“Life is pain! Anyone who tells
you otherwise is selling something.”
~The Great Pirate Roberts, The
Princess Bride
Seems like pain is the only common factor in humanity. All around the world, and all through time, no one anywhere has ever been able to avoid it. People can have the best spirits and there body decaying, or be pristinely rich, and suicidal on the inside. And though it could win for the most obvious human trait, many of us won’t even admit we’re going through any. We’ll put on our plastic faces, build up our walls, memorize our responses to “How you doing?” (“Fine”) “What’s the matter?” (“Nothing”). Most of us would never even think of telling someone else our deepest pain, because we’d have to go the very wound that caused it. And we fear that. In fact, isn’t that the core and breeding ground of all our fears and insecurities?
John
Eldridge, author and who I would consider my personal mentor, has done
extensive human study and has amazing insight into the complex nature of the
human heart. The Bible talks about the heart far more than we may think. Just
look it up in a Strong’s Concordance. The word appears 742 times in scripture,
to be exact. You think maybe it’s important to God? When His son, Jesus
himself, first began his earthly ministry, what did he present as his mission
to the world? He quoted Isaiah 66:1-2 in Luke 4:18
“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, to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed!”
Brokenhearted. Doesn’t that word describe a lot of us? Sure, there’s the brokenhearted in relationships, but I’m talking about something much deeper. When our spirit dies, when our confidence fades, when our dreams are crushed. “Brokenhearted” in this text is a very strong word, it’s the same word used in Romans 16:20 when it says “Jesus will crush Satan under his feet.” Why do you think Jesus choose this verse out of all scripture to christen the turning point of history? Because he knew what we need about all else. A whole heart.
Eldridge analyzes something very profound in his book “Wild at Heart”. He says that every human being, man or women, is born with and intern question, that above all else, must be answered. Think about it, what does every man constantly ask himself? “Am I good enough, am I strong enough, am I man enough?” And what does every women look the world over to answer for herself? “Am I beautiful, am I cherished, am I loved?” These questions are deep inside all of us, and they get answered very early in life, usually at the hands of our parents. We look to them first for the answer to our question, and if they don’t give us a bad answer, our Enemy will sure as heck make sure someone else does. We hear “No, your weak. No you can’t do it. No you’re ugly. No you’re stupid. No anything lovely about you is evil and dark.” We make very dangerous childhood vows, and make a major agreement with the Enemy.
That’s the wound. And we never go back to it, but try and get a different answer from anywhere and everywhere; friends, family, money, drugs, intellect, entertainment, relationships, sex, position, influence, and the list goes on and on and on. The answer never comes, and we bury the real wound deeper, until we don’t know what we want, or why we’re afraid of what we are. Are identity gets skewed, and we think about our selves the same way Satan does. The only one who can give us the answer our hearts absolutely LONG for, is God the Creator. In Isaiah 55 He says to His children Israel-
“Hey there! All who are thirsty, come to the water! Are you penniless? Come anyway- buy and eat! Come buy your drinks, buy wine and milk. But without money- everything’s free! Why do you spend money on junk food, your hard earned cash on cotton candy? Listen to me, listen well: Eat only the best, fill yourself with the finest.”
God’s saying “Why do you look everywhere else but me for what your heart needs? I’m a Giver of Life, you’ll never find it anywhere else.”