Breaking Point

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This week in Melissa Taylor’s Online Bible Studies we studied chapter 10: “Broken for Breakthrough,” in the book “Stressed-Less Living by Tracie Miles.  As one of our blog hop topics, we were asked to write about a breaking point in our life.  For mine, I’m going to share with you all a previous post of mine that I had written last August, just a few months before discovering Proverbs 31 and the online Bible studies.  I think that through it you will see that it was no coincidence that I “stumbled across” these studies just as they were getting ready to begin the “Let. It. Go.” book.  At that time, I was definitely at a breaking point in my life – struggling with physical health problems, fear, lingering post-partum depression, stress-eating, relational and family stress, and on top of all of that, I had fallen away from my close, daily relationship with our Lord.  It was also only a couple months after my Mom had open-heart surgery to repair a birth defect that had gone undiagnosed and as a result had almost killed her…just one month after I originally wrote this post, she died…God turned me back to him knowing how much I was going to need him just a few short weeks later.  God is good. 

 

(from August ’12)

I spent much of my life struggling to hide and stuff down the pain that I felt, so that on the outside, I'd look strong and unbreakable; but it was all a front. Truth was, inside, my pain and sorrow continually cut like a knife, destroying me slowly one tiny piece at a time. I did not always know the Lord, nor have I always understood that my daily struggles in the world could be healed through His Word. While sometimes I find myself briefly falling back into my old habits, the Lord is always there to pick me up and remind me of His truths...

Matter of the Heart




"He heals the broken in heart, and binds up their wounds." ~Psalm 147:3 
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The matter of the heart – it matters to God.  How do we know that? - Because it’s a topic that can be found all throughout the Bible.  In just the last three days I’ve spent digging deeper into Psalm 147:3, I counted the word “heart,” and its many variations, used 75 times in God’s Word.  That’s a lot and I’m sure there are many more still.  This “matter of the heart” has also been an important subject threaded throughout the book “Stressed-Less Living” by Tracie Miles.  Like I shared in a previous post of mine, "A Gift From Above," the lesson that has impacted me the most so far through this book is that God cares more about changing our hearts than he does about changing our circumstances.  This has been affirmed to me again this week, through Psalm 147:3.

When I looked up “broken hearted” in my dictionary, which read: “overcome by grief or despair,” I couldn’t help but also notice a few of the related words and their definitions. 

“Hearten” – encourage, energize, enliven, arouse, rally, rouse, stir

“Heartfelt” – sincere, genuine, honest, true, unfeigned, deep, profound
“Heartless” – unfeeling

What caught my attention in reading these, and maybe perhaps it drew yours too, is that the descriptions of the first two sounds like they’re describing God himself and what he does.  So much so that we could just erase the words “hearten” and “heartfelt” and replace them with “God” in the dictionary.  But then there’s the third one.  Is it just me, or could “unbeliever” possibly be substituted here for “heartless?”  I know that the word “unfeeling” described me before I came to know Christ as my personal savior and it is also how I can start to become again when I wander from him...

Spiritual Vitamins

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It seems that lately I’ve had so many questionable feelings, to the point where I can feel no more; only numbness.  The conflicting emotions have slowed my brain like a drug, taking over the realization that it is my turn to lead this dance.  Instead, I find myself waltzing around in a circle of confusion, battling myself every step of the way.  It’s as though a civil war has erupted inside of me and I’m frozen right in the crossfire of my own thoughts.  I sit here lost in the whirlwind of arrows buzzing by, not knowing which one is pointing in the right direction.  I try to find my way, but the smoke from the bombardment of mixed feelings has stolen my sense of direction and is slowly smothering me.  I run this way and that, finding myself advanced to the front line, where there are no more trenches to shelter me from the battle, only an open field of illusional freedom staring me in the face.

I wrote that sixteen years ago, as a senior in high school who was facing graduation and the prospect of going out into the world on my own for the first time.  I share it with you today because, to me, it illustrates what life looks like when facing it without God…or at least a life without leaning on His strength, power, and wisdom for help and guidance.   It is a painting of a battle met in confusion and ending in defeat because it is one that we can only recognize and win in Him.  It is the battle that is raging all around us for our hearts, our minds, and our souls - the spiritual warfare that the Bible speaks of and warns us about...