“He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds.” Psalm 147:3
The term “broken heart” is referring to the inside person that has been wounded. Similar to the way the body can feel pain, the heart can ache; it can grieve. Emotions may express or not express our heartache, but a broken heart is more than emotional. It is damage or loss to the heart, the person that you are deep within.
A person’s heart can become wounded for a variety of reasons. It can be damaged by the mistreatment, rejection or abandonment of another person. The heart can grieve over losing someone or something. It can hurt after failing. It can feel pain for someone else who is hurting.
There are also many ways that people try to cope with heart pain. Some people try to cover the pain by trying to feel something else – pleasure, anger, revenge. Some try to ignore it by denying their feelings, hardening their heart. Others turn to a substance that stimulates their body or numbs their mind as a distraction from their reality. Some make excuses. Some push the blame on someone else. Others will analyze their experience in order to feel they have their pain under control.
Instead of coping, we can go to God for healing. Instead of covering our hurt, we can ask God to remove our hurt. Just as we can receive healing from God in our bodies on the outside, we can receive healing from God for our hearts on the inside. They both are supernatural miracles. Jesus can heal you anywhere you hurt.
Isaiah 53:4 says, “Surely He [Jesus] has borne our griefs…” In Matthew 8:17 it is translated sicknesses and is used after Jesus healed the physically sick. The word for “griefs” in the Hebrew means, “a disease, whether internal or external.” The prefix “dis” means “away.” When describing disease, it is a condition that takes away a person’s ease. Instead of being “at ease” a person is troubled, whether with a physical sickness in their body or troubled and ill within. Jesus came to bring restoration, not just for our outside, but also for our inside.
Application: In Luke 10:25-37 Jesus tells a parable of a Good Samaritan. In the story, a man is brutally beaten. A Samaritan sees the beaten man and has compassion, cleaning his wounds and taking him to a place to be cared for. What about the people around us who are hurting in their heart? If we could see their wounds, would we have the same compassion as the Good Samaritan? Be sensitive to the Holy Spirit and we must listen to the people around you, and allow God to use you to minister His love and His healing power.