The Silent Cry of the Lonely Heart

Throughout time, there has always been a deep loneliness and an empty void in the heart of man that is painful, and it cries out to be met. It expresses itself as a deep yearning that is palpable. So profound is the loneliness that it is often felt as an intense desperation to find someone to take the emptiness away.

In reality, that aching inner yearning is the heart cry of the human soul that is searching for God. It awakens in a child like a tender flower, but sadly, through time, it is quelled, suppressed within and often silenced throughout the growing up years.

The stress and strain of life often anesthetizes this yearning and most people find a myriad of things to sooth and numb the emptiness within. If we were truly honest with ourselves, we all need significant times in our lives where we can experience the peacefulness of complete and total silence…. blessed solitude. Those precious Quiet moments are where we can make a heartfelt exploration of our deepest questions and pose them before the Almighty God of the universe. 

The Gentle Whisper of a Loving God

God is timeless, yet He pauses, draws near to our hearts, and listens to what we are truly saying when no one else is really listening. 

With the tragic falling away from God that took place with Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, man turned away from God and lost his pure and unhindered communion with his Creator. Mankind has since been left with a spiritual vacuum and a profound painful emptiness.

The Lonely Place of the Human Heart

The Quiet Place within the heart of man, where he walked in the cool of the garden with God, became instead, a lonely place. Every person who has ever lived has experienced the awareness of a profound inner thirst, deep within the heart. 

We discover in life that no amount of money, fame, possessions or power can satisfy the longing within or fill the emptiness. History has proven that whatever man attempts to use to fill that void never brings permanent fulfillment or genuine inner peace. Instead, there is an acute dissatisfaction with what was thought to be the solution to fill the emptiness within. Life is lived in a lonely Shadowland, unseen by others, but seen and understood by God. 

Only God can Heal the Lonely Heart

  

Loneliness is an unquenchable soul thirst that only God can satisfy, for it is the expression of the homesickness of the human heart for intimate communion with God. Sometimes you can be missing one person, yet it feels that your whole world is a lonely place. Why is that? It is because unrequited love has awakened the deepest need within, and that is a longing to find the Edenic innocence, and complete serenity of The Quiet Place, where God walks with you in unhindered communion.

David described this yearning as a deep thirst:

“Just like a deer that craves streams of water, my whole being craves you, God. My whole being thirsts for God, for the living God.” Psalm 42:1-2

God Alone Understands our Loneliness

Loneliness is the unquenchable thirst that nothing on earth can satisfy.  In spite of all of the sentimental poetry, romantic novels, tender musical ballads, or passionate love stories depicted in movies, there is no earthly relational experience that can truly satisfy the innermost loneliness of the human heart. 

We all need love and the companionship of intimate others, but the deep loneliness that abides within can consume us, and is a result of our soul being homesick for an intimate relationship with God.

The Human Heart is Thirsty for God's Love

Jesus identified the deepest need within mankind as an awareness of an inner thirst that cries out to be satisfied, conveying that every person knows that they are insatiably thirsty, and void of a lasting  true happiness.

 

“Let anyone who is thirsty come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as Scripture has said, rivers of living water will flow from within them.”John 7:37-38

God Reaches Out to Each of Us

When God awakens our thirst for Him, He does so on an individual basis. When we become conscious that He is drawing us to Himself, we are aware of our inestimable separation from Him, and discover that it is on the basis of His grace and mercy, saturated by His love, that we are given access to His heart.

"By this the love of God was manifested in us, that God has sent His only begotten Son into the world so that we might live through Him. In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins." 1 John 4:8-10

God Opened the Door to His Heart

God has sought us through His Love, and bought us through His Grace, for we had a debt that we could not pay so He paid a debt that He did not owe.


"But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us." Romans 5:8

God Invites Us to be Near His Heart

When God brings us home to Himself, He then invites us to sit by the fire, and then He fills us with His comforting peace and all encompassing love.

"By this the love of God was manifested in us, that God has sent His only begotten Son into the world so that we might live through Him. In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins." 1 John 4:8-10

The Only Way to Heal the Lonely Heart

Our deepest need is to bask intimately in the fullness of God’s love. There is nothing apart from God that can truly fill the inner void, because that place within that was lost, was created by God, for His Spirit to fill, and only He can dwell there. For Adam and Eve, the Quiet place was experienced in the external beauty of the Garden of Eden, and in their continual communion with God.

Jesus Christ has provided, through the sacrifice of Himself, access to the very heart of God. The Quiet Place has now become an internal reality through His indwelling Spirit, where we can worship and commune with God. In reality, the painful experience of loneliness in one's life, should open a pathway to the heart of God. It is a blessing of gain, disguised as loss.

When Loneliness Gives Way to Peace

"That He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with power through His Spirit in the inner man, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; and that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the believer's what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled up to all the fullness of God." Ephesians 3:16-19

The Blessedness of The Quiet Place

The Quiet Place....a blessed pause in life, where you set aside a time of uninterrupted solitude to meet with God. Precious moments, where you share with Him your love and draw strength from Him to do His will. Nothing on earth can replace what God has available for you, as you meet with Him intimately in The Quiet Place.  

Healing the Broken Heart in The Quiet Place

The silent burden of a broken heart…we have all experienced it at some time in our lives. It has been said that God can heal a broken heart if we give Him all the pieces. That is certainly true. but the real challenge is to first find all of the pieces, and that is easier said than done. Like shards of a broken glass, the pieces weave themselves deep into our hearts. 

The pathway to The Quiet Place is often bathed in the tears of those suffering the hurt of a broken heart. It is one of our life experiences that if unresolved, can ripple on throughout our lives, affecting each significant relationship in the future. If the woundedness within does not experience the healing that is needed to move on, it is very hard to build trust and intimacy with another. 

Working though the Pain of a Broken Heart 
 

There is a period of time, when the hurt within, literally takes away the capacity to breathe without pain. The painful ache touches a precious and vulnerable place often unknown to friends and family, but God knows it is there; an icon from an earlier time in our lives. When hurting is the only thing you can feel for a time, it can be a very lonely place. 

"The Lord is near to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit." Psalm 34:18

Those who are the closest may encourage you to get over it, to move on, and let it go, but relational hurt most often heals slowly. The struggle can come from close friendships gone awry, but mostly it is forged and cast within the breakdown of intimate relationships; a significant other that meant enough, that the loss cuts deeply into the marrow of our soul. 

“What I feared has come upon me; what I dreaded has happened to me. I have no peace, no quietness; I have no rest, but only turmoil.” Job 3:25-26

The Death of a Dream

We all dread loss. When we focus only upon the things that we count as loses in our lives, we become miserable. When an intimate relationship ends, it is as if a death has taken place, but there is no real shared funeral service to mark it as a place it our past personal history. Relational loss can linger on, and often whispers in the periphery of our minds, with feelings of deep regret, guilt, resentment and sorrow.

It has been said that time heals all wounds, but that isn’t really true. In time, the memory of something painful may dull, but the rasp of its presence upon our consciousness needs only a nudge to awaken its tenacious hold upon our memory. For some, there is the discovery that someone you thought you couldn't live without in your life, becomes someone you wish you had never met. 

Only God can Heal a Broken Heart 
 
There are countless ways to numb the pain that is within the human heart, and the world has an innumerable array of temporary remedies that simply do not last and never truly heal the hurt within. Only the God who created us knows the intricate and complex nature of inner woundedness in man. Only He can heal us deep within, when our hearts are broken and we are in deep anguish. 

There are many people who suffer through their grief alone, and are unwilling, and resistant to be vulnerable with God, even in the midst of great sorrow. Some blame God for the break-up, feeling that if He loved them He would have prevented the loss.

"In Quietness and Trust is your strength, but you would have none of it” Isaiah 30:15

Opening your Heart to the God who Created you

David was struck with a sense of wonder at the all-knowing depth of God’s insight into the human heart and soul, and wrote in awe the following:

“You have searched me, Lord, and you know me. You know when I sit and when I rise; you perceive my thoughts from afar. You discern my going out and my lying down; you are familiar with all my ways.” Psalm 139:1-3

David put action to that truth, and humbled himself before God to thoroughly search his heart, and reveal to him any unhealthy hurt within.

“Search me O God, and know my heart; Try me and know my anxious thoughts; and see if there be any hurtful way in me, and lead me in the everlasting way.” Psalm 139:23-24

The Hebrew word “hurtful” in the NASB version, is more literally translated, “…way of pain…” David requested that God explore his heart to see if there might be any, “way of pain,” within him, perhaps suggesting that even he might not realize the existence of a painful woundedness within.

The Pathway to Healing a Broken Heart

When a relationship ends the hurt left behind can be debilitating. Trying to forget someone you love is like trying to remember someone you never knew. One must bring the hurtful burden of that loss to God, in order to find a comfort that only He can provide.

“Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God.”  2 Corinthians 1:2-4 

You must first drive a tap into the Maple tree in order to draw out the sweet sap to make Maple syrup. Likewise we must step forth in faith, and personally tap into that comfort, in order to experience His healing and gentle quietness within. Otherwise we may pray unceasingly, yet continue to experience unrelenting grieving, without any relief from the burdensomeness of the sorrow.
 

Finding God's Comfort in The Quiet Place

During a time of great distress, David found a secluded quiet place, and communed with God and penned,

“I have calmed and quieted myself, I am like a weaned child with its mother; like a weaned child I am content.”  Psalm 131:2

We have all seen the sweet peace, and contentment that a child often experiences in the tender, nurturing arms of his mother. When you draw near, you can almost hear the infant cooing and purring with satiation and contentment. 

If you are struggling with a broken heart, remember that it takes time to heal a broken heart. Allow yourself time to heal, take responsibility to take care of yourself, work through unresolved issues of forgiveness, and spend devotional time in the Quiet Place.

"He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds." Psalm 147:3