Home For The Broken Hearted

By Kristina Cornell

One of my favorite scriptures is

Psalms 91:1- “He who dwells in the secret place of the Most High shall
abide under the shadow of the Almighty.
2- I will say of the Lord, He is my refuge and my fortress; my God, in Him I
will trust.”

Sometimes knowing where we can go for help does not mean we take the
steps to “get there”. Sometimes, safety looks dark and cold, like a
“shadow”. Sometimes, our perspective is skewed toward our outlook
instead of our needed outreach. It may look scary and desolate rather than
the isolated hiatus it actually is, so we retreat. We retreat into comfortable,
even when it is chaotic. Our souls take over. Our minds, our wills, our
emotions begin to dictate our “feelings”. We lay aside the very Spirit that
raised Christ from the dead, even though He actually dwells in us and
produces fruit, we ignore Him. We choose to focus on our bodies, our
souls. We choose self fulfillment, pride, comfort, “happy”, “quiet”.

Meanwhile, all of this is a quest for what we already possess; we have
been granted love, self control, joy, peace. So why do we allow that
constant wrestling that Paul shared in Romans 7; “We do the things we
know we should not and do not do the things we know we should?”

Sometimes, the shadows are dark, they are cold. We miss the “dwelling
place” that is so close to our Father’s heart. David (the apple of God’s eye)
describes it as being our ’secret place”. Maybe David, thoroughly grasped
the concept that so many of us face: We try, exhausting ourselves, to get
to Him, to reach our Father. In Psalms 23 David says “He MAKES ME LIE
DOWN in green pastures”. I get it! We struggle with resting our minds and
finding that secret place. We find it challenging to live in peace, because
THAT is where God, Himself, ministers to us! After we dwell in the secret
place and abide under the shadow, the victory begins. Verse 2 says “I will
say of the Lord, HE is my refuge and my fortress, My God in Him will I
trust. Psalms 23: After we “lie down in green pastures, He restores our
souls”.

This was a light-bulb moment for me: The enemy would never want us to
rest our minds, to be renewed by the Word. That could result in us being
warriors like David. We might actually stand like Paul and realize that we
never wrestle against flesh and blood, but principalities and powers and
rulers of darkness. If we know it, we can speak the word over it, like Jesus
did in the desert as He was tempted by Satan, yet had victory. “I will say
of the Lord” is so powerful, because the psalmist is speaking the Word,
(saying it out loud) “He is my fortress, my God in Him will I trust.”

As one who has suffered a broken heart, in a various, heinous ways, I can
attest that saying the words “I will trust”, is BIG stuff. When any one is
broken hearted, it is because there is a breach of trust. Our heart, in this
scenario is not the beating organ in our chest, rather, our soul.
I needed to break it down: Because our soul is our mind, will and
emotions, we need to look at it one step at a time We can be transformed
by the renewing of our mind (speak the Word). We have been given the
fruit of the Spirit which includes self control, so our will is not our own. And
as for emotions, I do not believe that the Bible would specifically lay out
what LOVE does if we were to be ruled by emotion rather than concerted
effort. So, honestly, how trustworthy is our soul? We can only rely on the
Spirit within us for comfort and guidance.
Here is the best news you have heard in your entire life: when you get
saved, you are filled with the Holy Spirit. And as I stated earlier, “If that
same spirit that raised Christ from the dead dwells in you, it will quicken
your mortal body”. WOAH! That means your soul and your body can be
quickened by the King of Kings, on the daily.

Also, remember earlier, I wrote of Paul’s teachings, in Romans 7? If we
read a little farther Paul goes on in verse 24 “What a wretched man I am!
Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death? 25 Thanks be
to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord!
While your body may feel cold and numb, while your soul may feel dark
and alone, your spirit says “Rise up!” You are made whole (like the tenth
leper) in Jesus name. Recognize your source and dwell.