Dr. Ron Sumners
January 10, 2010
In one way or another, we are all hurting. Everyone is in the same boat. Even the laughing, happy-go-lucky crowd is hurting. They try to hide their hurt by frenetic activity, drinking and joking, but it won’t go away.
Who hurts? The parents of a prodigal son or daughter hurt deeply. Millions of parents have been wounded by children who have rejected their love and counsel. These parents grieve over the deception and delinquency of children who were once tender and loving.
The victims of broken homes are hurting. The abandoned wife, whose husband rejected her for another woman, is hurting. The husband who lost the love of a wife, for no other reason than the wife’s restlessness, is hurting. The children, who have lost their security, are hurting. They are now shuttled from one parent to another and often are used as pawns in the couple’s game of animosity toward each other. Some say, “Children are flexible they will be OK.” Sometimes they break, and the parents are so absorbed in their feelings toward each other, the brokenness of the child goes unnoticed!
Others suffer illness: cancer, heart problems, diabetes, and a myriad of other diseases. To be told by a doctor that you have a potentially fatal disease can be terrifying. Many of you here today know that fear.
Marriages fail. Lovers break up. A boyfriend or girlfriend walks away, trampling on what was a beautiful relationship. All that is left is a wounded, broken heart.
And what about the unemployed? What about the despondent ones whose dreams have collapsed? Consider the shut-ins. Who remembers the prisoners, the drug addicts, the alcoholic; and the homosexual; trapped in misery by their own bad choices?
Even those who have achieved everything that the world says should bring happiness and contentment, can live a life filled with deep hurt and disappointment.
When you are deeply hurt, no person on this earth can shut out the innermost fears and deepest agonies. The best of friends cannot really understand the battle you are going through or the wounds inflicted on you.
Only God can shut out the waves of depression and feelings of loneliness and failure that come over you. Faith in God’s love alone can salvage the hurt mind. The bruised and broken heart that suffers in silence can be healed only by a supernatural work of the Holy Spirit, and nothing short of divine intervention really works.
God has to step in and take over. He has to intercept our lives at the breaking point, stretch forth His loving arms, and bring that hurting mind and body under His protection and care. God comes as a caring father and demonstrates that He is there, making things turn out for the good. He will, by His power, dispel the storm clouds, chase away the despair and gloom, wipe away the tears, and replace the sorrow with peace of mind.
What hurts most is that you know your love for God is strong, yet you can’t seem to understand what He is trying to work out in your life. If you were cold toward His love, you could understand why your prayers went unanswered. If you were running from God, you could understand the testing and the trials that keep coming. If you were a lost sinner, who despised the things of God, you could bring yourself to believe that you deserve to hurt badly. But you are not running, you are not rejecting Him. You long to do His perfect will. You want to please God and want only to serve Him in all that is in you. That is why your hurting is so debilitating. It makes you feel that there is something terribly wrong with you. You question your spiritual depth. A voice deep down inside whispers, “Maybe I hurt so deeply because God can’t see much good in me. I must be out of His will. He has to discipline me to make me obedient.”
A bruised or broken heart causes the most excruciating pain known to mankind. I have experienced some physical pain in the past few years as have many of you. I would choose that physical pain, ten-to-one, to the pain of a broken heart. Loneliness and regret fall like a cloud. The pain explodes when you are alone, trying to understand how to cope with all the inner voices and fears that keep surfacing.
Your friends, who care for you but really don’t understand what you are going through, offer all kinds of easy solutions. They get impatient with you because you don’t just ‘snap out of it.’ They accuse you of wallowing in self-pity. They remind you that the world is filled with hurting, broken-hearted people and they have survived. They want to have prayer with you, and that is great. But they expect your sadness to be over once they have absolved it with their prayer. You are given every religious cliché in vogue, i.e. “release your faith, claim a promise, confess a cure, agree with them for your healing and walk away from your despair.” I do not dismiss the validity of that kind of prayer, but it is so much easier to anticipate miraculous healing when you are not the one hurting!
That’s all well and good, but it is preaching that usually comes from people who have never known much suffering. They are like Job’s baby-sitters, who knew all the answers but could not relieve his pain. Job said to them, “…You are all physicians of no value” (Job 13:4). Thank God for well-meaning friends, but if they could experience your pain for even one hour, they would be changing their tune.
There is an old cliché, “Time heals all wounds.” You are told to hang in there, put on a smile, and wait for time to anesthetize your pain. It isn’t true. Time heals nothing, only God heals!
When you are hurting, time only magnifies the pain. Days and weeks go by, and the agony still hangs on. The hurting won’t go away no matter what the calendar says. Time may push the pain deeper into the mind, but one tiny memory can bring it to the surface.
People seldom get hurt just once. Most who hurt can show you other wounds too. Pain is layered over pain. A broken heart is usually a tender, fragile one. Unfortunately, the fragile heart is subject to be damaged again.
Part of the pain a broken heart must suffer is the thought that the offender, the heartbreaker, is going to get away with it all. Hurters seldom get wounded. Their hearts are covered with a thick veneer of callousness. They leave a string of hurt behind them, without pain themselves because their hearts are too small and encrusted with self-centeredness to really give themselves to another.
Is there a balm for the broken heart? Is there healing for those deep, inner hurts? Can the pieces be put back together and the heart be made even stronger? Can the hurting people rise from the ashes of depression and find a new love and a new life? Yes! Absolutely, yes! If that were not so, God’s Word would be a hoax, and God would be a liar. That cannot be! “Come unto me all you that labor and are heavy laden and I will give you rest” (Matt. 11:28).
Let me share a few simple thoughts about how to cope with hurt.
Stop trying to figure out how and why you got hurt. What has happened to you is a very common ailment to mankind. Your situation is not unique. It is part of our humanity. Whether you were right or wrong makes no difference at this point. All that matters now is your willingness to move on in God and trust His working in your life. 1 Peter 4:12-13 says, “…think it not strange concerning the fiery trial which is to try you, as though some strange thing happened to you. But rejoice, inasmuch as ye are partakers of Christ’s sufferings; that, when His glory shall be revealed, you may be glad also with exceeding joy.”
God did not promise you a painless life. He promised you a way of escape from the pain. He will help bear the pain and give you strength when yours fails.
Stop condemning yourself. Stop the anger at the one who hurt you or the situation that brought you low. Understand what Paul said in 2 Corinthians 12:15, “The more I loved, the less I was loved.” When you love, and when you give; you run the risk of being hurt. It is a risk worth taking!
Remind yourself that God knows how much you can take, and He will not permit you to reach the breaking point. Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians 10:13, “There hath no temptation taken you, but such as is common to man; but God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able; but will with the temptation also make a way of escape, that ye may be able to bear it.”
The worst kind of blasphemy for a Christian is to think God is behind all your hurt and pain, that it is the Heavenly Father disciplining you; that God thinks you need one or two more heartbreaks before you are ready to receive His blessings. What an affront to God’s character!
It is true that God chastens those He loves. But that chastening is only for a season and it is not meant to destroy us but to help us grow stronger. God is not the author of confusion in your life; neither are you. It is human failure. It is the enemy sowing tares in the field of your life. It is the deception of someone else near you, who lost faith in God. The enemy tries to hurt us through other human beings.
Your Heavenly Father watches over you with an unwavering eye. Every move is known. Every tear is recorded. He identifies with your every pain. He promises to come right on time to wipe away your tears and give you joy to replace mourning. The Bible tells us, “…weeping may endure for a night, but joy comes in the morning” (Psalm 30:5).
When you hurt the worst, go to your secret prayer closet and weep out all your bitterness. Jesus wept. Peter wept bitterly! Peter carried with him the hurt of denying the Son of God. He walked alone, weeping in sorrow. Those bitter tears worked a sweet miracle in him. He came back to shake the Kingdom of Satan!
A good friend of mine from Landrum, South Carolina, died with cancer while I was pastor there. I have mentioned him several times from this pulpit. He was my teacher as well as a dear friend.
When he was diagnosed with lymphoma, he was given about six months to live. He lived over eight years. I asked him what it was like when he was first diagnosed. He said, “Ron, I cried until there were no more tears left. Then I began to draw closer to Jesus, until I knew His arms were holding me tight.”
Jesus never looks away from the crying heart. God tells us in Psalms 51:17, “A broken heart I will not despise.” Not once will the Lord say, “Get hold of yourself! Stand up and take your medicine! Grit your teeth and dry your tears. Shake it off and quit feeling sorry for yourself.” No! Jesus bottles every tear in His eternal container.
Do you hurt badly? The go ahead and cry! Keep on crying until the tears stop flowing. But let those tears originate only from hurt, and not from unbelief or self-pity.
Convince yourself that you will survive, you will come out of it; live or die, you belong to the Lord. Life does go on. You would be surprised how much you can bear, with God helping you. Happiness is not living without pain and hurt. Happiness is learning to live one day at a time, in spite of pain and sorrow. It is learning to rejoice in the Lord, no matter the circumstances.
You may feel rejected. You may feel abandoned. Your faith may be weak. You may think that you will never recover. Sorrow, tears, pain, and emptiness may swallow you up, at times; but God is still on His throne. He is still God!
You can’t stop the pain or the hurt. But God will come to you, and He will place His loving hand under you and lift you up to sit again in heavenly places. He will deliver you from the fear of dying. He will reveal His endless love for you.
Look up! Encourage yourself in the Lord. When the fog surrounds you and you can’t see any way out of your dilemma, lie back in the arms of Jesus and simply trust Him. He wants you to cry aloud, “Jesus loves me, this I know for the Bible tells me so. He is with me! He will not fail me! He is working it all out right now! I will not be cast down! I will not be defeated! I will not be a victim of Satan! I will not lose my direction! God is on my side and I have nothing to fear!”
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