When you think of God you probably think of His love, power, holiness, grace, etc. But you probably don’t think of Him with a broken heart … but you should. God has emotions like love and that love opens Him up to becoming broken hearted.
God was broken hearted by humanity before the flood because they became wicked:
5 When the Lord saw that man’s wickedness was widespread on the earth and that every scheme his mind thought of was nothing but evil all the time, 6 the Lord regretted that He had made man on the earth, and He was grieved in His heart. (Gen 6:5-6)
God was broken hearted by ancient Israel when they turned away from Him:
9 Then your survivors will remember Me among the nations where they are taken captive, how I was crushed by their promiscuous hearts that turned away from Me and by their eyes that lusted after their idols. (Eze 6:9)
God can be broken hearted because of you:
And don’t grieve God’s Holy Spirit. (Eph 4:30)
We are told not to grieve God because we can cause Him deep sorrow in His heart. The reason you can cause God such pain is because He is emotionally invested in His people. Remember, you are His child and His bride and that means He is emotionally attached to you on those levels.
The Bible gives us examples of how we can break His heart by being an unfaithful spouse:
2 When the Lord first spoke to Hosea, He said this to him: Go and marry a promiscuous wife and have children of promiscuity, for the land is committing blatant acts of promiscuity by abandoning the Lord. (Hos 1:2)
2 Rebuke your mother; rebuke her. For she is not My wife and I am not her husband.
Let her remove the promiscuous look from her face and her adultery from between her breasts. 3 Otherwise, I will strip her naked and expose her as she was on the day of her birth. I will make her like a desert and like a parched land, and I will let her die of thirst.
4 I will have no compassion on her children because they are the children of promiscuity.
5 Yes, their mother is promiscuous; she conceived them and acted shamefully. For she thought, “I will go after my lovers, the men who give me my food and water, my wool and flax, my oil and drink.” (Hos 2:2-5)
19 I thought: How I long to make you My sons and give you a desirable land, the most beautiful inheritance of all the nations. I thought: You will call Me, my Father, and never turn away from Me. 20 However, as a woman may betray her lover, so you have betrayed Me, house of Israel. This is the Lord’s declaration. (Jer 3:19-20)
Israel was unfaithful to God and ran after false gods, idols, and the world like an unfaithful spouse and broke His heart. Imagine the pain and heartbreak of a spouse being unfaithful to you and running after another person. There is no deeper wound than the one inflicted by a cheating spouse. That’s how God feels when believers turn from Him to the world or idols. Remember that you are God’s spouse and remain faithful to Him. Don’t break His heart like an unfaithful spouse.
The Bible also shows us how we can break God’s heart as rebellious children who have gone astray:
When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called My son. 2 The more they called them, the more they departed from Me. They kept sacrificing to the Baals
and burning offerings to idols. 3 It was I who taught Ephraim to walk, taking them in My arms, but they never knew that I healed them. 4 I led them with human cords, with ropes of love. To them I was like one who eases the yoke from their jaws; I bent down to give them food. (Hos 11:1-4)
Can you feel God’s emotion as you read that passage? Go back and read it again as a parent grieving over your child. God’s heart is broken. Just like we invest so much into our children, God invests into your life. God rescued Israel, taught them to walk, held them in His arms, healed them, fed them, led them, and did everything to give them a great life.
Imagine spending so much time and effort trying to teach your child the right way to live so they could have a great life, but they reject it and shipwreck their lives in any of a million ways like drugs, promiscuity, worldliness, etc. It would be unbearably painful to see them suffer the consequences of sinful living. Imagine investing so much into your relationship with your child only to have them reject or turn on you. That would be like a knife piercing your heart.
Read the passage above again and see God’s pain as over His children. Yes, as His child, you can break God’s heart by turning from Him toward sin and the world.
4 Adulteresses! Don’t you know that friendship with the world is hostility toward God? So whoever wants to be the world’s friend becomes God’s enemy. 5 Or do you think it’s without reason the Scripture says that the Spirit who lives in us yearns jealously? (Jms 4:4-5)
Did you realize that you break God’s heart by being worldly? As you become worldly and a friend of the world, you become God’s enemy and break His heart.
The most recent example of God’s broken heart for His people is Jesus’ response when entering Jerusalem for passion week:
41 As He approached and saw the city, He wept over it, 42 saying, “If you knew this day what would bring peace—but now it is hidden from your eyes. 43 For the days will come on you when your enemies will build an embankment against you, surround you, and hem you in on every side. 44 They will crush you and your children within you to the ground, and they will not leave one stone on another in you, because you did not recognize the time of your visitation.” (Lk 19:41-44)
To grasp this scene better, you need to understand that Jesus weeping over Jerusalem is not just a single teardrop rolling down His cheek. The word used here indicates an out loud sobbing and wailing. Jesus’ heart was utterly broken over how His chosen people had rejected Him and what their future was going to be. He was crying out loud with a broken and sad heart as a parent over a wayward and rejecting child or wife. Jesus was devastated emotionally.
Understand and know that you as a believer can grieve God’s Spirit and break His heart by how you live.
Think about it
Did you ever think about how God’s heart can be broken?
Did you ever think about how you can break God’s heart?
Can you think of a way that you’ve broken God’s heart by turning from Him or living poorly?
How does that make you feel?
Does knowing how deeply you can wound God’s heart motivate you to live better and pray from His help to do it? Does it drive you to your knees to apologize and repent?
Love God by keeping in mind that you can cause Him heartache. Try to live in a way to please His hart and not break it.
