Have You Felt Like Giving Up Lately?Sample

When You Hurt

In one way or another, we are all hurting. Even the laughing, happy-go-lucky crowd is hurting. They try to hide their hurt by drinking and joking, but it won’t go away. 

When deeply hurt, no person on this earth can shut out the innermost fears and deepest agonies. Only God can shut out the waves of depression and feelings of loneliness and failure that come over you. 

God has to step in and take over. He has to intercept our lives at the breaking point, stretch forth his loving arms and bring that hurting body and mind under his protection and care. 

A bruised or broken heart causes the most excruciating pain known to mankind. Most other human hurts are only physical, but a heart that is wounded must carry a pain that is both physical and spiritual. Friends and loved ones can help soothe the physical pain of a broken heart. When they are there, laughing, loving and caring, the physical pain eases, and there is temporary relief. But night falls, and with it comes the terror of spiritual agony. Pain is always worse in the night. Loneliness falls like a cloud, when the sun disappears. The hurting explodes when you are all alone, trying to understand how to cope with the inner voices and fears that keep surfacing. 

Then there is that age-old cliché, “Time heals all wounds.” You are told to hang in there, put on a smile and wait for time to anesthetize your pain. But I suspect all the rules and clichés about loneliness are coined by happy, unhurt people. It sounds good, but it is not true. Time heals nothing; only God heals! 

When you are hurting, time only magnifies the pain. Days and weeks go by, and the agony hangs on. The hurting won’t go away, no matter what the calendar says. Time may push the pain deeper into the mind, but one tiny memory can bring it to the surface. 

Let me share a few simple thoughts about how to cope with your hurt.

1. Stop trying to figure out how and why you got hurt. 

2. Remind yourself God knows exactly how much you can take, and he will not permit you to reach a breaking point. 

3. When you hurt the worst, go to your secret prayer closet and weep out all your bitterness. 

4. Convince yourself that you will survive. You will come out of it; live or die, you belong to the Lord. 

The bottom line is faith, and faith rests on this one absolute: “No weapon that is formed against thee shall prosper” (Isa. 54:17).