Hope When Our Hearts Fail

There are times when our emotions threaten to overwhelm us, when we feel we just can't take any more bad news, when we don't have the strength to try for another day.

The Psalmist expressed it this way:

Psalm 40:11 Withhold not thou thy tender mercies from
me, O LORD: let
thy lovingkindness and thy truth continually preserve me.

12
For innumerable evils have compassed me about: mine iniquities have
taken hold upon me, so that I am not able to look up; they are more than
the hairs of mine head: therefore my heart faileth me.

So often, however, we insist on suffering through these times without the comfort of our God.  We harden our hearts to His Word.

We use the methods of the world to comfort ourselves during these times:

• alcohol to numb the pain
• music to drown the crying
• tobacco to soothe the hurt
• food to block the agony
• pornography to forget the reality
• work to avoid the misery
• adrenaline thrills to escape the bitter ache
• activity to ignore the despair

We need to turn our back on these evasions, and turn our face toward the only One who can bring us through the heartbreak with victory.

God is not afraid of your emotions.  After all, as Creator, He is the one who blessed you with this gift of "feeling". 

Believe me, He has heard every blasphemous accusation before.  He is no stranger to the depths to which our emotions can take us.

We need to incline our hearts to Him, and allow Him to heal our failing hearts. 

We need to agree with the Psalmist at the beginning of Psalm 40, when he proclaimed:

1 I waited patiently for the LORD; and he inclined unto me, and
heard my cry.

2 He brought me up also out of an horrible
pit, out of the miry clay, and set my feet upon a rock, and established
my goings.

We need to trust Him to be our salvation, even in the midst of our fear and despair.

13
Be pleased, O LORD, to deliver me: O LORD, make haste to help me.

14
Let them be ashamed and confounded together that seek after my soul to
destroy it; let them be driven backward and put to shame that wish me
evil.

15 Let them be desolate for a reward of their shame
that say unto me, Aha, aha.

16 Let all those that seek thee
rejoice and be glad in thee: let such as love thy salvation say
continually, The LORD be magnified.

May we remember who we are, and never forget the great God that He is:

17 But I am poor and
needy; yet the Lord thinketh upon me: thou art my help and my deliverer;
make no tarrying, O my God.

My Help.  My Deliverer.  My Heart-Mender. My Hope.