Wounds of the Heart, Part 3

Have you ever been betrayed?

Scientists and researchers at UCLA and other places are documenting the links between emotional pain and physical pain. What impacts us at soul-level can take a severe toll on our bodies. But I probably didn’t have to tell you that.

As holy and powerful as God is, He knows what it’s like to be betrayed. The Old Testament, somewhat like a novel, reads like a series of: 1. God pursues His people in love; 2. God’s people enjoy His blessings; 3. God’s people reject Him, and abandon Him; 4. God’s people get into trouble; 5. God’s people ask for forgiveness; 6. God forgives and restores; and 7. Rinse and repeat.

So our Sovereign God knows what we’re facing when it comes to getting better – emotionally, and in every other way. In fact, He is the hope we’ve been looking for! Check out Paul’s testimony in Second Corinthians 1:8-11.

A broken heart is not likely to heal overnight. It’s not like getting a cavity filled. It may take months, or even years. We trust God with the timing, right?

But what I want you to wrap your mind around today is the good things that can come into our lives via a broken heart. Sometimes God uses these seasons of suffering to replace our pride and false identity with confidence in Him. Glory comes through pain. C.S. Lewis said it like this: “God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pain. It is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world.”

So here’s what I want you to do …

Look back on that affliction of sadness that keeps dogging you. Maybe it was something that someone did to hurt you, or something that you did – and that you regret doing – and something that you can’t seem to move past (no matter how hard you try).

You’re going to take one step forward today – another step will come next week – but here is your one step for today: FACE YOUR FALLENNESS. Read, and reread (and reread) Romans 3:9-20. “None is righteous, no, not one.” This applies to you. This applies to me. This applies to our betrayers.

Thankfully, it does not apply to Christ. Hallelujah, what a Savior!

 

Pastor Charles