Bill Johnson - Healing a Broken Heart
When he brings healing to a broken heart, it doesn’t, at least for me, initially start with answers. Most of the time, I don’t need answers anyway; I need a person, I need presence. If I can have the peace that passes understanding, I’m good, which for me has meant I have to give up my right to understand.
Verse 1 of Chapter 16: When the Sabbath was passed, Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome brought spices that they might come and anoint Him. Very early in the morning on the first day of the week, they came to the tomb when the sun had risen, and they said among themselves, «Who will roll away the stone from the door of the tomb for us?» But when they looked up, they saw that the stone had been rolled away; it was very large. Entering the tomb, they saw a young man clothed in a long white robe sitting at the right side, and they were alarmed. He said to them, «Do not be alarmed; you seek Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He is risen!»
Those are the coolest three words ever spoken: «He is risen!» He is not here; see the place where they laid Him. But go tell His disciples and Peter, which is interesting because it’s not that Peter wasn’t a disciple; he just needed a little extra attention. Sometimes every one of us needs just a little extra nudge, and Jesus was kind enough to give it to Peter. So He said, «Go tell the disciples and Peter that He is going before you into Galilee, where you will see Him as He said to you.» That’s an amazing promise, isn’t it? Go to Galilee; you’ll see Him for yourself.
They went out quickly and fled from the tomb, trembling and amazed. They said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid. When He rose early on the first day of the week, He appeared to Mary Magdalene, out of whom He had cast seven demons. She went and told those who had been with Him as they mourned and wept. When they heard that He was alive and had been seen by her, they did not believe.
Let’s pause for a moment. You know how there are certain places in scripture you return to for what I call «recreational reading»? This portion has meant a lot to me personally because it shows me, number one, how to deal with mourning. Every one of us has disappointment, every one of us has lost, and every one of us has stuff that we have no explanation for. You just get that in life, and if you don’t know how to navigate that, you end up crippled. You can call it whatever you want; you can say, «Well, that’s just not my gift; that’s not my calling,» but really, you’re just resisting stepping into who you are because you’re hurt.
This issue of pain he talks about here indicates that they were mourning in verse 10, and they did not believe. Mourning will take you in one of two places. First of all, mourning is biblical; if it takes you to God, blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. So here’s the point: there is one route to go in mourning where I don’t have the answers, I don’t have solutions, and I don’t have some great strategy. All I know is who to come to. I come to this place in abandonment, oftentimes in worship, in the sacrifice of thanksgiving when it doesn’t feel good, but I do it anyway. In that engagement with the person of the Holy Spirit, He comes and comforts.
There’s one direction to go in mourning that takes you to the Comforter; the other takes you to unbelief. We can call it all kinds of religious titles, but the bottom line is that I’m in pain, I don’t have answers for it, and I’m going to keep the routine up. I’m just not going to be as involved in that area. I just suffered a great loss; I’m not going to pray for the sick like I used to. It’s not always thought through; it’s just what we do. We react to suffering loss—like cancer—by saying, «I’ll just let somebody else handle that; I’ll seek help for people with injured legs.» We rationalize instead of facing head-on the area where we need to be healed.
When He brings healing to a broken heart, it doesn’t, at least for me, initially start with answers. Most of the time, I don’t need answers anyway; I need a person, I need presence. If I can have the peace that passes understanding, I’m good, which for me has meant I have to give up my right to understand.
There’s something about coming into that place of engaging with the person of the Holy Spirit where I’m engaging with Him in surrender. I’m not there to dictate to Him; I’m not with Him so that I can become successful in life. I’m there because He’s God, and I’m not. I think I mentioned last week that I saw a sign saying, «The only difference between you and God is that He’s not trying to be you.» Excuse me, that’s not the only difference, but you get the point.
So this issue of mourning takes me in one of two directions: either to a place of healing and comfort from the Comforter or to unbelief. Now picture being the Eleven; you’re huddled together in a home, scared to death because Jesus was just brutally murdered before your eyes. You’re afraid you might be next. If there’s anything you don’t feel, it’s resistant to truth; you feel demoralized, maybe you feel weakened. There’s probably tears, all this stuff going on in the room. But the one thing you don’t feel is hardness of heart. Yet when Jesus walks in the room, He rebukes them for their hardness of heart.
See, hardness of heart isn’t evident through strong self-will; it’s often evidenced in the unwillingness to deal with the pain in your life—unwilling to come to the Lord for healing out of that which makes no sense. What happens is it builds a resistance in us. The scary thing about this story to me is here are the guys who are going to take on the message that will shape the course of world history, and Jesus starts off His relationship with them with a rebuke. This is His first interaction with them after the resurrection, and He’s basically saying, «Listen, I sent messengers to you; you didn’t believe them. I told you ahead of time what would happen; then I sent messengers.»
Here’s part of the problem: the first messenger was Mary Magdalene. In this male-dominated culture, women were counted as less. I’m not saying it’s right; I’m just stating the culture of the day. So these guys who are running things—who does Jesus first reveal Himself to? Not just women, but Mary Magdalene, the demonized, tormented one. Jesus chooses her first, or the Father did, however it works. I remember part of the problem is you have to learn to recognize when God is speaking, not because it makes sense to you, but because you recognize the presence of God released when they speak.