church, and asking for God to refine us and purify us as his bride. And I know many of you are too.

And so this series is really just coming from my own processing as I go to God and I ask for him to meet me in my places of need. To bring his healing and his comfort to broken areas in my heart and my life.

And I want to take a few minutes here on the podcast to share those things with you, to hopefully help you continue to connect with God in these same ways.

In every way that I minister, I never want to come across like I'm minimizing your pain or your grief. Where it feels like, oh, just slap a verse on this like a band-aid and you'll be fine. Chin up and trust the Lord and move on past this.
That is the opposite of what I'm wanting to do here.

We need our great healer to come and heal the broken places in us, the broken places in our church. We need God's comfort. We need his words of wisdom. We need his perspective. We need an awareness of his presence right now in the hard things in our lives.

And so today, we're actually starting off with one of the breaks from the heartache episodes.

When I had planned the very last episode you just heard about difficult circumstances or difficult people, that was not part of this series. that was actually ready and recorded prior to some of the things that have been prominent in the news about the church recently.

And so I wanted to start out this new series giving us an opportunity to come to God and ask him what a break could look like as we navigate all of these heavy and hard things.

It's good to bring them to God. And also speaking for me here, I can get too weighed down. Like it just becomes heavier and heavier. The more that I invest time to investigate my feelings or to learn about what's going on in the circumstance that's troubling me, I can feel very weighed down by the grief that I carry.

And sometimes I just need a break. I need to pull away from the news. I need to pull away from the topic. I need to do something that still sparks joy in my heart or my life. I need to rest. I need to eat. I need to get around other people who are safe people for me, where our relationship allows us to just be in each other's presence or enjoy doing something totally unrelated.

So we're bringing this topic to God today in light of whatever heartache you might be facing. Now that could be your own personal heartache, could be your own personal heartbreak, even with personal relationships. It could be something communal for your greater family, for your community, for the church at large, for a church that you're part of. Whatever that is, my encouragement is to bring that burden to the Lord today.

And one of the ways that I encourage you to talk with God about it is based on a passage that we see in Matthew 11:28-30 in the New Living Translation.

“Then Jesus said, ‘Come to me, all of you who are weary and carry heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you. Let me teach you, because I am humble and gentle at heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy to bear, and the burden I give you is light.’” (Matthew 11:28-30 NLT)

And our question for God today is really simple.

We can bring these burdens to Jesus to receive his rest. We can bring our grief and our mourning, our distress, our anger, our discomfort, our sadness. In light of that, what does that rest look like for you today?

You might know some of those things and if you know them, do them, but don't skip over this opportunity to ask God the question to see what he might want to share with you.

God, you know the burdens that I'm carrying. What does rest from these burdens look like for me today?

And then walk in the rest that he gives you.

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!

Connect with Jen on Instagram