Picture by Becky Bruckner
“Break my heart Lord”
Just what exactly does this statement mean? As I am righting this article, our church is about half-way through the sermon series and Max Lucado book, Out Live Your Life. By the time you are reading this article, we all should be done with that series.
What did you think? Did any of your reading and the questions following the readings, slap you in the face? Did any of it cause a stirring of emotions? Did you feel a wake-up call?
Many of you have heard me talk about my experiences in Swaziland and how deeply God has touched my heart and soul for these struggling people, but your passion, your calling, does not have to be in Swaziland. What thoughts is God stirring within you? What tugs at your heart strings?
Max Lucado said, “We cannot repay the debt that we owe Christ, but that doesn’t mean we don’t try.” The same thing holds true for world hunger, for clothing the poor, for providing housing for the poor, for being friends to the friendless, for providing hope to the hopeless, and for reaching out to the lonely. Many times the world’s troubles look so huge that it seems impossible for us to make a difference, but that doesn’t mean we should not try. We can’t fix it all but we can do one thing at a time, help one individual at a time and they will see the love of God through us. Max says, “The task is big, but so is the opportunity.” Stop and dwell on that sentence for a while! Pray about it. How can you make a difference?
Jess Mengal (our New Hope Church missionary to India) told me about something one of her professors had said. This is not an exact quote but it goes something like this. Someone had told him that they have been praying and waiting their whole life for God to show them what he has planned for them, and still had not received an answer. They wanted to know how you know when to wait on God versus taking action. He answered them by saying that you can keep praying for God’s direction in your life, and while you’re waiting on that response, you can look at the many ways that God is working throughout the world and find a way to plug into that work. What a wonderful way to answer that person. I think that holds true for all of us. We need to wake up and get involved. We need to stop going through our days, our weeks, our months, and our years just plugging along, without taking the time to look at what is going on in our world. How can we turn a blind eye? How can we not want to do our part to make even a little difference in the lives of even a few people?
Just before going to Africa, I had a prayer that I said regularly to God. It went like this: My Lord, my God. What do you expect of me? I cannot support and save all of the suffering people in today’s world. It is so overwhelming. Sometimes Lord, instead of doing something, I do nothing. Where do I begin? How can I help? What are you calling me to do? Is the suffering of your people throughout the world, just too big of a problem for me to do anything about? Well, God answered that prayer during and after my trip and now I am forever devoted to the Swazi people. Try it! Pray it and mean it! Be open and patient for a response.
Break my heart Lord. This thought came from another great book that I am reading called The Hole in Our Gospel by Richard Stearns. Richard believes that we should pray this with some regularity. From this book I have this prayer: God, please break my heart for ________. (In my prayer it is the people of Swaziland, but you can fill in your own blank). When God breaks my heart for these people, it becomes personal, as if it was my own child or family member. As times passes I could naturally become distant or not engaged, and their plight is not as personal. If God breaks my heart again and again for them, it now becomes very personal again.
We beg of you, break our hearts Lord, that we might do great works for all hurting people.
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