When It Is God That Is Breaking Your Heart.
This title may sound crazy, yes. Truly, I believe it is just words many are afraid to mutter with their own mouths. This feeling of God breaking your heart is not new to man; David felt it, Jesus felt it, Job, Joseph, Paul, the list goes on. Many Christians wrestle with this feeling.
SO, before you throw your stones, take a breath and hold my hands. Let us walk through this together.
When it feels like God is breaking your heart (emphasis on the word “feels”), and you’re caught between the pain of disappointment and the weight of the love you hold for Him, that is that crevice of our walk that we’ll explore today.
You gave your best to God, laying all down to do His will, denying yourself for the sake of obedience. Then, you receive that dreaded news. A loved one is on their deathbed, a bad medical report, impending financial doom. Whatever it may be. Unshaken, you take that news head-on. Puffing your chest up high in the face of adversity and professing, “Do you know who my God is?”
Oh, how large your faith, larger than mountains, everyone could see it from afar. You carried a trust that was immovable, a trust that inspired all who saw. You were so sure that God would do that one thing; there was no way God was going to let you down after all you had given to Him.
And then boom
He does not do it; the prayer seems to go unanswered…
It is in that space that suddenly, you are hit with the weight of a feeling you have never carried before, a feeling you cannot name. “What is this? No, it cannot be”.
The shattering commences, rendering you weightless, pushing you down an unending, gutting, black hole, with no support to hold onto.
What does this feeling feel like, you ask,
It feels like the immediate need to run the other way. A need to flee from a pain you cannot bear. It is cognitive dissonance, it is the five stages of grief, it is a case study of the psychology of a spiritual ache.
What does this feeling feel like?
It feels like mockery, like fingers being pointed your way. Laughter engulfing you, incessant voices surrounding you. “Where is your God now?” they mock, and further down the hole you fall.
Why does it hurt so bad?
It’s a feeling that’s hard to understand; it leaves you overwhelmed with questions. “But why God?” you endlessly beg. “Why did you let them die? Why didn’t you heal my condition? Why didn’t you provide? Why didn’t I get accepted? But God, why?”
You try to wrestle with Him for an answer, but soon your desire to even stand face to face with the Lord diminishes. You'd rather hide than know.
Odd, but somehow it feels like a betrayal, doesn’t it ( forgive me if that sounds blasphemous), it feels like a let down. Which makes you feel crazier for even thinking such a thing. Because how could a loving Father betray His children, how could He let them down?
That’s the thing,
He can’t, and He won’t.
Moment of silence? Sure, let’s take one.
I knew this would be the pill to obstruct the airways of the anxious believer.
Yes, I know this is hard. I have validated you, walked with you through the feelings. I myself have been there before and have personally wrestled with this dilemma. This is now the part of the essay where I need you to hear me out as I attempt to show you another perspective. So with tear-stained eyes and a groaning heart, please read on.
Open the eyes of our hearts, Lord, and silence the noise in our minds so that we may see you in this pain.
Brokenness
As much as we all may try to avoid the pain of brokenness, in the kingdom of God, brokenness is not something to run from. In fact, Psalm 51:7 reminds us that the sacrifices of God are a broken spirit and a broken and contrite heart. It is such things that He will not despise. But why is that?
Believe it or not, God breaks those He loves; He breaks us to make us up again. We are simply clay in the hands of the Potter; it is in the remolding that we feel that dreaded pain. Brokenness will not destroy you; however, the attempt to avoid brokenness may lead you down a path that will.
2 Corinthians 4:8-10
“We are troubled on every side, yet not distressed; we are perplexed, but not in despair; Persecuted but not forsaken; cast down, but not destroyed; Always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our body”.
God does not allow us to experience pain without having an end in mind. The pain that Jesus endured on the cross was for the joy that was set before Him (Hebrews 12:2). The pain of abandonment that Joseph endured had an end in mind. The pain of rejection and persecution that David endured had an end in mind. It is because we do not see the future that God can see that we are so hurt. That is why we are reminded in John chapter 13 verse 7, which states, “Jesus answered him, ‘What I am doing you do not understand now, but afterward you will understand.”
God’s Glory & Sovereignty
It’s not always about us and how we feel.
Yikes, I know. Let’s let that sink in for a second.
Western Christianity appears to have a hyperfocus on the self. It is concerned much more with how the individual is feeling rather than the body at large. God must and will receive the glory! And sometimes, how He goes about it does not make sense to us. That is why we are urged to lean not on our own understandings. God’s ways are not our ways, and His thoughts are not our thoughts. However, He works all things out for the good of those who love Him and are called according to His purpose.
Proverbs 25:2
“It is the glory of God to conceal things, but the glory of kings is to search things out”.
God is sovereign to say “no” or “wait”. Just consider how David felt after pleading with God for his child in 2 Samuel 12:16-23.
Take another breath.
Maybe allowing this to happen will make for a far greater testimony that someone out there needs to hear. Maybe the path God had to take you on was so that you could be a witness to someone else who is on that same path. What if your story is the story that will save them? But what do we care right? All that matters is how we feel.
Look, the bottom line is, sometimes we are broken so others can be made whole. It may sound unfair, but how do you think Jesus felt when he cried, “Father, why have you forsaken me”, as He was being used to set us free?
Unfortunately, many of us give up right at that breaking point before we can even see what was on the other side. Many of us leave God in this moment, before we can see what He had in mind.
A Call To Wake Up
Is it okay if I say that this pain of brokenness is what is needed to wake us up? If you hadn’t gone through that pain, you would have never recognized how much more you need God. Maybe you were going down a path whose end was death, this pain God used to thwart that does not compare to what could have happened if God allowed you to keep on. Proverbs 14:12, “There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death”. Maybe your heartbreak was God taking away an opportunity from you. Though that closed door may hurt, only God knows what was truly on the other side of it. He has a different plan and path for your life.
God is intentional; things do not happen without a reason. There are things unseen, things we cannot understand from a place of carnality. His plan is greater than our own.
I have never seen the righteous forsaken.
You are not expected to carry a fake positivity when it comes to Christianity. God welcomes your honesty, your pain, your tears, your hurts, and confusion. Why run from the one person in whom the answer to your dying questions lies?
If he does it or does not do it, it is for His glory and our good. A hard truth, but the truth nonetheless, we do not serve a genie in a bottle who will grant us our every demand and desire. He had a plan for your life far before you were born. Trust that He knows better than you in what He is doing.
And even in this, be honest with Him about the condition of your heart while you go through this painful process. In this stretching, in this growing and spiritual development, pray what is written in Psalm 139: 23-24
“Search me, God, and know my heart; test me and now my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting”.
God is not being mean; He is simply allowing this pain to do a work in you that will mature you perfectly for where he is taking you.
What good parent does not want their child to grow and be prepared?
Job himself said, “Though He slay me, yet will I hope in Him; I will surely defend my ways to His face”, Job 13:15.
Can you hope in God even with a broken heart?
Do not allow disappointment to take you away from a God who cares for you. The enemy loves it when we are disappointed or discouraged; that is a peak moment of vulnerability for him to creep into our minds and fill us with lies concerning God. When our disappointments cause our hearts to harden towards God, the enemy smiles. Don’t give him that satisfaction; hope in the Lord even through the pain.
With love, Vanessa.
2 Peter 3:9
“The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. Instead, he is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance”.
Comments