How can I receive emotional healing?

Turning to the word of God, we discover for our comfort that God is not indifferent to these broken hearts. The Psalmist tells us that God is One that "heals the broken in heart, and binds up their wounds." Moreover, the Psalmist immediately adds, "He tells the number of the stars, He calls them all by names. Great is our Lord" (Ps. 147:2-5). The number of the stars is too great for us to tell; the sorrow of a broken heart too deep for us to fathom; but God can count the stars in heaven and heal the broken hearts on earth. In the greatness of His love He gave His only begotten Son to come into this world to heal the brokenhearted.

It should be remarked, also, that to comfort is His character - that, in other words, He is the comforting God. As the apostle says, "Who comforteth us in all our tribulation," and again in chapter 7, "Nevertheless God, that comforteth those that are cast down." So likewise in the Psalms, as, for example, "He healeth the broken in heart, and bindeth up their wounds." In each of these passages it will be noticed that the verb is in the present tense, that the action is consequently characteristic, and that therefore it is not what God will sometimes do if we wait upon Him, but what He ever does because it is His character and delight to do it. The question need therefore never be raised, Is He willing to comfort? It should rather be this, Are we in the state to receive this blessed ministry from Himself? What a God it is with whom we have to do! One who has told out all His heart in the dark domain of death through the gift of His beloved Son; One who, being "rich in mercy, for His great love wherewith He loved us … hath quickened us together with Christ"; and the One who, while we are passing through a world where sorrow and tribulation are our portion, presents Himself to us as a comforting God - the God, as Paul says, "who comforteth us in all our tribulation."

In connection with chapter 7 we learn, moreover, who they are who are qualified for this gracious ministry of comfort. It is, in one word, "those who are cast down," as we have it again in the Psalm, "The Lord upholdeth all that fall, and raiseth up all those that be bowed down." To be in distress and sorrow, in fear and depression, burdened with grief, constitutes an appeal to the heart of God for consolation and succour. How often this was blessedly illustrated in the life of the Lord Jesus on earth! In the synagogue at Nazareth He proclaimed His mission to preach the gospel to the poor, to heal the broken-hearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and to set at liberty them that were bruised. And in fulfilling it, when He saw the multitude having nothing to eat, He had compassion upon them, and would not send them away fasting to their houses, lest they should faint by the way, for He knew they had travelled a long distance to hear His blessed words. When, moreover, He beheld the widow of Nain, in her unspeakable sorrow, following her only son to the grave, He had compassion upon her, and turned her night of weeping into a morning of joy by raising her son to life and giving him back to her. And is He not the same still? He is not One who cannot be touched with a feeling of our infirmities, and we may therefore come boldly to the throne of grace for the needed mercy and the seasonable help. What an evangel of consolation this is to weary, burdened, and sorrowing hearts!

The words of your friends reach your ears, and perhaps leave you more hopeless and bewildered than before. His words will reach your soul and give you divine support for human props, and a comfort and peace that death cannot destroy, for His words reveal Himself, and He is more than all you need. Turn yourself about to Him; lift your tear-filled eyes to His; hide not your broken heart from His touch; tell Him the cause of your grief.

On the other hand, the conscious sins and failures of a Christian, are, when confessed, forgiven things. The faithfulness of God secures this (1 John 1:9). Confession of sin, or of shortcoming, casts the matter confessed, with the person who confesses it, on the righteous advocacy of Jesus. The blessed Lord acts thus for the instantaneous removal of all that can defile or darken the conscience, or afflict the soul with a sense of guilty deficiency. Confession of deficiency and shortcoming is at once met, in the fulness of that grace which flows evermore towards the once purged worshipper, by the intercession of our great High Priest. Peace thus is again restored to the conscience, while the heart yet retains its humbling sense of personal vileness. For it is the true discernment of the gracious action of restoring mercy that effectually humbles, and keeps low the soul.

Read Psalm 32 and see what misery David was in while he refused to confess his sin. Then read the songs of deliverance and confidence in God that were his as soon as he confessed it. So it always is. The believer must honestly confess to God, believing that Christ has already settled the matter with His blood. Then, he must take sides with God against his sin, thanking Him for giving His Son to die for it on the cross, and believing in his heart that He has forgiven it for Christ's sake, according to His Word. Then God will restore his peace.

Despair does not enter into true sorrow for sin, for along and with it there is a sense of the nearness of the Lord. He stands by in tender grace to lead the soul into full restoration to Himself. Sin appears in its exceeding sinfulness in contrast to His faithfulness and love; His grace becomes a greater reality than ever; the sin is confessed and forgiven; the root of it exposed and judged; and the soul is cleansed from all unrighteousness.

But (verse 5) the strong exercise of conscience leads to a profounder searching into the root and fountain of human wretchedness. Sinful conception is an evil anterior to personal transgression: the latter comes of the former as its fatal fruit. Grace, then, if it deal remedially with a sinner, must meet the evil in its source. God is accordingly invoked no longer as a helper in the sinner's work of self-recovery: the work is purely and exclusively His own. What He requires in holiness He must effect in grace (verse 6). This primal, yet often imperfectly learned truth of Christian doctrine, if once divinely taught in the cross of Jesus, secures the tried believer from despair in the darkest hour, how much soever he may have to loathe himself meanwhile on account of his experienced vileness. Satan cannot work a work of evil in a believer which God has not already counteracted and excelled in measure in the finished work of grace. "Where sin abounded, grace has superabounded." Atonement once complete is of an eternal validity. In justice therefore, and in faithfulness to Jesus, God forgives continually the confessing sinner. "The Lord has put away thy sin" was the immediate response of Nathan to David, when the simple confession of his sin was made. God is Himself the healer and restorer of the soul. The broken spirit can be bound up effectually only by His gracious hands The plenteousness of forgiving mercy re-opens in the heart of the believer the springs of pure desire toward God. Fruitful works of love flow also from the soul that has been thus restored (verse 13). There is no true restoration where this result is not perceived.

It is in the Epistle which unfolds for us the favour and joy of our relationship to God as our Father that we read: "If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness" (1 John 1:9). And wherever there has been backsliding this is the way of restoration, and restoration to communion with our God and Father and our Lord Jesus Christ means deliverance from oppression and defeat, and spiritual revival. We come out from under the hand of the Syrian, and dwell in our tents as aforetime. We enjoy our blessings and live as God's children should.

Truth may cover our faces with "shame and confusion," under a deep sense of our shortcomings; but grace is the restorer of paths, and of souls to walk in them. "If we confess our sins, God is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness." This is the only true position for a smitten conscience to take. Here, and here alone, we gain a complete victory over all our sad failures, when in full confession of all our sins and shortcomings, we cast ourselves on the boundless grace of our God, owning the authority of His truth, and submitting ourselves to it, through whatever channel it may come. Every soul thus exercised, will certainly be led by the Spirit, "that other Comforter," from the "word of God which is quick and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword," up to the "throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need."

Trust in Him: "These things I have spoken to you, that in Me you may have peace" (John 16:33). Our circumstances may not change, our sorrows may not be removed; but if Christ is brought into our grief, we will be able to say with the psalmist: "You shall preserve me from trouble; You shall surround me with songs of deliverance" (Ps. 32:7).