Healing the Brokenhearted

This is an excerpt from the late, Kenneth E. Hagin, pioneer of the Word of Faith movement and founder of Rhema Bible College’s book, ‘The Triumphant Church’. He writes,

‘I was raised up from [a] bed of sickness (from a heart defect). But my own mother’s life was a tragedy. Demons of worry, depression, and oppression got into her emotional or soulish realm and held her in bondage. Yes, she was saved, but she didn’t know her rights and privileges in Christ….My daddy left us when I was about six years old, leaving my mother with four little children to raise by herself any way she could. All the trouble my mother had…began to eventually affect her physically, mentally, and emotionally…She eventually had a complete physical, nervous, and mental breakdown. For several years she had mental problems and even tried to kill herself.” p.36

From a son’s perspective, this is what he saw about his mother. But if you read that from a woman’s perspective, you can see that she was brokenhearted. Because I’ve read several of his books, I know that his father was the youngest son of a wealthy family. He describes him as a spoiled young man having never had to quite mature while under the protective eyes of his older sisters. That protection and immaturity is what led his father to abandon his wife and children.

Brother Hagin also tells of how he and his siblings would go days without food while his father and wealthy relatives were only miles away. That neglect paid a toll on his mother.

As a mother, there had to have been times when she reached out to him or his family and was met with fierce rejection. As a woman there had to also have been times, throughout their marriage and after their divorce, when she either heard and/or saw her ex-husband with another woman. Coupled with his abandonment of not only her children but of herself, she had to have questioned who she was as a woman.

Did he ever love her? Why didn’t she see the red flags? Or why had she ignored them?

Considering the fact that Bro. Hagin never mentions her having remarried, she could have possibly carried him – in her thoughts – the majority of her adult life. Ultimately resulting in her many mental breakdowns and multiple suicide attempts.

This, however, was not the case for 22-year-old Missael Pena Canela, a young man who fatally shot his ex-girlfriend’s 19-year-old boyfriend, Salem State basketball player Carl-Hens Beliard just last week. His actions were the result of a broken heart and though we typically apply this subject to women, men can handle their broken heartedness in a myriad of ways. As was the case with Bro. Hagin's mother, hers led to mental breakdowns. Others can lead to suicide and as we just read, homicide. It can also manifest into promiscuity and/or trying to heal your heart with another person. This was the case with the woman at well in John 4 which reads,

“So [Jesus] He came to a city of Samaria which is called Sychar, near the plot of ground that Jacob gave to his son Joseph. Now Jacob’s well was there. Jesus therefore, being wearied from His journey, sat thus by the well [and a]… woman of Samaria came to draw water. Jesus said to her, “Give Me a drink”… Then the woman… said to Him, “How is it that You, being a Jew, ask a drink from me, a Samaritan woman?” For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans. Jesus answered… “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is who says to you, ‘Give Me a drink,’ you would have asked Him, and He would have given you living water.” The woman said to Him, “Sir, You have nothing to draw with, and the well is deep. Where then do You get that living water?”… Jesus answered and said to her, “Whoever drinks of this water will thirst again, but whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him will never thirst. But the water that I shall give him will become in him a fountain of water springing up into everlasting life.” The woman said to Him, “Sir, give me this water, that I may not thirst, nor come here to draw.” Jesus said to her, “Go, call your husband, and come here.” The woman answered and said, “I have no husband.” Jesus said to her, “You have well said, ‘I have no husband,’ 18 for you have had five husbands, and the one whom you now have is not your husband; in that you spoke truly.” John 4:5-18

There is no way you can go from husband to husband, or today, from person to person and not experience some type of heartbreak. This woman had to have been heartbroken or may have even been headed for her sixth. One thing's for certain: there was something in her that wasn’t healed which led her to other men. But Jesus said in Mark 4:18 that, “the Spirit of the Lord [was] upon [Him]…to…heal the brokenhearted…” And my future abstinologist™,

if you’re in the middle a heartbreak, then He's ready to heal you of yours.

Though I talk about it in depth in my book, ‘Close Your Legs: A How To Guide On How-To Wait’ and in my upcoming book, ‘I Let The Wrong One In: A Guide for the Brokenhearted’ a broken heart has to be healed.

Healing is progressive which means it takes time. And though there will be times during your healing where you may think, desire, or even ache for that person, if you’ll let Jesus do His thing, He will heal your thoughts, hopes, heart and even your hips. All you have to do is give Him, and not another man, an opportunity.

Pray this with me: Heavenly Father, I am hurt. I feel as if I should have known, and I question how did I let this happen. But it did, nonetheless, and I am here. I am asking You to heal my broken heart and to allow me to heal progressively, and if possible quickly. I’m not going to ask You for someone else but ask that You love me until I am ready to receive whomever You have for me. In Jesus’ name.