Mended Hearts

What is it that you are not happy with?
What is it that you are allowing to steal your joy and rob you of your peace?

In Isaiah 61 we are given an extensive list of the various things that Jesus came to do for us and also some entitlements. One of the first things we learn is that He came to heal the brokenhearted. Now we tend to think of the brokenhearted as those who were in love and something went terribly wrong resulting in the end of a relationship. However the brokenhearted covers a much wider category. The brokenhearted includes those whose hearts have been broken by circumstances and situations in life, those things that when you think about them they make you give a loud sigh and you would rather not remember them and wish that they would just disappear.

Many have lived with a broken heart for so long that it may not even be that big an issue anymore. The waves of oppressive conditions can often beat us into a passivity of putting up with things sometimes unknowingly. Examples of which can be an illness, we know that God's will for us is healing and that His word says we are healed. But often times the sickness can come upon us with such ferocity that after a while of standing on God's word, making declarations of faith and praying fervently, we often run out of steam and start putting up with it. You might be living in a neighbourhood that you are not happy with, a house that everything needs fixing, a dead end job, single for yet another year or still living from hand to mouth.

That brokenhearted feeling comes from our perception that things will always be like this because they have always been like this. It comes from our inability to see any light at the end of the tunnel. The scripture which then springs to mind is Psalm 37:4 "Delight yourself also in the Lord, and He will give you the desires and secret petitions of your heart. This verse deals with me in a two fold manner, first I realise that I have inadvertently allowed my situation to become bigger and more prominent than my God. Instead of being totally satisfied by His love and trusting in His promises. I magnified the issues which feed on our attention and grow the more we give it to them. The antidote for me is to fall back in love with God. Focus my attention on Him and His word and allow Him to totally satisfy me. Not so He can give me what I want, but so that I get so enraptured in His presence so that what I wanted either:

1. Fades into the background


2. Doesn't become so significant


3. I realise that I didn't really want it anyway
   

Delighting in the Lord is spending time with Him, loving Him, praising Him, singing to Him new songs and being totally grateful that He is in your life. Discovering that He is indeed our shield and our exceedingly great reward (Gen 15:1). Be confident that you will see the goodness of the Lord in this life but also resolve in your heart that even if I don't get what I want, a desire is not met or a prayer does not get answered, God is still good and He is good to me. This attitude will make all the difference.

The second way that Psalm 37:4 ministers to me is that I realise just how much my loving God knows me, to the point that those intimate things that maybe only I know about, only I carry and whisper to Him quietly in prayer, He is concerned about and will make perfect (Ps 138:8).

With this in mind do not allow your heart to be broken for a minute more, bring that situation to God and leave it in His capable hands because He actually knows how to sort it all out. Your job is now to get on with the fun stuff of enjoying Him and enjoying your life.

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