I want to talk to you about pain; not the kind that you can deal with by taking a tablet. I’m not talking about physical pain. I want to talk to you about the pain of the heart.
It’s the kind of pain that sometimes you don’t even realise is there until one day you wake up tormented by your feelings and with your heart twisted up in knots. It’s the kind of pain whose symptoms are easy to miss because it’s often too easy blame them on others.
The most common symptom of hurt is anger. We are angry at others for causing our pain. We may even blame God himself. Because we ultimately can’t keep anger bottled up inside us, we have to direct it at someone else. We have to find a way to justify it. Sometimes, instead of blaming to others, we just blame ourselves and destroy ourselves and with us, those around us. That’s what happens when we are suffering from pain within. Either way, we suffer, and those around us suffer as well.
It’s easy to blame others for pain of the heart. After all, we’ve all been hurt by others, right? And the first thing that pain of the heart does is to scramble our thoughts so that we cannot think outside ourselves. Then we build walls around our hearts and lives to protect them against being hurt, so that no-one can get in. And finally it makes all our thoughts and actions selfish.
That’s what happens when hurt is not dealt with. And there’s only one way to deal with it, only one way to heal. But to access this healing, we need help from the outside of ourselves. We cannot do it alone. Accepting that is often the hardest step.
Anger is usually a warning sign that we need to forgive.
There is only one solution for a hurting heart. It’s not an easy cure, but it’s a certain cure. And there is only one solution. You will never lose that pain and be free and healed until you are willing to accept it.
Whatever the cause of that pain, healing is only possible through the way of forgiveness. Most often we need to forgive others, sometimes we need to forgive ourselves, and sometimes even God. Anger is usually a warning sign that we need to forgive, to heal the pain in our heart.
It’s usually when the pain becomes too great to bear that people reach rock-bottom. It’s only then that they may reach out for help outside of themselves, and come to understand their need to forgive. But this realisation comes through travelling a slow and painful road.
The alternatives are unthinkable. However, in the same way as it perhaps took a long time for your heart to be wounded, so too you must be patient as God heals it step by step.
Forgiveness is as essential to the soul as breathing is to the body. Like breathing, we must learn to allow forgiveness to flow into us from God, through every part of us, and out from us to others. And if you will accept it, that’s how healing comes.
Article supplied with thanks to Dr Eliezer Gonzalez.
About the Author: Dr Eli Gonzalez is the Senior Pastor of Good News Unlimited and the presenter of the Unlimited radio spots, and The Big Question.