So God says: it's okay, I accept your love. Let's just walk the journey. You be committed to pursuing Me, and being intimate, and allow Me access; leave Me to do the work with your heart. Isn't that amazing? So how does God do the work with your heart? Well, He just engineers a few circumstances, and you suddenly hear yourself - now where did that come from? And if you'll just stop, and go quiet a little bit, and listen, the Holy Spirit will tell you exactly where it came from - a wounded heart somewhere, an offence in the heart, anger unresolved, resentment unresolved. Everyone is trying to change the world around them, and they don't change themselves. Change yourself! You want to change the world? Start with yourself. Change your own world.
So God heals the broken heart; and the word 'broken' means to be shattered into pieces. It means to be crippled or quenched, so when our heart has been wounded by events in life, it becomes shattered, or crippled, or unable to function. In the spirit that's what it's like: your leg is broken, and you're dragging it behind you; and they say: why won't he run, I don't know why he won't run. Why won't you run? In this church, you need to run. Run brother! It's like putting a pressure to do something that they can't do. They're powerless to do it.
The woman that was bowed down with a spirit of infirmity, it said she had no power to stand up! She had a demon on her. That's where a lot of Christians are, they've got demons riding on them, having access into the wounds and the brokenness, and they're hunched up, they can't go anywhere. They need healing and deliverance. That's what His ministry was: heal the broken-hearted; deliver the captives. The word 'wound' means literally to be an idol. An idol is a substitute for God that you end up serving, and become angry with. So when you've got a wound in your heart, you end up serving it. It controls your life, because now, you know what'll happen?
Instead of wanting to love people, now I'm going to hold myself back, and I've got to guard myself. You might hurt me, so now that what's governing my life is a pain in my heart, and the spirit driving it is the spirit of fear, rather than actually the love of God. That's why He needs to deal with these things; we want God to touch those areas. Lord, touch my heart, heal my heart, whatever it is. Jeremiah makes the complaint, in Jeremiah 6:14 - "they've healed the heart of My people lightly, saying 'peace brother, peace' - but there's no peace!" There's war in the heart, and the people need healing. In your ministry, do you have a process for healing the broken heart? Do you have a process for setting the captives free?
Is there a process in place? Do you celebrate that this is part of everyone's journey; or do you allow them to come in, take them through a little bit of a program, connect them in, take the money, and them get them serving... but their hearts are still broken, and there's no process to heal them, and restore them? We need to be committed to do that, because that is Jesus' ministry - and you don't want to have people broken. If your children are hurting, you know what a mother does? They run; oh they fuss over them; get them, and bind them all up, and hug them, and reassure them. They do something! A church is a mother to God's family. We need to do that; heal them, and bind them all up.
So there are many ways that people can have a broken heart. It's many; but it's either things that happen to us; or things that are withheld from us break the heart. Things that happen to us; or things that are removed; or that we need for life, and they are withheld. Rejection will break the heart; abandonment will break the heart. Abuse will break the heart - sexual abuse, emotional abuse, abuse of any kind shatters the heart, causes wounding; it varies from person to person. Being bullied, being hated just because of who you are - all of these things break the heart; being in an unstable, unpredictable, unsafe environment will break the heart. Going from loss and grief break the heart. Betrayal breaks the heart. These are things people have happen to them.