How to Heal Broken Hearts

In Luke 4 and verse 18 is a very interesting scripture, because this particular scripture describes the ministry of Jesus Christ. It describes what he was going to do when he came to the earth the first time and what he will do in the future when he comes back to this earth. Look at verse 18. We read, The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor.

He has sent me to heal the brokenhearted. Today we want to focus on the aspect of the ministry of Jesus Christ, which is to heal the brokenhearted. This is a passage that is taken from Isaiah chapter 61. It reveals that the healing of broken hearts is an important part of the ministry of Jesus Christ. It is something that he considers so important that it's included here in the scripture. As we will see, it's also something that will apply to us very much in the future. Have you or I ever had a broken heart? Or maybe a better way of saying that. Is there anybody in here who's not had a broken heart? Now, I'm not talking about romance. I'm not talking about somebody who said, well, my girlfriend or boyfriend broke my heart. But I'm talking about legitimately what we mean by a broken heart. The symptoms of a broken heart are all very much familiar. They include hurt feelings, emotional pain, insecurity, worry, fear, rejection, anger, depression, anguish, sorrow, grief. You could go on and on.

What we need to ask ourselves is there hope for a broken heart? Jesus Christ indicated that there was. He was sent and part of what healing is all about. We know that God can heal our bodies. We know that God can heal us in many different ways. But one of the areas that God will heal us in is a broken heart. When somebody breaks your heart—and this happens many times when you're perhaps caught off guard—you're betrayed. Somebody's shocking behavior, loss of a loved one, the death of a loved one. Our betrayal or in some way you're a marriage off kilter and we become upset, discouraged, despondent over that type of thing. It's very easy to begin to lose heart, to begin to give up all hope, and to think that this will never be resolved. How can we resolve or take care of this? So, brethren, we want to take a look at this topic today and discover what we can do, steps that we can take. We're going to take a look at six steps that are there that will help us to cope and deal with the powerful emotions that we all have to deal with from time to time. I don't think there are many here in this room who have not gone through some of this. Turning back to Psalm 147, Psalm 147, verse 3, right in the middle of these verses, here's a verse that basically states, he, referring to God, heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds. So, one of the jobs, one of the responsibilities, one of the duties that God has is, in working with his people, to heal the brokenhearted. And eventually, we know in the millennium that this is also going to be a job that will be extended to us along with Jesus Christ. So, how does God actually work in a person's life to heal a broken heart, to help us to overcome? Well, Jesus Christ begins to show us in, let's go over to Matthew chapter 11, and we'll begin to read here in verse 28, Matthew chapter 11, and verse 28. Notice what Jesus Christ says here. He tells us, come to me, all you who labor, and are heavy laden.

So, whatever the burden is that we might be carrying, the heavy laden says, and I will give you rest. So, God promises to give us relief from that, rest from that. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls, for my yoke is easy, and my burden is light. Christ invites us to come to Him, to unburden ourselves to Him, to be refreshed, to be revitalized, and we find that that's what we want to take a look at today. How do we go about doing that? What are the steps that we need to go through? I think there is an outstanding example in the Old Testament, one that you and I can learn from. We realize that these examples are recorded for us to learn and to pattern our lives. We have the example of the patriarch Job. I think that's a good place that we can begin the sermon today. And reviewing some of the steps involved in emotional healing. How do we heal emotionally?

The first thing that we need to do, step number one, is to acknowledge and properly express the hurt.

It's not to deny that you're hurting. It's not to say that it's not occurring or it didn't occur, but to acknowledge it and properly express it. How do you express it? Through anger, through bitterness, through resentfulness? Is there a right and a wrong way? Well, let's go back to the book of Job. Job chapter 1, beginning in verse 13. We're familiar with the story of Job. And you'll notice here in Job chapter 1 verse 13. Job had been going along and everything was going great for Job. He had 10 children. He was wealthy. He was one of the greatest men of the east. He was respected, a man of wisdom, a man of character. And he had been blessed in all of his works. And I want you to notice beginning in verse 13. One day, although that comes crumbling down around him, and how would you feel if you were in Job's place? Verse 13. Now there was a day when his sons and daughters were eating and drinking wine in their oldest brother's house, and the messenger came to Job and said, Well, the oxen were plowing, and the donkeys feeding beside them. And then the Sabeans, raided, took them away, killed all your servants, and I only am left.

And then while he was still speaking, another came and said, Well, fire came down from heaven.

The fire of God, he attributes this to God, came down from heaven, burned up the sheep and the servants consumed them. I alone have escaped, to tell you this. While he's speaking, another came and said, Well, the Chaldeans formed three bands. They came along, they raided the camels, took them away, killed all your servants. I alone am left alive. Now that's pretty devastating to have all your wealth wiped out in just a few minutes. And then, while he was yet speaking, another also came and said, Your sons and daughters were eating and drinking wine in their oldest brother's house. And suddenly a great wind came from across the wine wilderness, struck the four corners of the house that fell on the young people. They're dead. So now, all of his children, you wouldn't think all ten of them would die at the same time, but they did. So his family is ripped away from him, his wealth is stripped from him. And notice, Job arose in Torrey's robe. Obviously, this was a traumatic experience for him. And he shaved his head, and he fell to the ground in worship. And he said, Naked came I from my mother's womb, and naked shall I return there. The Lord gave, the Lord has taken away, blessed be the name of the Lord. And all this Job did not sin nor charge God with wrong. He didn't curse God, he didn't shake his fist in God's face. This man was suddenly faced with a number of huge trials that he had to confront and deal with. Now, you and I can only imagine how Job felt. Try to put yourself in his place. Here he's stripped, family taking away. And then in chapter 2, guess what? He has boils from his head to his toes. He's in utter agony, sheer pain. He's sitting on an ash heap, and he's just suffering. Now, he was personally afflicted with these boils. There are many verses, many chapters throughout the book of Job, that reveal how Job continued to acknowledge and express his deep emotion, his grief. Notice chapter 2, verse 12. Chapter 2, verse 12, three of his friends came to visit him.

A life as a team and I built at the Shuhi and Zophar and the Nehemite. They came to comfort him.

And when they raised their eyes from afar, they did not recognize him. And they lifted their voices and they wept. And each one tore his robe, sprinkled dust on his head towards the heaven. So they sat down with him on the ground seven days and seven nights, and no one spoke a word to him.

So this shows this wasn't something that just came one day, disappeared the next. For a solid week they're sitting there, they don't know what to say. And for the says for they saw that his grief was very great. So here was Job and his grief was great. This was something he was grieving over. This is not something that he just sort of passed off. You know, he was emotional about it and he felt deep emotional pain and grief over what had occurred.

Now, when you look at other examples in the Bible, let's go back to the book of Deuteronomy 34 and verse 5. Deuteronomy 34 verse 5, we find that Moses died, the servant of God. Moses had been with the children of Israel for 40 years, had led them out of Egypt, brought them through the wilderness. You know, he's the one who would strike the rock, the water would come, he's the one who prayed, and God said, manna and quail and so on.

He was a leader, and when he died, the people mourned him for 30 days, as we read here in verse 5. Moses, the servant of the Lord, died in the land of Moab, according to the word of the Lord, and he buried him in a valley in the land of Moab, opposite Beth Peor. But no one knows his grave to this day. And Moses was 120 years old when he died. His eyes were not dimmed, or his natural vigor diminished. He could have gone on living. But God had told Moses he was not going to enter into the Promised Land. So Joshua then was selected to lead the people into the Promised Land. And the children of Israel wept for Moses in the plains of Moab 30 days. So the days of weeping and mourning for Moses ended. So the people were deeply moved by this. They had lost their leader. This was the man that they looked to and trusted to lead and guide them. He obviously had contact with God, as verse 10 shows, that since then there has not arisen in Israel a prophet like Moses whom the Lord knew face to face. So God would come and talk to him face to face. And so that had not occurred since then. Do you remember the example of King David back in 2 Samuel 18? 2 Samuel chapter 18 verse 33. 2 Absalon, his son, had rebelled against David. David had to flee the city of Jerusalem. Absalon had produced a coup against David. And yet when Absalon was killed, David didn't stand up and rejoice, notice his feelings. Then the king was deeply moved and went up to the chamber over the gate and wept. As he went, he said thus, O my son Absalon, my son, my son Absalon, if only I died in your place, O Absalon, my son, my son. So he wept for him. He was deeply moved.

Rather than when a loved one dies, your mate dies, your parents die, you die. We all go through a grieving process, do we not? And God created us that way. There's nothing wrong with that. We have to grieve. We have to get the emotions out.

The time following the death of a loved one is a time when we really need encouragement, comfort, strength from others as well as from God. And this is a time when God shows that he really does care for us. Whether we experience the loss of a loved one or hurt from words that are misspoken, often of all of us at one time or another, lost or cool, said something in anger and later on wish we hadn't said that. And there's no retracting words, are they? Once you say them, guess what? You don't come along and erase them. They're out there, and so you have to ask for forgiveness. We all need time to express our feelings, our hurt, our love, and our loss.

And one of the biggest things in doing this that all of us need is we need someone that we can trust that you can divulge your feelings too. That's not just everyone. We all have close friends. We all have people that we're close to. If we know we go and talk to them, that that individual will understand you and that they will know how you feel and that they will not divulge to others. Some people you talk to, you realize if you say it to them, pretty soon everybody in the whole block or the whole neighborhood or the church will know about it. Now we're talking about someone who's a special friend. I've mentioned this before, but on many occasions my wife has said something and I've told her, well you shouldn't feel like that. She immediately comes back and tells me, don't you tell me how I should feel? And that's true because what somebody is looking for is not someone who's going to correct them, but someone who will listen to them, be empathetic to them, understand, and we need to find out how they feel. Sometimes it can take a lifetime to resolve or cope with some hurts. We need other human beings who care for us, who will listen to us, who will acknowledge our pain and our suffering, who will be there to just help us. And we also need to be able to express to God Almighty our deepest feelings. There are things that you can go and talk to God about that you can never talk to another human being about because you know that He is your Father, He understands, and so you talk to Him. So the first thing that we need to do, brethren, is to acknowledge and properly respond to the hurt, to the feelings that we have.

Second thing that we need to do, second step ties in closely with that, we need to deal with anger, we need to deal with resentment, bitterness, and hatred. We need to deal with these negative emotions that can come up. Our emotions have an amazing capacity for good or evil. They can be strong emotions for good or they can be strong emotions in a negative sense. Our failure to deal with powerful negative emotions can have lasting devastating consequences on all of us. You can't just pretend they're not there, you need to deal with those. The Apostle Paul, back in Ephesians 4, 26 and verse 27, Ephesians 4, 26, explains the importance of handling our anger in a proper way, an appropriate way. When he says, be angry and do not sin, generally human anger is going to lead us into wrong actions. So here he says, be angry, do not sin, do not let the sun go down on your wrath, nor give place to the devil. You and I, if we don't control our emotions properly, we open the door up for Satan the devil. We just say, come on in, and then he's able to come in and influence us in a way that we certainly do not want. Anger is not always a sin, however, it can very easily lead to sin. How often do we get angry or wrathful? And the first thing you know, you say something, do something, and later on you regret. Also, unresolved anger can be like a spiritual cancer that gnaws at us, that eats at us. We know that cancer in the body can be very destructive because it begins to consume the good cells around it and spread. The same thing about unresolved anger. Sometimes we have anger, it's there, we just sort of push it down, hoping it'll go away. It doesn't go away, it's still there. And if we allow that to go on, it can spill over into many of our relationships that we have with others. Emotional maturity plays a very vital part in our lives. Several years ago, Mr. Armstrong wrote an article that deals with the secret of going on to spiritual perfection. Many of you may remember this booklet from years ago. There's a hidden enemy in your home.

And I felt over the years it was a very good booklet. I've referred to it on numerous occasions in various sermons. Let me read from this, and then I'll, in going over this and re-looking at it, I noticed a number of further quotes from this.

Mr. Armstrong wrote, the great tragedy of our generation is that nearly all people mature physically and perhaps half to two-thirds mature mentally. So let's hope we're in that group that have matured mentally. But very few ever grow up emotionally or spiritually. The time to start that emotional growing up is the same time mental training has begun. It should be started in the home within the first months of a child's life. He asked the question, what is emotional maturity? It is not something to be learned about as a college graduate. It is something that ought to begin and be taught long before the first grade in the home.

It is a technical art of putting into practice the Ten Commandments. Emotional maturity, notice, is putting into practice God's law, the Ten Commandments, living by those. One author defines emotional maturity as development from the state of taking to the state of giving. Taking is the way of Satan. Giving is the way of God. Love is giving. A little baby learns generally only how to take. He will take his bottle, his rattler, his toy. It becomes a human nature to take. Humans know absolutely nothing at birth. Humans must be taught to give.

Giving is something that has to be learned. Taking is something that almost seems to come natural, because that is the way of Satan the devil, and he influences mankind in that way. All human beings are actuated by their emotions. An emotion is a strong feeling, a disturbance, a departure from the normal calm state of rational thinking and acting of an impulse towards an action that has not been reasoned and approved by the mind. Among the emotions are such impulses as fear, anger, disgust, grief, joy, surprise, and yearnings. The first cousin to emotions are our moods.

An emotionally immature person is usually one who is moody, and has never learned to control his moods. If I am, then perhaps I have not matured to the degree that I should have matured. God intended that man's mind direct his actions. As a child, he had been pampered. You have to stop and ask yourself, is this describing a whole generation of young people growing up, or they've been told that they're the greatest? That anything they want to do, they can do it. Of course, they're not necessarily taught that in order to achieve, you've got to do something.

You've got to be responsible, and you've got to really work at it. But as a child that had been pampered, petted, spoiled, permitted to have his way, never taught self-restraint, self-control, or how to understand his moods, feelings, and desires, and to control and guide them according to the sound reasoning of the mind, instead of impossibly following them without mental direction.

But letting feelings, moods, and impulses dominate his mind, instead of making his mind rationally, wisely directing them. So our mind should be able to direct our emotions, not the other way around. One is not a fully mature man or woman, as God intended until emotionally and spiritually maturity has been reached. It should be started in the home within the first month of a child's life. Remember, the training of the emotions involves control, right directions of feelings, temper and pulses. It means control over anger, jealousy, hatred, fear, grief, resentment, selfishness, vanity.

And since right direction is the way of God's law, and since this is the way of love, the principles of giving, instead of taking, means teaching your children. To give. Our children have to learn to give. Yelling, loud talking, bursts of temper, rudeness, all these are a lack of emotional growth. Ever seen a child in the store throw a temper tantrum? Ever been in toys or us or some toy store and they're going through buying toys? And here's a little child, maybe two years old, three.

I want, I want, no you can't have it. I want it, though. And then the child begins to cry, begins to scream, falls on the floor, begins to kick and pound the floor. And of course, parents are deeply embarrassed. They turn all shades of red. And the first thing you know, you hear them, they grab this child and try to cover its mouth. If you don't be good, I'm going... They start whispering to the child, wait till we get out to the car, and all of these threats.

The problem is, the child has already learned to get his own way. All he has to do is scream, yell. He hasn't been taught that if you do that, there's a direct correlation or punishment that's going to happen. And to control himself. So you have to begin to teach a child. True spirituality, therefore, is sound-mindedness, for true spirituality can come only from the Spirit of God within us. Even though the emotional is physical reaction, it does truly accompany or react from true spiritual experience.

But it's not a substitute for it. So you and I, he says to sum it up, then that the emotional mature combine the controlled expression of emotion with physical health and an educated mind that is Spirit-begotten and Spirit-led. In other words, emotional maturity develops hand-in-hand with physical, mental, and spiritual growth. The four blend into, and finally, the perfect spiritual character that we have come here to develop. So you and I are in the process of developing that character.

So a child has to be taught. The problem is, many of us miss that fundamental teaching as we were growing up. And we weren't taught that growing up. And so we're having to learn it. Emotional maturity is the ability to properly express and control our emotions, and consequently our attitudes, our thoughts, and our actions. Over here in chapter 4 of the book of Ephesians, chapter 4 and verse 31, we read chapter 4 of the book of Ephesians, verse 31, Let all bitterness, all wrath, all anger, all clamor, and evil speaking be put away from you with all malice.

These type of things we're to put away. They're not to dominate us and be kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving one another, even as God in Christ forgave you. Powerful negative emotions can have the potential to devastate us emotionally and spiritually. We must not allow the negative emotions to control us and to control our lives. Okay, brethren, moving on to the third step. The third step that we need to think about is releasing the hurt and being at peace with ourselves and with others. We have to learn to release the hurt, to give it up.

Sometimes we fail to relinquish and release the hurt and the pain and the agony. We take it with us. If we don't do this, we don't give it up. Peace will not come. Peace will remain in the lucid quality for us. We'll be struggling with our emotions and our feelings, wondering why we can't overcome them, why we can't do anything. Do we have a responsibility to pursue peace with others? Romans 12, verse 18, We read, as is possible, as much as depends upon you, live peacefully with all men. So we should strive to live peacefully with everyone. In Philippians 4, verse 9, we read an interesting scripture about God.

Philippians 4, verse 9, It says, These things which we learned, and received, and heard, and saw in me, these do. And the God of peace will be with you. God is a God of peace. That's His nature. And God will be with us. He will give us of His peace. And His peace is vastly different from the peace that we know in the world. There is a peace in this world, which is preparation for the next war, but there is a peace that comes from God, as verse 7 tells us. The peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, is beyond the understanding of human beings when God's Spirit comes on us.

And one of the fruits of that Spirit is peace, love, joy. That we have that peace, it passes all understanding, and will guard your hearts. So it guards our hearts. It protects us and minds through Christ Jesus. So we have God's Spirit. That Spirit, that peace, is there to guard us, to guide us, and direct us. I won't read this. We covered it last week, 2 Corinthians. 2 Corinthians 1, verses 3 through 4. We discover that God is a God of all comfort, a God of all encouragement, a God who is there to help us whenever we go through any type of problem or trial.

And why does God do this? So that we can turn around and help other people. That's why. Because God wants us to be able to serve others. God is in the process of preparing a bride for his son. And that bride must have the same attitude, same approach, as the son has. You and I need to spend time sometimes with friends and expressing our concern, those that we can truly trust that might help us to relieve the hurt.

Sometimes when you're going through something, you just need to talk to someone else. And that's where it's a blessing to have both mates where you can sit down and go over things, talk to each other about it. So we need to be able to release the hurt.

We need to have peace. We need to pray to God that God will give us that peace that passes all understanding, in spite of the trials we go through. Then that brings us to a critical point, point number four, or step four, which is forgiveness. This is one of those very difficult things to do, to forgive one another. Are we willing to forgive others when they hurt us? Are we able to say, I forgive you? This can be extremely difficult for us to do. Be willing to forgive others certainly does not mean that it's always wise to reestablish or even continue in a relationship.

I'm not talking about that if you're in an abusive relationship, that you have to go back into it. God does not expect us to stay in and continue or reestablish an abusive relationship. There are situations where a mate abuses, you may be a man, his wife, to the point that for her own sanity and health she has to get out of that. To forgive doesn't mean you have to go back into it. It just means that you're willing to forgive.

It is true that you and I are not capable, humanly, of forgiving in the same way that God forgives. When God forgives, God forgives the sin. Only God forgives sin. We cannot forgive sin. So God forgives our sins, and when we repent, our sins are covered, removed from us, as far as east from the west. The way that we learn to forgive is to cancel the debt or pardon the offense. Somebody does something against you, and you are deeply upset over that.

And yet, you know that this is bothering you. They shouldn't have done it. That's what it means to cancel the debt. Somebody owes you a debt. They owe you money. And you tell them, look, I canceled the debt. Don't worry about it. It's forgiven. You don't have to pay me back. There are times when you have to do that. You have to pardon the offense. Why is this important? Because it deals with our emotions. We're talking about what you do to help you handle your own emotional state. Because if you keep bitterness or resentment or anger or animosity against someone, and that just feeds on you, it's going to tear you up emotionally.

And it's going to ruin your health. There have been people who've been angry, bitter against someone for years and decades. The other person may not even know it at all. But you know it. And if that's what goes on, you are hurting your health. Because those wrong emotions will have an effect upon our minds, on our emotions, on our overall health. And a lot of times, this is where people have this type of problem. In Matthew chapter 18, notice Peter. Peter came to Jesus Christ and said, Well, how often should I forgive my brother?

He thought he was probably being generous. He said seven times. Well, notice what Christ said. I'm sure this surprised Peter. Verse 21, Matthew 18. Peter came to him and said, Lord, how often shall my brother sin against me?

And I forgive him. Up to seven times. And Jesus said to him, I do not say to you up to seven times. But seventy times seven. Every time he sins, you forgive him. Obviously, he has sinned. It's hard for us to hate the sin and to love the sinner.

It's hard for us to separate the offense from the offender. Some offenses against us are so traumatic that we don't want to forget them. We've all had things happen to us. They're not going to go away. They're there. But at some point, we have to relinquish the past. We have to be willing not to carry grudges. The easiest thing is to carry a grudge against somebody else, but to forgive them and not hold that grudge against them.

There are times that we just have to cry out to God and say, Father, the thought is there. It's never going to go away. But help me not to be bitter, resentful, and hold a grudge over this. So we have to be willing to forgive. That brings us to the fifth step, and that is the restoration of our human spirit.

There is a restoring that we need to go through. We need to be restoring. Remember Psalm 23, Psalm 23. The Lord is my shepherd, verse 1. I shall not want. He makes me to lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside distilled waters. What else does it say? He restores my soul. He leads me in the path of righteousness for His name's sake. So we find that one of the works that God does is to restore our soul, to restore us, to make us whole again, to help us. What does restoration of the human spirit entail? What must we do? It includes mending, repairing our minds, our hearts, our emotional status, our balance. Our human spirit needs to be revived. It means to allow God to do His marvelous work within us, of spiritual transforming in us. When God gives us His spirit, there is a transformation that begins to take place within us. There is something spiritual within us. There is a power within us, the power of God that imparts to us the very nature of God and begins to have the outlook of God. We need to do as 2 Corinthians chapter 4 tells us. We need to begin to have a worldview that is no longer temporary. Most people's worldview is very temporary. As long as they've got a job, married, they don't want anybody to upset that. They just want to get along, continue to make money, keep the American dream going. That's it. Our worldview has to go beyond just the physical, the temporary. It has to go to the eternal. In verse 17, let's read verse 16.

Now, when we're going through something, it doesn't seem so light, does it? The Bible says, While we do not look at the things that are seen, but at the things that are not seen, for the things which are seen are temporary. This physical is temporary. But the things that are not seen are eternal. God's kingdom, God, the angels, His rule. We find His throne, the New Heavens, or the New Jerusalem, I should say. These things are things that are eternal, that are going to last. This physical will not last. We have to have a worldview of looking to the future, knowing that that's what we're striving for. The physical is here. We are physical. We hurt when things go wrong. But yet, we can still move forward.

We know that emotions are a vital part of who we are. And we need to understand that sometimes there are some things that will take a long time to heal. One time, I broke my leg, my right leg, playing softball. Somebody threw a bat into my shin. And I happened to be standing in the wrong place. It hit me right in the shin bone and popped it. It took me three months. Now, what if I decided that that bone was healed after a month? Well, I could have taken the cast off and everything else, but I wouldn't have been able to walk on it. Now, you leave that on until you heal. The same thing is true. Sometimes spiritual healing takes a while. It's not something that's just going to happen instantaneously in all cases, depending on what we're going through. Complete healing requires time. One of the best things I can encourage anyone to do is to read the Psalms. If you find that you're going through this type of process, go back and reread the Psalms of David. Many times, David cried out, Well, how long, O Lord? He wanted God to intervene on his behalf.

So, he would cry out and God would intervene. So, we need to make sure that we do that. We study those things that are going to give us encouragement. That brings us to step number six, which is probably the one step that many people truly fail to do. That is, forget the past and reach forward toward the future. You and I live in the present. We look forward to the future. An hour from now is my future. Tomorrow will be my future. A year from now, if I'm alive, will be my future. Right now is the only moment I can live in. Presently, I can plan for the future. But so many people are stuck in the past. They live in the past. That's where they exist in the past. You and I cannot do that. Yes, there are things that have happened to us in the past that have a tremendous influence. But we can't just be living there and not living in the moment and looking to the future. God has called us to the greatest future that any human being could ever have to be a son and daughter in his kingdom. How you and I live the remainder of our life is something we need to think about. What if you were Saul of Tarsus?

Put yourself in the shoes of Saul of Tarsus. Before his calling and conversion, Paul had been zealously persecuting the Church. He threw people in jail. He separated families. He was there when Stephen was martyred. He apparently had Christians killed. He was a one-man wrecking crew in the early New Testament Church. Yet God called him. I am sure that when God opened his mind and Paul began to think about all that he had done, that he was absolutely devastated. He felt guilty. For the first time in his life, he understood what had happened. But how did Paul allow God to heal him emotionally?

You and I could live the rest of our lives. Feeling guilty, berating ourselves, beating ourselves over the head. I think this is one reason why Paul, when he wrote on a number of occasions, said, I am the least of all the apostles. I am the least Christian because he realized where he came from. But did he just live back there? Did that hold him back? Let's go over to the book of Philippians. Did he allow himself to live just in the past, or did he move forward? Let's notice what he wrote in Philippians 3, beginning in verse 13. Paul said, Brethren, I do not count myself to have apprehended, but one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forward to those things that are ahead, I press toward the goal of the prize of the upward calling of God. That's what he did. So he said, forgetting those things which are behind, and there are a lot of things that that could include. He said, I press toward the goal of the prize of the upward calling of God. And so he pushed forward for the kingdom of God. Therefore, let us, as many, as our mature, have this mind, and if in anything you think otherwise, God will reveal even this to you. Brethren, we should realize that we can't just live in the past. We learn, we repent. There are things that I've done years ago that come back to my mind occasionally. I go to God and ask him to help me with those to remove them. But I don't just live back there because there's something that I've been called to do now. We've all been called by God to become a part of his kingdom. Stop and think about it. When Jesus Christ comes to this earth, the resurrection takes place. The bride of Christ will be changed made immortal. The son and the bride will be a married supper. We will then, beyond the same plane, same level, have in this life, by the experiences that we've gone through, learn how to deal with our own broken hearts, learn how to deal with our own emotions, learn how to deal with what we've gone through. Then we will be able to take that and go in the world tomorrow to those who come out of the tribulation, those who come out of prison, those who come out of slave camp, those who for three and a half years have been in the tribulation suffering. We will be able to deal with them. They will have known the loss of family members. They will have seen maybe hundreds of thousands of people die. You and I will be there to help them, to comfort them. How will we know to do that? We're learning it right now. We're experiencing what we go through, so that we might, as 2 Corinthians 1 says, turn around and comfort and encourage and help all those individuals. We would never choose to just have a broken heart. That's not something we'd say, well, I choose that. The agony and the recovery is sometimes too unbearable to go through. But yet, the Bible reveals that we have a high priest who suffered in all points as we have, yet without sin, he sympathizes with our weaknesses. Jesus understands our sorrows, our pains. In verse 53, he says that he's gone through the suffering, the pains, and the agony. He's experienced what we have experienced. He's our comforter. He's there to counsel our companion. He's there to help us, to heal us, so that we can move forward. So, brethren, let's take these points and realize the process of emotional healing is not easy. It doesn't always happen overnight, but it can be one of the greatest challenges that we all have in our lives. God can, and He will help us. He will restore us. He will heal us. That's one of the promises that He gives to us. So, let's go to God in faith and rely upon Him to heal our broken hearts.