Praying God's Wisom: The Lord is Close to the Brokenhearted

 

The Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit. Psalm 34:18

 I am so grateful for the truth shared in this scripture and the rest of the suggested reading today. I highly encourage you to read along through Psalm 34:4-10 and 17-18.

I sought the LORD's help and he answered me

 How wonderful that we have the Father’s ear, that He deigns to listen to us. Scripture gives us so many examples of people doing this, even Jesus Himself, but I am especially touched this morning by the invitation to do it myself. Seek the LORD’s help and he will answer you. What a privilege! What a wonderful opportunity!

He delivered me from all my fears
Those who look to him for help are happy; their faces are not ashamed.

This oppressed man cried out and the LORD heard; he saved him from all his troubles.

The LORD's angel camps around the LORD's loyal followers and delivers them.

 The passage doesn’t say that God fixed everything in the author’s life or eliminated adversity, no it says that He delivered him from his fears, and God will do that for you as well. How can we stop being afraid in the face of fierce oppression, traumatic health diagnoses, or insurmountable relationship issues? The answer to all that circles back to the first statement, seek the LORD’s help and He will answer you!

Taste and see that the LORD is good! How blessed is the one who takes shelter in him!

 If you are at a restaurant and you have a beautiful plate of food set before you, do you just take a picture of it and then tell everyone what a wonderful meal you were served? No! You taste it! Each bite more wonderful than the next, you make your way through the feast and fully appreciate its goodness. It’s the same with God. We can talk about how good He is, we can quote scripture to people, but until we taste for ourselves, we cannot begin to imagine just how good the LORD is. It is only when we actively, intentionally take shelter in Him that we get to see this goodness played out in our lives.

Remain loyal to the LORD, you chosen people of his, for his loyal followers lack nothing!

 Let’s address the elephant in the room. There are Christians who have had their homes, their families, their very lives stripped away from them. But guess what? Even in this, they lacked nothing, because they had God. If we have Him, we have everything. In Him is everything we could ever need or want. If we have Jesus, we have everything!

The LORD is near the brokenhearted; he delivers those who are discouraged.

 In this world though, we will have trouble. Jesus promised us this in John 16:33, but He went on to give us the very good news that He has, in fact, overcome the world! He tells us to take heart in this. If our hearts are broken, He mends them with the truth that He will deliver those who are discouraged, those who are crushed in spirit. Things around you may seem irreparably awful, insurmountably hard, impossible, but nothing is impossible for God (Luke 1:37, Matthew 19:26). If we give Him our discouragement, if we trust Him with our problems, doubts and fears, He will deliver us. It may not look like what we think we want, but it will decidedly be for our best. We can trust Him to work it out, whatever IT is.

 Let’s get real here. I was devastated by the news of ICE killing a man in Minnesota this weekend. He was just a regular guy, a 37-year-old VA ICU nurse who was out exercising his constitutional right to protest. He was not likely to be targeted by ICE since he was not brown, nor did he have a Hispanic sounding last name (his name was Alex Pretti), but he felt so moved by what was happening around him to his neighbors, his co-workers, his friends that he had gone out to protest. He was using his phone to document what ICE was doing in his city and give a voice to the voiceless. When he saw an ICE agent push a woman to the ground, all I can guess is that his helper instinct kicked in. He was an ICU nurse after all. I wasn’t there, but I’ve seen videos from lots of angles taken by those who were, and in NONE OF THEM does he appear to be approaching threateningly or attacking the ICE agents in any way. He simply turns towards the woman, seemingly in an effort to help. Regardless, they pepper sprayed him, threw him into the street, many agents held him down, and they shot him TEN TIMES. The officer emptied his magazine into Alex. Share with me any rationale that would make this make sense. Learning about this, watching this unfold before my very eyes, shook me. I was everything mentioned in these verses: I was afraid (what does this mean for my country? My family?), I was ashamed (why have I not done anything?), I felt oppressed (this horrible power is coming against us regular people and we cannot fight it), I feel trouble (although I do not live in Minnesota, ICE has been present here on the West Coast as well and I have dear family and friends who would certainly fall under their net. Beyond that, it is not their victims of color that have been publicly executed, but those victims’ white neighbors, men and women who have stood up for them when they couldn’t), I feel discouraged (what can a disabled woman who has to mostly stay at home do in the face of such injustice and oppression?), and most of all, I am brokenhearted. This country that I love, that my Grandfather, my uncles, my cousins, my step-mother and my brothers have fought for, has come to such a terrible place. What can be done?

Here’s the Thing: I’ll tell you what, bring it to God. Seek the LORD’s help and He will answer me, answer us. He will hear us and save us from all our troubles. His angels will camp around His loyal followers and deliver them. We WILL taste and see that the LORD is good! In all this seemingly insurmountable doubt and uncertainty, friends, remain loyal to the LORD and you will lack nothing. He will be near to the brokenhearted and deliver those who are discouraged. We may not see it or understand it in the moment. I remember back to the story of Corrie Ten Boom who had her father and sister brutally murdered by the Nazis. Surely, that left some confusion, some lack of understanding for how God could be delivering them, but she stayed loyal to God, loyal in her faith, and God provided over the course of her life in incredible and miraculous ways. If you haven’t heard about this, I encourage you to read The Hiding Place, or, if you aren’t partial to reading, watch the 1975 movie.