Silas
Beloved of All
Your heart for this person is clear, and your desire to keep reaching out with encouragement while they remain closed off is a loving and prayerful response to their pain.
It is understandable that someone who has been hurt would pull inward. Past wounds can leave a person feeling fenced in, surrounded by bitterness and sorrow, wearied and broken as if there is no way out. When a heart has experienced that kind of heaviness, it often shuts itself off even from those who want to help.
Scripture shows us that God does not turn away from that kind of brokenness. What he desires is a broken and contrite heart, and that kind of heart he will not despise. He is close to those who are brokenhearted and he invites us to cast our burdens on him because he will sustain us. Other sources we turn to for comfort are like broken cisterns that cannot hold water. They cannot sustain a person in a day of crisis. Only the Lord himself is the fountain of living water who can bring true healing and life.
That healing is provided through Jesus Christ. The prophet Isaiah said he would bear our griefs and carry our sorrows, and Matthew explains that Jesus fulfilled this when he healed the sick and those oppressed in body and spirit. The bread of communion reminds us that his body was broken for us. The Scriptures were fulfilled that not a bone of him would be broken, as with the Passover lamb, yet his body was truly broken through his suffering, so that through his wounds we might be healed. That provision is not limited to spiritual forgiveness alone. It reaches to the whole person, including infirmities, sicknesses, and the deep hurts of the heart and mind that can become a heavy spirit.
So continue to bring this person before the Lord in prayer. Ask him to do the inner work only he can do, to lift the heaviness, to heal the memory of past hurts, and to remove the bitterness that has caused this withdrawal. Pray that God would gently open the lines of communication in his timing and that this person would be willing to receive encouragement and help toward healing rather than remaining isolated.
You can trust God to work even while you wait, and to keep your own heart sustained as you carry this burden. Keep offering words of encouragement as God gives opportunity, without forcing what only he can open, and keep entrusting both this person and the outcome to him.
May the Lord touch this dear one with his healing presence, take away the spirit of heaviness and give instead wholeness and peace, and in his perfect time restore openness and healthy connection. May he also strengthen you with patience, wisdom, and hope as you continue to intercede and to love well.
It is understandable that someone who has been hurt would pull inward. Past wounds can leave a person feeling fenced in, surrounded by bitterness and sorrow, wearied and broken as if there is no way out. When a heart has experienced that kind of heaviness, it often shuts itself off even from those who want to help.
Scripture shows us that God does not turn away from that kind of brokenness. What he desires is a broken and contrite heart, and that kind of heart he will not despise. He is close to those who are brokenhearted and he invites us to cast our burdens on him because he will sustain us. Other sources we turn to for comfort are like broken cisterns that cannot hold water. They cannot sustain a person in a day of crisis. Only the Lord himself is the fountain of living water who can bring true healing and life.
That healing is provided through Jesus Christ. The prophet Isaiah said he would bear our griefs and carry our sorrows, and Matthew explains that Jesus fulfilled this when he healed the sick and those oppressed in body and spirit. The bread of communion reminds us that his body was broken for us. The Scriptures were fulfilled that not a bone of him would be broken, as with the Passover lamb, yet his body was truly broken through his suffering, so that through his wounds we might be healed. That provision is not limited to spiritual forgiveness alone. It reaches to the whole person, including infirmities, sicknesses, and the deep hurts of the heart and mind that can become a heavy spirit.
So continue to bring this person before the Lord in prayer. Ask him to do the inner work only he can do, to lift the heaviness, to heal the memory of past hurts, and to remove the bitterness that has caused this withdrawal. Pray that God would gently open the lines of communication in his timing and that this person would be willing to receive encouragement and help toward healing rather than remaining isolated.
You can trust God to work even while you wait, and to keep your own heart sustained as you carry this burden. Keep offering words of encouragement as God gives opportunity, without forcing what only he can open, and keep entrusting both this person and the outcome to him.
May the Lord touch this dear one with his healing presence, take away the spirit of heaviness and give instead wholeness and peace, and in his perfect time restore openness and healthy connection. May he also strengthen you with patience, wisdom, and hope as you continue to intercede and to love well.
