God Hurts Too

“You keep track of all my sorrows. You have collected all my tears in your bottle. You have recorded each one in your book.”

Psalm 56:8

It’s been one year today since my wife’s sister Les went home to be with Jesus at just 59 years of age. Her passing leaves a hole in our families heart and though time does help to heal our wounds on birthdays and anniversaries and other memorable days throughout the year, the scab gets torn off a little on days like today and we start to bleed again. Heartache is the price we pay for love this side of heaven and like one author wrote, “if they were worth loving they are worth grieving.” Grief is the hearts natural response to lost love, even if we know the ones we love are home with the Lord.
 
As I study the book of Hebrews for a bible study in a few hours there is a passage I want to share with those of you are dealing with hurt and heartache in your own life. Hebrews 4:14-15 says, “So then, since we have a great High Priest who has entered heaven, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold firmly to what we believe. This High Priest of ours understands our weaknesses, for he faced all of the same testings we do, yet he did not sin.” No one else may understand the pain you are going through but rest assured, Jesus does!

Though Jesus was 100% God, let’s not forget that He was 100% man too. Jesus hurt and suffered overwhelming grief and pain when He walked this earth. Thats why we can find comfort in the God who feels what we feel and who understands from personal experience just what a broken heart feels like. As Jesus was praying in the Garden of Gethsemane He became confronted with the reality that He and the Father were going to be separated for the first time in all eternity. That realization broke His heart and when Jesus went to the Cross in our place where the Father would turn His back to the Son for the one and only time in eternity that was more than even Jesus could bare.  

In Matthew’s gospel, chapter 26:37-38 we read, “And Jesus took with Him Peter and the two sons of Zebedee, and began to be grieved and distressed.  Then He said to them, ‘My soul is deeply grieved, to the point of death; remain here and keep watch with Me.’” Luke, being a physician adds something in his account, (Luke 22:44) “And being in agony he was praying very fervently; and His sweat became like drops of blood, falling down upon the ground.” Medical science tells us this phenomenon is known as “Hematidrosis”, or “bloody sweat”, Under tremendous emotional stress, tiny capillaries in the sweat glands in the face can break, causing the mixing of blood with sweat”. All these are just contributing factors of a broken heart.

Let me put it into perspective for you. “Jesus was only in his early to middle thirties and was most likely a very strong man since He was a carpenter or stone cutter by trade and walked most everywhere He went. And yet we read in John’s gospel (John 19:34) that, “one of the soldiers pierced His side with a spear, and immediately there came out blood and water.” C. Truman Davis writes concerning the medical significance of the blood and water, “We, therefore, have rather conclusive post-mortem evidence that Our Lord died, not the usual crucifixion death by suffocation, but of heart failure…”  Heart failure you could say began to develop in the Garden of Gethsemane where Jesus was sweating blood, then the stress continued to build when He was rejected by many of His disciples and then was fully realized when He was nailed to the cross.”

Are you suffering from a broken heart? Keep this in mind if you are, “love suffers long, but not forever!” That’s the good news of the Gospel today. One day every tear will be wiped away and there will be no more death or dying! Until then, know a broken heart as a result of deep love is a Medal of Honor. To grieve a loss is evidence of a life that is missed and a heart that has loved. Just as important, a broken heart allows us to identify with Christ and serves for us an opportunity to know Him in a way we otherwise could not know Him. Don’t bury the pain, feel it, embrace it and allow it to shape you and bring you closer to Jesus and those you love and who love you. Let your hurt and heartache bring you to Jesus knowing…


“He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds.”


Psalm 147:3


I LOVE YOU!

Michael Osthimer

Recent

Archive

 2024

Categories

no categories

Tags

no tags