Dharius Daniels - Healing Heartache

I want to jump right in. I want to jump right into the second installment of this series, and I want to read a couple of verses of Scripture from an Old Testament book of the Bible called Second Samuel. Second Samuel Chapter twelve—I want to start reading at verse number eighteen. Second Samuel Chapter twelve, we’re going to read beginning at verse number eighteen. It says this: on the seventh day, the child died. David’s attendants were afraid to tell him the child was dead, for they thought, «While the child was still living, he wouldn’t listen to us when we spoke to him. How can we now tell him that the child is dead? He may do something desperate.» David noticed that his attendants were whispering among themselves, and he realized the child was dead. «Is the child dead?» he asked. «Yes, ” they replied, „he is dead.“ Then David got up from the ground; after he washed, he put on lotions, changed his clothes, and went to the house of the Lord and worshiped. Then he went to his own house, and at his request, they served him food, and he ate. This is the reading of God’s Word.

I want to talk from this subject today, family: I want to talk about healing heartache. As I begin this introduction today, I want to inform you that as long as you and I have residence in this world, we will all experience an array of aches. Yes, indeed, as Father Time begins to progress and gets closer and closer to you and me, we will experience aches like toothaches, or for others, headaches, or for others, it may be backaches. Aches are not uncommon in the physical arena; however, when I deal with a physical ache, very often there’s a medical remedy I can take. I can take pain medication for certain aches, muscle relaxers for certain aches, but there is an ache that goes beyond the realm of the physical. There is an ache that cannot be treated with natural, physical remedies. I can take something when my tooth is hurting, take something when my head is hurting, take something when my back is hurting, but what can I take when my heart is hurting? What do I take for a heartache? I need to address the ache; here it is. Whatever you have an unaddressed ache in one area, it adversely impacts another area. I’m going to say that again: whenever you have an unaddressed ache in one area, it can adversely impact another area. I used to have some backaches, but my backache in one area was adversely impacting some other areas. It affected how I sat, it affected how I slept, it affected my mobility, and there are some times where we’re dealing with issues in certain areas, but those issues in certain areas are a result of aches in another area.

What do I take when my heart is hurting? When my heart is hurting, it shows up in my relationships; whoa, yeah! It shows up in my choices. When my heart is aching, it shows up in my choices. People who make rebound relationship decisions are making those choices out of heartache. The heart hasn’t been healed from the ache, so the ache is impacting their choices. They are settling for less than God’s best. Such heartaches will make you—here it is—heartaches will make you put a period where God wants to put a comma. Heartaches will adversely impact every area of our lives. This is why the sage named Solomon says in Proverbs Chapter 4, verse number 23, „Guard your heart with all diligence, for out of it flows the issues of life.“ Every area of my life is impacted by heartaches.

What do you do when your heart is hurting? Well, some people ignore it; other people attempt to anesthetize it. But what we should do is address it. However, we can’t address it without understanding it. The word for heartache is grief. Grief is deep sorrow that is felt in response to loss. It produces a myriad of emotions. C.S. Lewis said, „No one ever told me grief felt so much like fear.“ Grief is not an evil emotion; it is not a motion of inadequacy. It is a human emotion that is a natural and normal part of the healing process. Whenever you experience loss, wherever there’s loss, there’s grief; and wherever there’s grief, there’s a heartache. Unfortunately, many people have limited the reality of grief to physical loss, when you lose a loved one and have to bury someone. That is not incorrect, but it is incomplete. Because whenever you lose anything of value to you, your heart hurts. It doesn’t hurt the same way for everything, but wherever there’s loss, there’s grief. So when you lose a job, there’s grief; when you lose a relationship, there’s grief; when you have a dream that never came to pass, but you realize it’s not going to come to pass, you lose something you never had, but you feel so strongly about it. When you lose it, it’s all grief. And there are many people who know when their back is hurting. I feel this thing! They know when their back is hurting; they know when their tooth is hurting, but they don’t know when their heart is hurting. They don’t know they’re grieving, because the response to pain isn’t always tears. And somebody needs to talk back to me. I said the response to pain isn’t always tears; sometimes pain doesn’t make you soft; sometimes pain makes you hard.