How to Heal a Broken Heart

Broken Heart Syndrome

Broken heart syndrome is a medical condition caused by extreme emotions or stress. It interferes with the heart’s ability to pump blood. It may feel like a heart attack, with shortness of breath and chest pains. An intense emotional reaction causes it. It is usually a temporary condition.1

Broken Heart Pain

Most people with broken hearts never experience broken heart syndrome. Have you experienced a broken heart? Has a lost cherished or wished-for relationship left you feeling abandoned and emotionally tortured?

Has it derailed your life and decreased your ability to function normally? Is the pain preventing you from thinking clearly? Does it block your vision for the future like coins an inch in front of your eyes?

My mother’s death when I was seven and the loss of a job when I was 59 both broke my heart. The emotional pain was as great as any broken bone I had endured. The pain of both diminished with time and God’s intervention.

God Heals the Brokenhearted

The good news is that even when we might retreat from relationships with our hearts pulsating with pain, God draws close to us. He rescues those with crushed spirits and tortured hearts (Psalm 34:18).

God sent my Aunt Elizabeth, a never-married 64-year-old, to replace my deceased 37-year-old mother to help my father raise five boys, ages one, five, seven, seven, and thirteen. My initial tears of grief have given way to tears of gratitude as I reflect on all she did for my family, sacrificially serving us for twenty years. A better stint of sacrificial service you would be hard-pressed to find.

God sent a prophetic prayer on the lips of a man in South Carolina I had never met to heal my heart from the job loss and supernaturally birth hope that fruitful days of Christian service were still ahead. They were, to an extraordinary degree, a story I have told in previous blogs.

Don’t be surprised when many people are unmoved by your pain and try to take advantage of your weakened state.  Wicked people treat others like the dirt from which they were formed. They refuse to be kind.

Instead, they persecute people in their most vulnerable condition: poor, needy, and broken-hearted. They stomp on them instead of offering a helping hand (Psalm 109:16), but God always has the last word.

God is like the Good Samaritan who compassionately and sacrificially ministered to a hurting person (Luke 10:33-34). Jesus’s followers are to go and do likewise (Luke 10:37).

“God heals the brokenhearted and bandages their wounds” (Psalm 147:3 NLT). The healing rarely appears simultaneously with the pain’s emergence, but it is sure. The delay is because God gets our attention amid pain in a way He doesn’t when all is well.

Good News for the Hurting

The messages of Jesus, the Messiah, were healing, renewing, and freeing for those whom Satan oppressed. Like the wicked stomping the helpless in Psalm 109:16 to the ultimate extent, Satan strives to steal, kill, and destroy (John 10:10). Jesus came to rescue us from his domination.

“The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is upon me, for the Lord has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to comfort the brokenhearted and to proclaim that captives will be released and prisoners will be freed” (Isaiah 61:1 NLT). Jesus’ mission is the good news He preaches.

By God’s grace, through faith in Jesus’s death, burial, and resurrection, God sets us free from perpetual brokenhearted living. See additional free spiritual growth resources for Christians.  #freediscipleshipresources #freeevangelismresources #freechristianleadershipresources 

1.     Broken heart syndrome - Symptoms and causes - Mayo Clinic

See free spiritual growth resources for Christians at https://www.christiangrowthresources.com

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