Brokenhearted Moms
I get the privilege of praying with people at the church where I work. They come to me as the leader of my ministry and also as the leader of a women’s Bible study. Often times they are Moms, brokenhearted over their children. My heart breaks for them. I know what it is like to hurt for your child…to carry the weight of their choices, their decisions. We love and hope and dream…and often hurt.
After praying for a Mom at church recently I decided that I would set aside this week’s Bible study time to pray for all hurting Mom’s. And so we circled up and poured our hearts out to the One who holds the universe. And in doing so we found ourselves filled with Him. Because you can’t approach the King and not be greatly affected by His presence.
It can be difficult to know what to pray at times. So we opened the Bible and started with the first scriptures that came to mind.
They are brokenhearted, Lord, would you heal them? Would you meet them right where they are and bring comfort?
He heals the broken hearted and binds up their wounds.
Psalm 147:3
Psalm 34:18
The Lord is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit.
They feel as though they can’t carry the weight of their issue any longer, would you help them?
Do not fear, for I am with you, do not be dismayed for I am your God. I will strengthen you, I will help you, I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.
Isaiah 41:10
Lord, so many women struggle with feelings of failure, either as the result of their own choices or the result of someone else’s choices. We feel trapped, bogged down by the weight of what we carry. Help us to see there is freedom in You, there is breath and life for us.
I waited patiently for Jehovah and he inclined unto me and heard my cry. He brought me up out of a horrible pit, out of the miry clay. He set my feet upon a rock and established my goings and he has put a new song in my mouth, even praise to our God. Many shall see it and fear and shall trust in Jehovah.
Psalm 40:2
And then, right here in this scripture from the Psalms, a song of worship, we saw ourselves. We saw that God reached down and took the hand of each of His daughters and lifted us out of the miry clay.
Miry clay. I’ve always had a picture in my mind of what that is, but decided to dig a little deeper. So I went to the dictionary.
Miry is a soil that is wet, slimy, deep and swampy…like quicksand but sticky and sucks you in.
I almost didn’t look up clay, I know what it is…. A stiff, sticky, fine grained earth…usually red or gray. But then, I saw this…
Clay - the human body as distinguished from the spirit.
Wow, so, it’s our humanness…the human part of us. The part that fights against Him, the part that rebels and runs and is weak.
He lifted us up out of the sticky, slimy, deep swampy yuck of our humanness…the reality of this world…the result of the choices we’ve made…the way we’ve been treated…the bent toward sin.
He set our feet on the rock of who He is and gave us a path to walk out in our future. A path that is good. A path that is more than we could think, hope or imagine.
Why? So other people will see and believe. So they will see what we have faced…the pain of this life…and they too will believe.
They too will be taken by the hand and lifted out.
As we prayed for Mom’s, we also prayed for ourselves. To be strengthened, to be lifted out, so we can lead others straight to the One who saves.