Words are powerful. There are some words in our lives that we will never forget. “You have cancer.” “Your mother-in-law has been killed in a car accident.” “Your child is on drugs.” “Your teenage daughter is pregnant.” “You need surgery.” “You’re fired.” “You have bipolar disorder.” “I don’t love you anymore.” "I want a divorce." And the list goes on. The one thing they all have in common is the way they turn our worlds upside down and change our lives forever. I have heard those kinds of impacting words many times throughout my life—and just thinking about them still puts a knot in my stomach like hearing them for the very first time.
Not too long ago, I heard some new words I never could have imagined hearing—words that pierced my heart to the core. Words that I am wrestling to accept. Words, quite frankly, that I don’t always know what to do with.
When we’re left only with sorrow, confusion, disbelief, failure, and feelings of hopelessness, we need to turn to the only words—the Word—that can bring comfort and healing, and reinstate our hope when it’s all but disappeared.
When I look back at the words I didn’t want to hear, I see a pattern. They have not been the only words that I have heard. If they were, they would leave only a vacuum of hopelessness behind. In those moments of disbelief or shock, there have always been God’s coinciding words that are bigger and more powerful than the words I never wanted to hear.
They are words that I have faithfully stored in my heart and laid as the foundation of my life day by day. Words that I have gone to regularly to invest in my relationship with Christ. Words that His Spirit has pulled out and into my hour of need. Words that have always been bigger and greater than any human words I could ever hear.
Those words—His—have changed my life in even greater ways. They have been the words that have anchored my soul and that the Holy Spirit has used to give me the strength to go on when I wanted to crawl under my covers and never face the world again. They have been the words that have reminded me that God will never leave me alone—He’s right here with me to face the fallout. I hang onto His Words when nothing else makes sense, and when human words threaten my peace. When I looked at the impossibility of those words and said, “I can’t;” He met me with His Word and said, “You can.”
In that moment of disbelief, when your world falls apart, God’s words are more powerful than the words you never wanted to year.
Why? Because God’s Word speaks the truth we are desperate to hear, even as we weep with grief. Even when our feelings tell us “I will never feel good again,” we can hold tightly to the truth that God “heals the brokenhearted, and binds up their wounds” (Ps. 147:3). Like you, I’ve been brokenhearted and crushed in spirit more times than I care to count.
It’s in these bitter moments that we need to confront our very real fears with His words that will soothe our fears and reshape our thoughts and feelings. It’s His words we need the most when the words we hear about our life are the harshest. Without fail, God’s words have always been the only words that have the ability to breathe LIFE into our hurting souls!
Psalm 119 is an entire chapter on the benefits of God’s Word. And how many times has Psalm 34:18, “The LORD is close to the brokenhearted: and saves those who are crushed in spirit,” been a comfort and balm to our fractured souls? I know it has mine.
When you and I are feeling the strain of the words we never wanted to hear, get out God’s Word and pore over it or ask God to recall it to you. Words like Hebrews 13:5: “Never will I leave you, never will I forsake you.” Or 2 Chronicles 20:12b: “We do not know what to do, but our eyes are on you” or “I can do everything through Him who gives me strength” (Phil. 4:13). Strength for the health diagnosis, strength for the circumstances spinning out of control, strength for the rejection—strength for anything and everything that comes our way! “The LORD is my strength and my shield; my heart trusts in him, and he helps me” (Ps. 28:7).
My journal is filled with words God has spoken into my heart sustaining me through “the words I never wanted to hear” circumstances. It’s at those times that we can turn to the only words that can bring lasting peace, comfort, strength, and hope. Psalm 112:7 says, “[She] will have no fear of bad news; [her] heart is steadfast, trusting in the LORD.”
