Topic: Hearts Wide Open – Daily Devotional by Proverbs 31 Ministries 28 JUNE 2023
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Hearts Wide Open
JUNE 28, 2023
“My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.” Psalm 73:26 (NIV)
“What?!” I shook my head and stared at the test. One strong line and one very faint one.
“There’s no way … What?”
If there was anything five years, one positive pregnancy test and deep grief had taught me, it was not to get my hopes up so easily.
I tested again, this time unable to clearly make out a second line. Maybe it was there — maybe it wasn’t. I decided to go out and purchase a more sensitive pregnancy test, bringing my dog along for moral support.
When I got home, I took the third test and was unable to make out a second line. Later that night and the next day, I started to see the sure signs that I was not, in fact, pregnant.
The ache and pain of this disappointment were so devastating that I felt like they would crush my body and soul. My heart was broken.
It was painfully difficult for me to wrestle with the goodness of God in unexplained infertility. Why, God? If You knew it was going to be negative in the end, why give me a positive test? If You know each month I will end up with no baby, why drag out the disappointment?
Don’t You see how painful this is already?
Don’t You care?
At times, I felt that it would be easier to know pregnancy would never happen, to grieve the loss and move on, rather than keep hoping.
How could I keep my heart wide open and vulnerable to hope — and at the same time keep my heart wide open and vulnerable to devastating grief month after month? How could I keep doing so when I’d experienced more pain than joy? How could I not numb or harden my heart to protect it from disappointment?
Recalling God’s unwavering love, goodness, promise and presence with me and my husband — even in the deepest, dark valley of infertility — kept us holding on to nothing else but Him. He is the God who is able to throw the mountains into the sea (Psalm 46:2) and raise the dead to life (Matthew 28:6). He is the God who created the heavens and the earth and all that is in it (Genesis 1). He is El Roi, the God who sees, and is near to the brokenhearted (Psalm 34:18).
“My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever” (Psalm 73:26).
We can also look to Jesus, the Son of God who was forsaken by the Father as He hung on the cross for the sins of the world (Matthew 27:46). Remembering that Jesus can identify with us in our own feelings of being forsaken gives us comfort that He understands our grief.
The cross helped my husband and me hold on to hope that our story wasn’t over yet, just as it wasn’t over for Jesus when He had yet to be raised to life in defeat of death itself. God was still at work to bring about the salvation of the world even as nothing seemed to be happening; Jesus’ body lay in the tomb, and all hope seemed lost. But Jesus’ death and resurrection give us courage to believe that God can redeem even our darkest moments.
At the end of the day, when all else fails, we put our hope not in the things of this world — in doctor appointments, fertility treatments, scheduling, testing and temperature taking — but in God alone. He alone is faithful, He alone is enough, and He alone is able to rewrite our stories of pain to be more beautiful than we could ever think of or imagine.
Lord, You are the strength of my heart and my portion forever. When I feel forsaken, help me remember the cross, and give me courage to return to hope in You. In Jesus’ Name, Amen
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