Now we shall cover the final four steps.

5. TAKE A LONG WALK WITH GOD

Take a long walk with God and just talk it all out. Everything! Enoch did. So did Noah, Abraham and many others who learned that only God can turn our pain into gain. I’ve found long walks with the Lord help me see things from His broad perspective rather than my narrow one.

6. OPEN YOUR HEART IN PRAYER

Why have I placed prayer as my sixth point rather than what it should normally be—the first point? Because there are times when one’s heart has been broken to the point where you can’t even pray. You’re numb and just stare in the silence of a world that has turned to stone. But that’s when the Lord comes to us with groanings which cannot be uttered (Romans 8: 26) and loves us when we think He’s a million miles away and our situation is hopeless. Because we love Him, we begin to share in prayer our ache, tears and fears. We feel we can’t go on anymore unless He carries us. And that’s when we find only one set of footprints in our sands of sorrow because he carries us in His arms when we’re too weak to walk.

7. BECOME INVOLVED WITH OTHERS

Why does Jesus so understand everything you’re going through? It’s because He’s been there; “For in that he himself has suffered being tempted, he is able to succour them that are tempted” (Hebrews 2:18). The English Amplified New Testament is even more detailed, “For because He Himself in his humanity has suffered in being tempted and tested, He is able immediately to run to the cry of those who are being tempted and tested and who are suffering.”

Isn’t that beautiful? Because Jesus has suffered as no other, He can identify as no other in the suffering of others. Your husband fails you or dies? The Lord becomes a husband and fills each room with His presence (Isaiah 54:5). Your best friend walks out on you? He becomes the “friend that sticks closer than a brother” (Proverbs 18:24). Your employer fires you and you face an uncertain future? Jesus calls himself your Lord and guarantees that He will supply all your needs if you’ll put him first (Philippians 4:19). Even if your father or mother would forsake you the Lord would take you in His own tender care (Psalm 27:10).

8. YOU’RE COMFORTED TO COMFORT OTHERS

Jesus involves Himself with our most profound pain and makes us aware that others have broken hearts, too. We used to pass them by but now we notice them for we, too, have suffered. That is exactly the way a sovereign God planned it when He said, “…God who is the source of every consolation and comfort and encouragement…consoles and comforts and encourages us in every trouble, calamity and affliction, so that we may also be able to console, comfort and encourage those who are in any kind of trouble or distress, with the consolation, comfort and encouragement with which we ourselves are consoled and comforted and encouraged by God.” (II Corinthians 1:3,4 English Amplified Bible). God comforts you so you can reach out to comfort others. And that thought is what can lead to the conclusion of this lesson.

CONCLUSION

The longer I live, the more I see that it’s the people who have suffered the most who seem to love the most. They have experienced broken hearts and thus reach out to others who are shattered by calamity. Perhaps your own heart has been crushed and you think you’ll never be the same again. Quietly absorb the principles found in this study. God is already reaching out to minister to your wounded and weary spirit. And always remember that as He heals our broken hearts, the Lord expects us to follow Him in the direction He is always going—to minister to other broken hearts all around us.