Four Spiritual Laws for Healing a Broken Heart (1)
1. God loves you and desires you to know Him personally. He desires to heal your broken heart so that you can be filled with joy as you experience His unimaginably great plan for your life.
The Lord is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit.
--Psalm 34:18 ESV
The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.
--Psalm 51:17 ESV
“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. 4 “Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. 5 “Blessed are the gentle, for they shall inherit the earth. 6 “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied. 7 “Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy. 8 “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. 9 “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.
10 “Blessed are those who have been persecuted for the sake of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. 11 “Blessed are you when people insult you and persecute you, and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of Me. 12 Rejoice and be glad, for your reward in heaven is great; for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.
--Matthew 5:3-12 NASB1995
What breaks our heart? Why is the world so broken? Where does sadness come from? What steals our joy? Why do we struggle with anxiety, guilt, shame, fear, hopelessness, and depression?
2. Our intimate relationship with God is severed by the ways that we don’t trust Him. Ultimately, we rebel against God’s leadership when we don’t believe that He has our best interests in mind. Severed from believing, knowing, and experiencing God’s love for us, rejection and sorrow breaks our hearts.
“Reproach has broken my heart and I am so sick. And I looked for sympathy, but there was none, and for comforters, but I found none.”
--Psalm 69:20 NASB1995
“A soothing tongue is a tree of life, but perversion in it crushes the spirit.”
--Proverbs 15:4 NASB1995
“A joyful heart makes a cheerful face, but when the heart is sad, the spirit is broken.”
--Proverbs 15:13 NASB1995
“A joyful heart is good medicine, but a broken spirit dries up the bones.”
--Proverbs 17:22 NASB1995
If sorrow, rejection, reproach, chronic grief, and sadness breaks our hearts, then how can God heal our broken hearts? How can our hearts be restored with joy, hope, love, peace, and new life again?
3. Jesus Christ is God’s only provision for the rebellion and unbelief that separates us from receiving God’s love. God sent Jesus to heal our broken hearts and to remove our guilt, shame, fear, anxiety, hopelessness, and depression. Through Jesus alone can our crushed spirits be made new and whole so that we can know God intimately the way we were made to experience.
The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me to bring good news to the poor; he has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to those who are bound;”
--Isaiah 61:1 ESV
The following passages were written by the prophet Isaiah about 700 years before Jesus came from heaven to earth. On the cross, Jesus was crushed and separated from God the Father’s love when he took the penalty for our rebellion against God.
“Surely our griefs He Himself bore, and our sorrows He carried; yet we ourselves esteemed Him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. 5 But He was pierced through for our transgressions, He was crushed for our iniquities; the chastening for our well-being fell upon Him, and by His scourging we are healed. 6 All of us like sheep have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way; but the Lord has caused the iniquity of us all to fall on Him.”
--Isaiah 53:4-6 NASB1995
“His grave was assigned with wicked men, yet He was with a rich man in His death, because He had done no violence, nor was there any deceit in His mouth. 10 But the Lord was pleased to crush Him, putting Him to grief; if He would render Himself as a guilt offering, He will see His offspring, He will prolong His days, and the good pleasure of the Lord will prosper in His hand. 11 As a result of the anguish of His soul, He will see it and be satisfied; by His knowledge the Righteous One, My Servant, will justify the many, as He will bear their iniquities.”
--Isaiah 53:9-11 NASB1995
“For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, 4 and that He was buried, and that He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures,”
--1 Corinthians 15:3-4 NASB1995
4. As we experience the love God demonstrated for us, we must submit our loyalty to Jesus Christ in eternal commitment. Then we get to experience a new heart and a new spirit where our griefs, sorrows, pains, guilt, shame, fear, anxiety, and depression have been removed because of what Jesus has already done for us!
“But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. 9 Much more then, having now been justified by His blood, we shall be saved from the wrath of God through Him.”
--Romans 5:8-9 NASB1995
“Therefore I will judge you, O house of Israel, each according to his conduct,” declares the Lord God. “Repent and turn away from all your transgressions, so that iniquity may not become a stumbling block to you. 31 Cast away from you all your transgressions which you have committed and make yourselves a new heart and a new spirit! For why will you die, O house of Israel? 32 For I have no pleasure in the death of anyone who dies,” declares the Lord God. “Therefore, repent and live.”
--Ezekiel 18:30-32 NASB1995
Then I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean; I will cleanse you from all your filthiness and from all your idols. 26 Moreover, I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; and I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. 27 I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes, and you will be careful to observe My ordinances.
--Ezekiel 36:25-27 NASB1995
How can we receive this new spirit (God’s Holy Spirit in us) in exchange for our broken heart (or our crushed spirit)?
Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God. 16 We have come to know and have believed the love which God has for us. God is love, and the one who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him. 17 By this, love is perfected with us, so that we may have confidence in the day of judgment; because as He is, so also are we in this world. 18 There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves punishment, and the one who fears is not perfected in love. 19 We love, because He first loved us.
--1 John 4:15-19 NASB1995
The following is a suggested prayer for receiving this “divine exchange:” our broken heart in exchange for God’s heart (the Holy Spirit)!
Father,
I desire to know You intimately. Thank You for creating me to know You personally. I want to know You better and to experience what You saw in me and planned for me before the creation of the world. I am sorry for all the ways that I have not trusted You, doubted that You have good plans and a purpose for my life, and did things my own way without any regard for Your heart for me.
You laid out commandments to describe what You are like and what love looks like practically, but I have not kept those commandments diligently. I have not treated other people with the dignity, honor, and respect that they have in Your eyes, because I have anxiously sought to meet my own needs at others’ expense whenever I have been unkind, impatient, rude, or self-seeking. I agree that I have not loved You with all my heart, soul, mind, and strength, have not treated others the way that I would like to be treated, and have fallen short of Your glorious standard of love and honor in relationships with You and others.
Father, thank You for sending Your Son, Jesus Christ, to heal my broken heart. Thank You that You are near to the broken-hearted and heal all their emotional wounds. You sent Jesus to heal my broken heart, to forgive all my sins, and to give me Your heart. You sent Jesus to deliver me from all my fear and anxieties, so that I could be filled with Your perfect love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faith, humility, and self-control. You sent Your Word and healed me and delivered me from my depression.
God, You sent Jesus to give me a heart full of joyful praise in exchange for depression. I give You my entire life and thank You for taking away all my guilt and rebellious inclinations because of what Jesus did on the cross. I confess with my mouth that Jesus is my Lord and that my life now belongs completely to You. I believe in my heart that You raised Jesus from the dead, declaring that I am dead to sin (those old selfish ways) and alive to You in Christ Jesus. Thank You for giving me Your Holy Spirit, that You have created in me a new heart and put Your Spirit in me. I choose to believe that You have taken away my old heart of stone and given me Your own heart in its place!
As I commit to following Jesus’ words with my entire life, I thank You for shaping and forming me into who You saw me to be before the creation of the world. Again, I thank You for giving me Your Holy Spirit to guide me every day as I communicate with You day and night through Your Word. As I remain rooted and grounded in Your love and the truth of what You say, then I am truly Jesus’ disciple. Then I shall know the truth even more deeply, and Your truth makes me free.
In Jesus’ name,
Amen
To become even more embedded in this good news of God and what it looks like to communicate with Him, see “Four Spiritual Laws About Prayer.”
(1) Four-point format based on Would You Like to Know God Personally? A version of the Four Spiritual Laws, written by Bill Bright.
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