Healing Broken Hearts

Today's encouragement comes from a very healing book called Making Peace With Your Father by David Stoop, PhD. This book is very helpful and life-giving to those who have various kinds of issues with their earthly father. It is a Christian book written by a Christian counselor who is very knowledgeable in psychology, etc. I would recommend this book to anyone for help along their journey of healing and wholeness. Below is an excerpt of the section called "God Our Healing Father."

God specializes in healing broken hearts. Isaiah wrote of God's Messiah, "The Lord has anointed me to bring good news to the suffering and afflicted. He has sent me to comfort the brokenhearted, to announce liberty to captives, and to open the eyes of the blind" (Isaiah 61:1) When he announced the beginning of his ministry at the synagogue in Nazareth, Jesus took those words to himself. In so doing, he showed us God's loving, compassionate heart.

David also assures us that "the Lord is close to those whose hearts are breaking" (Psalm 34:18) He adds in another place that God "heals the brokenhearted, binding up their wounds" (Psalm 147:3)

God knows our pain, our loss, our disappointments. He longs to heal our brokenness. He could do so instantly -- but then we would not learn the lessons that are vital to our healing. For most of us, his promise to heal our broken hearts will be fulfilled over a period of time.

The writer of the letter to the Hebrews assures that "this High Priest of ours understands our weaknesses...So let us come boldly to the very throne of God and stay there to receive his mercy and to find grace to help us in our times of need" (Heb. 4:15-16) We can stay there as long as we need to in order to experience the fullness of God's healing grace.

Father, I pray in the name of your Son Jesus, Yeshua, today that you would begin the healing in all who read this message of grace today. I pray your love would pour over them in a tangible way, that your presence would manifest around them as they read and come before your throne of grace. I pray they would be filled with all hope in you. Amen.