BROKEN HEARTS EVERYWHERE

It was during a Shalom seminar in Pennsylvania when, in the space of only a few hours, I touched three people who had broken hearts. One lovely young mother couldn’t do enough to help us and her smile warmed everyone. But beneath that gentle and gracious surface was a heart that had been broken many times by a husband who would verbally and physically abuse her.

Minutes later, I met a man who only months before had lost his wife of almost fifty years. He couldn’t talk about her without choking up, and yet he desperately needed to open up.

A few hours later, I spoke kindly to a Korean maid who was cleaning the rooms in the motel where I stayed. Those words of appreciation lifted the lid on her bottled up emotions. She began sobbing as she told me that her husband had walked out on her and that she was now alone.

All three of these people were believers in Jesus, demonstrating that we Christians are not immune to broken hearts. Perhaps you are suffering through a pain-filled marriage. Or the feet of a loved one you adored are now missing from under your table as you eat alone in a home that has seen death silence a voice that once sounded with laughter through you home. Or perhaps you have just been torn in half through the agony of divorce.

Broken hearts are everywhere. Like the young couple whose one year old child died after they begged God to heal him. Their screaming ache was compounded by the fact that nearly two million little babies are murdered in the wombs of their mothers each year in America—their lives seen as unimportant and a nuisance to the “comfort” of others.

And then these parents, who value life and wanted their baby to live, had to watch him die.

Who would dare give an easy answer to such parents. Or to the parents of two teenage girls who shot themselves in a suicide pact because their painful experiences proved too heavy to handle? Their deaths inflated further the suicide epidemic sweeping the world where young and old victims of broken hearts and hopelessness pull triggers, swallow pills, leap from buildings, or use a hundred other means to embrace death while loved ones are left to groan “Why, oh why?” There are also no easy answers for broken-hearted people who have lost their jobs and face futures with giant question marks. Or others whose homes or health are destroyed by various kinds of calamities and who view the continuance of life as a burden and not a blessing.

We’ve all had broken hearts at one time or another. And who is to say whether some are broken less or more than others. A broken heart is a broken heart—especially when you’re enduring one. I’ve been there. Norma and I have seen God’s greatest blessings and deep personal growth in our lives. There have also been times filled with special pain. The 1979 sudden death of our two partners in the infant work of Shalom. The death of Norma’s brother from cancer. The pain of burying my mother and father within a space of six months. A person whom we counted on in the work walking out just when the needs seemed to be the greatest. Going to a new area of ministry in New England and finding that many ministers and lay Christians didn’t even want to talk to newcomers.

And there was more. Broken bodies because of pushing them too far. Exhausted minds. Shattered emotions. Financial uncertainties. Great spiritual battles against demonic forces that sometimes seemed to roll in like waves of the sea.

It was hard for us to believe that those and other pains and heart-breaks would lead to a richer life with God. It’s easier to emphasize the positive things that make us feel good rather than admit that it’s the things that hurt the most that often draw us closer to God. Nevertheless, the following words I wrote when going through deep waters in the past ring true.

I’m learning that God knows just what I need to keep me in love with Him, Sometimes it’s sickness that crosses my way, To slow me down as I speed through the day; Weariness, pain and then sometimes distress, With nowhere to go but to Jesus for rest; Moments when everything’s falling apart, Make me aware He wants all of my heart.I grew impatient with others I met who needed a helping hand, But it was when my strength wavered and waned, That others told me of their hidden pain; When my heart was torn because I had failed, I understood those who also were frail; I’m starting to see—though ever so dim, Things that hurt most draw me closer to Him. Look beyond your tears and heartaches, When all of life seems dark and grim; For it’s the things that hurt the most, That have drawn us closer to Him.

There’s no real growth nor godliness without pain. That fact is borne out by our source and pattern of godliness, Jesus Christ, “Though He were a Son, yet learned He obedience by the things which He suffered” (Hebrews 5:8). Jesus understands suffering because He endured such. Following is a simple action plan that can help you to not merely endure the pain of a broken heart but bring you through in triumph.

(TO BE CONTINUED)