Caring for the Hurting

“Do you want to know that your [Christian] life is real? Commit yourself to a local group of saved sinners. Try to love them. Don’t just do it for three weeks. Don’t just do it for six months. Do it for years. And I think you’ll find out, and others will, too, whether or not you love God. The truth will show itself.”   Mark Dever

  When you read your Bible, do you find that the Psalms are encouraging? Do they often touch your heart? As you read them, do you sometimes feel that David has been peeking into your soul? Think for a moment. Do you think his greatest burdens, heartaches, sorrows were physical or emotional?

  I think we’d all have to agree that they were emotional. As you read the Psalms, it’s apparent that David was not struggling with physical pain but emotional pain – depression, fear, rejection, loneliness…to name a few.

  Most of our greatest hurts are not physical. They’re emotional and they’re spiritual. God powerfully brought that home to me just recently.

  Recently, I ran into a friend that I’d not seen in several months. Looking back, somehow I knew that something wasn’t quite right. Eventually, in our conversation he shared that he and his wife had gotten divorced. He was a broken man. I remember previously, just a few years before when he’d shared with me about their recent trip to China for the funeral of his wife’s father and how fulfilling that had been for him. Yet, here he was in retirement, looking forward to spending his retirement years with the love of his life, now attempting to put on a stoic face, but broken, hurting and confused.

  Let’s go back to the book of Psalms – here’s David, a man who Scripture describes as “a man after God’s own heart” (Acts 13:22), baring His soul not only to God but to us. The reason we find such encouragement and hope there is that we are reminded that we are not alone. We are not the only ones who struggle with depression, discouragement, worry, fear and a myriad of other emotions.

  Interestingly, for some reason anger or impatience are appropriate emotions to express and admit in our culture (maybe they’re seen as power emotions while others are seen as signs of weakness). But depression, grief, anxiety, fear or discouragement are possibly admitted to the closest of friends, but often not even there. We often wait until we find someone we can “pay” to share our heart with, a therapist or some other professional counselor. Sometimes we might share them with a pastor because he’s considered “safe.”

  If you’re a parent, you’ve gone through this. Your child came home from school. They’re discouraged, hurt or wounded. It probably started with a conversation like this. You notice something is wrong and you ask, “What’s wrong?” They retort, “Nothing!” Usually, eventually, particularly if you have a healthy relationship with them, it all comes pouring out.

  But what if you’re child never shared that they were hurt or struggling, would that be normal? Healthy? Of course not. Often you may not have the answer but what they most need is for you to listen and to care. They need you to pray with them and for them, not necessarily give them the solutions right away. That’s what family does. We love, care, help and pray with each other as we walk through life’s hurts. If that’s normal for family, shouldn’t it be normal with our church family? So why isn’t that the case?

  1). We really don’t know each other. Most of us won’t share our hearts with those we don’t know. Please understand, we can’t know each other unless we spend time with each other. That’s why even activities like last Sunday’s 60’s Party are so important – we start getting to know each other. It’s why small groups and Sunday Morning Live classes are so important – we start getting to know each other. That’s why we break you into even smaller groups in those classes – we want you to get to know each other, to begin to peel back the layers. If we don’t know each other, we’ll never feel safe with each other, safe enough to share our burdens and cares.

  2) We must realize that God has designed all of us with emotions. Usually, when someone shares their heart, there’s a sense of discomfort both on their part and everyone that just heard their “feeling.” Wow! What’s going on here! Someone let a feeling get loose. How did that happen? Someone catch that feeling and stuff it back in a drawer. We can’t have feelings running around loose. Yet, we all have feelings, even pastors. Every emotion that you feel and struggle with, everyone else at our church has too. Do you worry? So does everyone else? Do you get discouraged? So does everyone else? Do you periodically feel hopeless, depressed? So does everyone else?

  Currently, it weighs on me that our building hasn’t sold yet. I know that it’s in God’s hands and we’re on His timeline, yet it still weighs on me. I know that until we’re able to move and build a new facility, our ministry is terribly handicapped. The needs of our community and the many lost and hopeless folk I meet, weigh very heavily on my heart. I need your prayer support that my faith will deepen during this point in our church’s history.

  3) We must want and be ready to help. Simply put, we must care and love others. As believers, we have the best heart medicine available. We’re to love each other as God loves us. We have the Father’s promises (that means that we must know our Bibles). We can pray for each other (that means we need to know how to pray).

  Please understand that I’m not suggesting we indiscriminately share our hearts. Yet, as we’ve been working through in our current series, Me to We, God designed us for relationships. It’s part of our DNA. It’s who we are as image-bearers of God. So in a church family, we must build those relationships with brothers and sisters outside of our immediate family that we can share our hearts with and who can share their hearts with us. It will lighten our burden and help us grow – both by caring, being cared for and even having someone share with us those things that we can’t see because we’ve lost perspective.

  That’s normal church family and the church that the Father intends for us! At Grace, we want our church family to grow by seeing lost folk come to know Jesus and we want to grow by having His love pour through us as we love, care and share with each other as a church family!