Heartbreak Happens......Now What

God's heart breaks when we wallow in sin.  And yet His love for us NEVER changes.

Some people wonder whether God feels, as we do, whether He weeps over us, whether He experiences emotion at all.  I am fully convinced that He does and that He does so more profoundly than we can imagine. Remember Hebrews 2:9-10 But we do see Jesus, who was made lower than the angels for a little while, now crowned with glory and honor because he suffered death, so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone. In bringing many sons and daughters to glory, it was fitting that God, for whom and through whom everything exists, should make the pioneer of their salvation perfect through what he suffered.

What is even more amazing to me is that even when we break His heart again and again as we run to 'other gods' to satisfy us, His love for us remains completely unchanged.

There are those in my own life that I love desperately, but who run after 'other gods'. Watching this has an effect on my heart that I am unable to adequately describe.  A heaviness sometimes comes on me that I feel sometimes I will not be able to bear.  A breaking, weeping heart.  A crack and a piece falling out of place, it's jagged edges piercing and scraping as it falls in a heap.

Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a desire fulfilled is a tree of life. Proverbs 13:12
I was asking Father God to help me understand this pain and what to do with it.  He reminded me that He allows it partly so that I will understand His heart toward me.  Each time I turn away from Him, I bring Him pain.  His heart, which is pure and perfect, must experience the pain of my foolishness.  His heart which has given literally EVERYTHING for me, must be broken time and again.

Oh Father!  I am so sorry for the way I've hurt you.  I hand Him the broken pieces and watch as He gently, expertly puts them all back as they were meant to be.  He heals them, sometimes even the scars disappear and I can see how He intended it to be in the first place.

Revelation 21:4 says "He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away." How I look forward to that day.  And perhaps that is part of why we face the pain we do, in it's way, this experience encourages us to gaze toward the future and to find hope in heaven.  

God will use anything and everything to teach and grow us, even the things we so desperately want to shut ourselves off from experiencing. Today, when pain comes my way, I do my best to let it do the work my kind and loving Father intends it to do.  It's not a lot of fun, but I am confident of this, that he who began a good work in you( and me!!!) will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.(Phil 1:6) 

I'll leave you with this quote from John Stott which expresses this idea so beautifully.

"In the real world of pain, how could one worship a God who was immune to it? I have entered many Buddhist temples in different Asian countries and stood respectfully before the statue of the Buddha, his legs crossed, arms folded, eyes closed, the ghost of a smile playing round his mouth, a remote look on his face, detached from the agonies of the world. But each time, after a while I have had to look away. And in imagination I have turned instead to the lonely, twisted, tortured figure on the cross, nails through hands and feet, back lacerated, limbs wrenched, brow bleeding from thorn pricks, mouth dry and intolerably thirsty, plunged in God-forsaken darkness. That is the God for me! He laid aside His immunity to pain. He entered our world of flesh and blood, tears and death. He suffered for us. Our sufferings become more manageable in the light of His. There is still a question mark against human suffering, but over it we stamp another mark, the cross which symbolizes divine suffering."

—John R.W. Stott in "The Cross of Christ"