ABC's Father Heart of God "H" Heart Healer

Have you "known" God, our Abba as the healer of your heart? Have you seen shattered, wounded places restored?
When we have a wounded place, a hurting place, we want to feel better. Generally we want to feel better RIGHT NOW or yesterday would be good too.
So often, we turn to BEEPS. I love the term BEEPS, its from James Wilder's Life Model Resources.  His heart is for healing of addictions and trauma.  BEEPS is an acronym, “an attachment to a Behavior, Event, Experience, Person or Substance (BEEPS) that is used to regulate emotion, increase pleasure or decrease pain.” BEEPS is a very useful concept, because it describes the neurochemical process of attachment that is at the root of all addictions. They have brain data, research to document it and are Christian/ Christ centered in all their teaching.

http://www.lifemodel.org/download/AddictionAttachmentThriving.pdf

This goes well with the CR definition of Hurt, Habit, Hang-up
What is a Hurt, Habit or Hang-up?
• Hurt: a reaction to another’s behavior or a situation (e.g. abuse, abandonment, co-dependence, divorce, etc.)
•
• Habit: addiction or compulsive use of someone or something (e.g. alcohol, drugs, food, porn, gambling, etc.)
•
• Hang-up: negative mental attitudes regarding others or adversity (e.g. anger, fear, bitterness, anxiety, controlling, etc.)
 God is the one who is the PERFECT "BEEPS" and the healer for the root cause of every hurt, habit an hang-up.
Tonight we are going to study The ABCs of the Father Heart of GOD, "H". God is our heart-healer.

We are looking at verses and sharing what we notice about God or how we are to respond to the verse...Please use either mic or type to respond and the (!) so everyone can share. Your thoughts are important.
So glad you are here.
Lets pray.. would anyone like to open us in prayer?

Have you ever had a broken heart?

Has your heart ever been broken over sin? Your own sin that sometimes you think you simply will never stop either doing or wanting to do?

Or perhaps your heart was broken as a small child by someone else’s sin. Maybe someone who you trusted. A parent, a relative, a neighbor or a stranger.

Is your heart broken right now?
Over a relationship that ended by death, divorce or some other way? By desperate loneliness? Fear? Shame? Loss of health? A medical diagnosis? Financial loss?

There is no way we can go through life without experiencing a broken heart. In the bible we are told, When (not if, when) your heart is overwhelmed, come to the Rock. Psalm 61:2 From the end of the earth I will cry to You, When my heart is overwhelmed; Lead me to the rock that is higher than I.

We are told that Jesus came to bind the broken hearted. Psalm 147:3 He heals the brokenhearted And binds up their wounds.We would not have been told such things unless God in his awesome goodness knew that at times our hearts would be broken.

Since God knows what life is like and since God loves us, cares for us intimately, He HAS prepared in advance the care, nurture and provision we will need WHEN we go through a time of being heart broken or heart sick.

When a sudden heart shattering event occurs, AND we suddenly realize life will never be the same again, or when we are in healing for an older one (event) which is so far not yet healed, we need to know that God is there for us. So today, we are going to explore what God’s Word has to say about when our hearts are broken.

I am going to read you a writing first that I wrote when my own heart was shattered into tiny pieces and I thought I would surely die. It had been broken at other times, during other seasons for different reasons. But at this time something happened so suddenly and with no warning at all. The Lord spoke this writing into my heart.

Shattered Hearts
Beloved, yes there are shattered places in your heart.
Indeed there are shattered places in every heart.
I am the restorer of your heart.

When you come to me,
Each time you come to Me,
Lifting up your heart to Me,
No matter how you are feeling,
I will reach over and take your heart,
Tenderly into My love.

I will simply breathe onto and into,
The shattered places (and),
They will be restored.

Beloved, I know that there are broken places,
In the hearts of My people.
That is why I send forth the invitation,
Time and time again, to come to Me,
To rest in My love,
To rest in My embrace,
To lean on Me.
For that is the place/position,
From which restoration comes.

Psalm 34:18
The LORD is near to those who have a broken heart, And saves such as have a contrite spirit.

In this verse we see both sorts of broken heart...by our own sin, which would cause us to be broken in sorrow or contrite and those who have a broken heart.. I think also by the actions of another or an event of catastrophic nature.

Would anyone like to share?

Lets look at Isa...where Isa is telling us about the Savior, Jesus, who is to come:
Isaiah 61:1-3 NKJ "The Spirit of the Lord GOD [is] upon Me, Because the LORD has anointed Me To preach good tidings to the poor; He has sent Me to heal the brokenhearted, To proclaim liberty to the captives, And the opening of the prison to [those who are] bound; To proclaim the acceptable year of the LORD, And the day of vengeance of our God; To comfort all who mourn, To console those who mourn in Zion, To give them beauty for ashes, The oil of joy for mourning, The garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness; That they may be called trees of righteousness, The planting of the LORD, that He may be glorified."

The Greek words for “broken heart” used here (in BOTH passages) are shabar leb. Quoting John Elderidge: The Hebrew is leb shabar (leb for "heart," shabar for "broken"). Isaiah uses the word shabar to describe a bush whose "twigs are dry, they are broken off " (27:11); to describe the idols of Babylon lying "shattered on the ground" (21:9), as a statue shatters into a thousand pieces when you knock it off the table; or to describe a broken bone (38:13). God is speaking literally here. He says, "Your heart is now in many pieces. I want to heal it."

Anyone like to comment?

Let’s look at one more verse:
psalm 147:3 AMP
He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds [curing their pains and their sorrows].
NKJV
Psa 147:3 (NKJV) — He heals the brokenhearted And binds up their wounds.
The same Greek words, Shabar leb are used here.

So we have proof that God does heal our broken, shattered hearts. How does that happen?
Any ideas? Has God been healing your broken shattered places? How has he done that?

****PAUSE******

If our heart is broken over our own sin..things we have done or we do even now that we know grieve the heart of God and hence grieve us too. We know that the steps are Admit (own up to it), Repent, Ask for and receive forgiveness and then Go forth and sin no more. In CR, we learn (or will if you are not on that step yet) that sometimes we will need to offer amends to those our sin has wounded. Often God will simply remove a sin, but just as often, it is a process of going again and again to God for healing of the hurt that led to the sin. So Admit, Repent, Ask, Receive, Forgive, Go forth.

When the heart wounds are the result of either “life” or sin done to us by another, the process of having our heart healed is slightly different.
First we have to admit the pain, sorrow of grief. I saw a really neat quote in an article I was reading. This was written by Janet Treadway and I loved it:

Understand that it is OK to hurt. We try to push the hurt away, but we can’t. The hurt isn’t outside of us—it’s inside. So, in our attempt to push the hurt away, we actually push the hurt deeper inside. We then can spend the rest of our life running from this suppressed hurt.

I think we can all identify with that. Much of the reason we came to need CR was due to an attempt to suppress the hurts of our past. We found that does not work so well.
We have shown that the Heart of our Father God, our Abba who loves us is to HEAL our broken heart places. So how does he do that?
I am quoting bits from an article which I will post in the forum. It is from a book by Steve and Sarah Berger, called HAVE HEART which they wrote following the sudden accidental death of their son, Josiah.

GOD’S TRUTH IS THE FOUNDATION
God is there waiting for you. He’s there to start the heal-
ing process. He’s waiting for you with comfort and truth in
the Person of the Holy Spirit. John 16:7, 13 says, “Nevertheless-
less I tell you the truth. It is to your advantage that I go away;
for if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you; but
if I depart, I will send Him to you. However, when He, the
Spirit of truth, has come, He will guide you into all truth.”
God has given His children a Comforter who guides us
into His truth. If you feel disconnected from God’s comfort
and truth, the Holy Spirit may be the missing link for you.
We would encourage you to ask the Holy Spirit to come in
and fill you with God’s truth. The Comforter will serve and
soothe you as Jesus picks up the bits of your heart and carries
you through the healing process.

King David wrote in Psalm 34:18, “The Lord is near to
those who have a broken heart, and saves such as have a con-
trite spirit.” When our hearts are broken and we feel that God
isn’t near, the truth tells us He is. When we feel like God’s forsaken us, the truth tells us He’s nearer than at any other time
in our lives. This is the truth we need to meditate on, claim,
speak, and thank God for.

Note in the verse that “Lord” is spelled in small caps.
This has a purpose. Bible translators use caps and small caps
to identify where the covenant name of God (or YHWH,
phonetically pronounced “Yahweh”) appears in the text. The
Bible describes Yahweh as the one true God who met Moses
at the burning bush, delivered Israel from Egypt, and gave
Moses the Ten Commandments. In this psalm, David was
talking about “the great I AM” (Exodus 3:14), the Creator
God who is self-sufficient, all-powerful, and self-existent. He
is the First and the Last, the Alpha and the Omega.
In writing this psalm, David could have chosen other names
for God. For example, he could have chosen “Adonai” (mean-
ing “my Lord”), but he didn’t. He could have used “Elohim”
(meaning “He is the power over powers”), but he did not. He
said, “Lord,” the great “I AM.” He used the name of God
that is too big for words, and beloved, that is the God who is
near to the brokenhearted. That’s a promise we need to hold
on to when we are brokenhearted, and it’s a promise we need
to share with those who are hurting around us.
Paul wrote in Romans 8:38, 39, “For I am persuaded that
neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor pow-
ers, nor things present nor things to come, nor height nor
depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate
us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

He is saying that the love of God hasn’t stopped. It didn’t stop
when Jesus was on the Cross, it didn’t stop when Paul had his
head pressed against a stone table before he was beheaded,
and it didn’t stop when Peter was hanging upside down to
be crucified. The love of God never, ever stops in the midst
of our brokenheartedness, and regardless of what we feel, we
must hold on to this—nothing can separate us from God’s incredible, unbelievable love for us.

You might say, “God, if you loved me this would not have
happened,” and you would be mistaken. If you question God’s
never-ending love and allow yourself to dwell on that thought,
you are going to sink. God’s love never stops. His love is near,
because He is near and He is faithful. Believing this fact and
letting it constantly bubble up will strengthen and encourage
and comfort you.

This is the truth, and the truth you know
will set you free—and keep you free (John 8:32). When you
are brokenhearted, every bit of truth you think you know will
be challenged, and you must hold on to the truth of God’s love
like nothing you’ve ever held on to in your entire life. Nothing
separates us from God’s love.

Paul said in Ephesians 3:20 that God is “able to do exceed-
ingly abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to
the power that works in us.” If you feel, even for one second,that you might never recover from your brokenheartedness,
remember that God is able to do way more than you can ever
imagine. “

The “HOW” process will vary for all of us. But the first step is believing that GOD wants to heal our hearts. It is simply part of who He is.
Then admitting to God, exactly how we are feeling. We see David doing that often in Psalms, we see Jesus doing that in the Garden, we see many men of the bible doing that. God already knows every thought, our deepest heart feelings. But we have to be willing to sit with God, hearts wide open, admitting our need in order to receive the healing Jesus died to give us.
I thought that they worded all that far better than I could.

Another universal step is forgiveness. Of our self, of others, sometimes of God himself. Not that God does anything wrong but sometimes we do blame God.

Then we simply keep coming to God over and over..Psalm 62:8
Trust in, lean on, rely on, and have confidence in Him at all times, you people; pour out your hearts before Him. God is a refuge for us (a fortress and a high tower). Selah [pause, and calmly think of that]!
And we learn how to lean on HIM in every time of life. During every circumstance of life.
We learn to know him more and more until we can say like David did:
Psalm 28:7
The Lord is my Strength and my [impenetrable] Shield; my heart trusts in, relies on, and confidently leans on Him, and I am helped; therefore my heart greatly rejoices, and with my song will I praise Him.

Sometimes, (during times of wonderful healing) we feel all alone, lost and in a desert.. but even there God is meeting us.
Hosea 2:14
Therefore, behold, I will allure her [Israel] and bring her into the wilderness, and I will speak tenderly and to her heart.

Paul repeats this phrase over and over in his letters...Philippians 1:2
Grace (favor and blessing) to you and [heart] peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ (the Messiah).
That is a blessing taken from way back in the OT:
Numbers 6:26
The Lord lift up His [approving] countenance upon you and give you peace (tranquility of heart and life continually).

Lord God thank you that you ARE the healer of our hearts..when our hearts are broken by sin, that of ourselves or others done unto you, you come, you stand and your offer healing... forgiveness..restoring our hearts... drawing us close to you... making us into your image..OH God we cry out to you for healing... for salvation... for revival..revive our own dry and hurting places... help us to grieve over sin and then linger with you, in your Word and in your Presence until we are ready to go forth to tell the world around us, near and far of Who You Are and what YOU have done... we love you Lord... we thank you... we come now to linger a while with you...amen