Author: Jennifer

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Healing for the Brokenhearted

“He heals the brokenhearted
and binds up their wounds.”
Psalm 147:3

I feel brokenhearted right now — since my dad passed away.  My heart has been deeply wounded.  It is healing.  But it’s still very tender, and sometimes I have wondered if it will ever recover.

I found this promise today.  Psalm 147:3 tells me that God will heal my broken heart.  And until it is healed, He will bind it up.  He’ll bandage it so that it holds together while it is healing.  It’s not an immediate healing.  It’s a process.  But He’s in it from the beginning until the end.

Think of what a bandage does…

  • Some of the pain is relieved just from wrapping a wound.
  • It’s protected, because the bandage acts as a shield from further injury.
  • It’s put in the proper position to allow for healing.
  • It allows for the careful use of the part of the body that is wounded.

My heart is broken right now.  Yet…

  • I sense God’s tender wrapping relieving some of that pain.
  • His bandage is protecting my heart from further damage when I get stuck in a flashback of dad’s difficult last days.
  • I know He has set my heart in its proper place in order to begin healing.
  • My heart will still be able to be moved and touched.   I just have to be mindful of the state it’s in.

My heart will heal.  It will have a scar to serve as a reminder of the wonderful dad I was blessed with.  But it will heal!

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It All Added Up – Finally

Thought number 1:
Last April, my pastor preached this message:

Live your life knowing that you know there is the other side… that all this is temporary… that life in perfect love awaits…  that our faith will one day be sight.

Thought number 2:  
A few days later as I was driving to an evening meeting after being at school from 7:15 until 5:30, I felt (as I’d been feeling for so long) that I didn’t have enough space in my days to just complete a thought.  I couldn’t complete my thoughts because my energy was so taken by the work day, things that needed to be done at home, in relationships, etc.  This created frustration in all areas of my life, but especially because I didn’t feel like I had enough energy to really read my Bible and dissect it like I used to. All of these other things in my life were robbing me of the energy I needed to be able to truly study my Bible and to have a completed thought at the end.   That left me with the feeling that I could not be as close to God as I was when I had time for thinking, reading, and writing. I felt as if my hectic life was holding me back from experiencing and knowing God.

And then I combined those two thoughts:

And  it occurred to me that my life and my relationship with God are NOT two separate things.  I experience God in my life. That’s where our relationship exists!   Not just in my free time.  That whole misconception of needing free time in order to know Him and experience Him is what was tripping me up.

He is with me always.  I experience Him as I teach.  As I see my students with love and with an ache to help them.  As I see their humor, feel their frustration, anger, joy, disappointments, fear.  As I offer an encouraging word.  I experience Him at home when I have good advice for my daughters (that I know came from the Lord and not from me) and when my daughters do something beyond nice just to make my day easier.   I experience God in every situation in which I interact with other people.

And this was the conclusion:
Yes, I still need quiet time.  And, yes, I need time of no distractions leaving me with energy to focus on only Him.  But those are not my only defining moments with Him.  The subject matter I ponder and write about  is what I’m experiencing in my every moment and how I make sure to include Him in those every moments.

I am one person living one life.  And if I live it consciously recognizing that there is another side — if I live in that great hope — then all my moments will have great meaning.  Not just my solitary-unlimited-time-of-no-interruptions moments.  And my relationship with God will continue to grow and deepen.

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Prisoner of Peace

My brain is sometimes crowded with disquieting thoughts. It’s a racket in there! These thoughts keep me awake at night and make it difficult for me to concentrate on anything else during the day. There are so many of them. And they are all shouting for my attention. They are telling me I should be afraid. They are encouraging me to worry. They fill me with a sense of foreboding.

But right there … right in the middle of all that distress … is His comfort. Because that’s where His comfort is….”in the multitude of my anxieties within me”.

His comfort is the strength that allows me to overcome my fears and worries. His quiet reassurance within me prevails over the noise of the anxiety. His peace overpowers the disturbance within me. He sets me free from distress, and I am instead captivated by His consolation.

“In the multitude of my anxieties within me,
Your comforts delight my soul.” Psalm 94:19

 

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The Condition of Your Heart

“A merry heart makes a cheerful countenance,   But by sorrow of the heart the spirit is broken.”  Proverbs 15:13

In other words… A heart whose predominant tendency is joy to the point of laughter, mirth, festivity, and hilarity, spills over onto my outsides giving me a face full of cheer.

But a heart full of distress due to loss, affliction, disappointment, grief, sadness, and regret will smash, split, divide into parts, and violently reduce my spirit to pieces and fragments.

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The Problem with Callouses

In my pastor’s message a couple of Sundays ago, he told what happens when the voice of God is rare in one’s life – when one becomes so insensitive to God’s voice that he rarely, if ever, hears it. There are two things that happen:
1. we become indifferent
2. we let our minds grab on to other things – destructive things

Being insensitive made me think of the word callous. The the dictionary definition of callous goes along with what my pastor was talking about. When I am calloused toward God, I am insensitive. I am not quickly and easily responsive to or aware of God.

When I am calloused toward God, I am indifferent. I am apathetic. I am disinterested in God. He does not matter to me one way or another. He is not important to me.

When I am calloused toward God I am no longer affected by my relationship with Him.

I get a callous on my skin as a result from my skin being exposed to friction, like when my toes rub up against the end of my shoes when I am running. My heart becomes calloused toward God when I am in friction (contention) with Him. My heart becomes hardened when my ideas and desires conflict with His ideas and desires. And it’s as if all the fighting against what God wants for me creates chaos inside me and it creates a bunch of noise that makes me unable to hear God. So, the more friction there is, the harder my heart becomes and the louder the noise becomes. I can’t feel Him or sense Him any longer.

But I don’t cease to exist. And my needs that I was created with (love and purpose) don’t cease to exist either. Nor does the purpose I was created for. By in my calloused state and the chaos it produces I am confused. And because I can no longer sense God, I end up grabbing on to all sorts of other things that I think will give me the abundant life I was created to have a longing for.

The voice of God is still and small. He doesn’t use a PA system up in the clouds to talk to me down here. He doesn’t send me texts, letters, or emails. And He is most definitely not on Facebook. His voice is one that can only be heard when I am still and quiet. When I am soft and open.

The dictionary definition of callous gives the word unsympathetic as part of the definition. Looking up the definition for unsympathetic led me to the definition for sympathetic. And the physics definition for sympathetic was,

“noting or pertaining to vibrations or sounds, etc., produced by a body as the direct result of similar vibrations in a different body.” So that made me think of it this way…

My heart needs to be in such a condition (uncalloused) so that the vibrations (movements – deeds) and sounds (words) I am producing are the direct result of His similar vibrations and sounds. And this can only happen when I am sensitive to Him.

My life should be lived out as a response to who He is.

I Kings 19:12 The Lord was not in the wind or the earthquake or the fire. He was a still small voice.

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