A Heavy Heart

“Pour out your heart to God for He is our refuge.” Psalm 62:8 NIV

“Everyone’s pain is intensely personal to them.”

My thoughts today are about “a heavy heart.”

There will be times when your heart is full of questions and doubts. And you think no one else would listen or could help. So much is bottled up inside – feelings and fears that you do not know how to give a voice. Alone you wrestle with a confusion of thoughts and emotions that you cannot find words to express, nor would you to know to whom they could be safely shared. Such times can be lonely moments of the soul, when you find yourself unable to express the things inside and equally unable to dismiss them.

David seems to have experienced such circumstances more than once. The Psalms are the product of David’s pouring out his heart before the Lord in exquisite joy and excruciating sorrow, and in times of confidence and bewildering confusion. David felt the pain of suffering, loss, misunderstanding, betrayal, and his own terrible mistakes.

How must he have felt when forced to flee from King Saul’s jealous rage, or forced to gather in a cave with others in “distress, debt, and discontent”? 1 Samuel 22:2 NIV. Was he heartbroken when forced to flee Jerusalem as his estranged son, Absalom, turns the heart of the capital away from his father? Read 2 Samuel 15:1-14 NKJV. Imagine the myriad of feelings that overwhelmed David’s heart, as he was again a fugitive but from a son this time, not Saul as years earlier. What burden and anguish of soul did he battle with in the tortured aftermath of his indiscretion with Bathsheba, as he sought to keep secret what would soon be exposed? Read 2 Samuel 12:1-13 NKJV/Psalm 32:3-5 NLT/51:1-12 NLT.

Yours and my challenging times are probably not of the same drama or scale as David’s seem, and I am sure that he too had some days with more normal-sized dilemmas. But everyone’s pain is intensely personal to them. A hurting heart is not measured in comparison to anyone else. It’s uniquely yours and you need someone with whom to trust your care and concern.

I cannot give you better advice than David gave in today’s verse, “Pour out your heart to God, for He is our refuge.” Psalm 62:8 NIV. Did you notice that when David penned the words, “our refuge,” he reached across the generations and included you and me? That holy access was not David’s alone, but yours whenever and however you need – even at this moment. See 1 Peter 5:7 NLT.

God made your heart, redeems your heart, and knows best how to heal your heart, whether broken or just heavy. “The Lord is near to those who are discouraged; He saves those who have lost all hope.” Psalm 34:18 TEV. If that sounds like you right now, then you know what to do. Get alone with God, and pour out your heart with humility and honesty, secure in His love. Jesus was sent to “heal the broken hearted.” See Isaiah 61:1-3 NKJV. That is still what Jesus will do – for you!

My prayer for you today is that you always know the place to bring a heavy heart.