God’s Business

How good to sing praises to our God! How delightful and how fitting! The LORD is rebuilding Jerusalem and bringing the exiles back to Israel. He heals the brokenhearted and bandages their wounds. . . . How great is our Lord! His power is absolute!

Psalm 147:1-3, 5

This is one of the great promises of Scripture, assuring us that God specializes in the business of healing the brokenhearted. He has compassion on those who are oppressed by suffering or are crushed in spirit and binds up their emotional wounds. When Joseph was betrayed by his own brothers, separated from his father, and sold into slavery in a strange land, the Lord healed his broken heart. When Naomi was brokenhearted over the deaths of her husband and sons, God healed her grief-stricken soul and gave her grandchildren who brought boundless joy.

Jesus hasn’t changed in his desire to heal the hearts and minds of his people. The name Jehovah-Rapha, the Lord our Healer (see Exodus 15:25-26), doesn’t refer only to the healing of bodies but also to the healing of the inevitable heartaches that afflict us in this broken world. He has compassion on those who experience the pain of divorce, the anguish of losing a child, or the tragedy of having a home torn to shreds in a hurricane.

Do you have a wound that others can’t see, one that time has not healed? The Lord is standing ready to heal your broken heart, your troubled soul. Will you give yourself over to his healing love? The Lord’s power to heal is absolute and continuous. As you humble yourself and ask, the very life of Jesus through the Holy Spirit will flow into your heart and make it new.

All praise to you, Lord Jesus Christ, who carried our sorrow in your own body on the cross. I give you my broken heart and ask you to flood me with your healing power and life. In your name and for your glory, amen.

Come, Thou long-expected Jesus,

born to set Thy people free;

from our fears and sins release us,

let us find our rest in Thee.

“Come, Thou Long-expected Jesus” By Charles Wesley(1707–1788), English minister and hymn writer