Trust and Grow

"He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds". 

–PSALM 147:3 

What's so hopeful about this kind of statement in the Bible is that God's involvement with us isn't so "spiritual" and heavenly that it has no earthly good. 

This is really where the rubber meets the road: 

God is very present with us in our broken-heartedness, disillusionments, despair, and wounded spirits. 

These painful experiences—those that go deep into our hearts and psyches and daily eat away at the center of our being—are what occupy too many of our days. 

It's not just the great conflicts on the global or national level or the issues that appear on the evening news that God is concerned about—the small and the highly personal and intimate issues also attract his loving attention. 

He meets us where we are, not just where we ought to be. 

He wants to heal our deep hurts and bind up our hidden wounds—those not evident to anyone else—because he cares about such things and intends to do something about them. 

It's in the soil of this well-grounded hope that we are able to trust and grow. 

If sometimes God doesn't heal our wounds the very moment we ask him, it's not because he isn't concerned; it's because he intends to grow us through them. 

That might even be the reason they were allowed to come our way in the first place. 

If God is really in charge of everything all the time, then he's in charge of this as well. 

And don't forget, there will come a day when such things are no longer even a memory:  

"He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away." (Rev. 21:4) 

TODAY'S PRAYER Are there places in your heart and soul that feel so wounded that your prayer request feels out of reach because of you? 

ASK God to give you his eternal perspective on your development as a person of faith.

From "Your 100 Day Prayer" by Dr John Snyder 

Stay Strong and Stay Warm!!