Worship

“King of My Heart” by Steffany Gretzinger and Jeremy Riddle

Scripture

“And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.” -Mark 12:30 (ESV)

Introduction

I have received the great gift of a dear friend, Dr. Alexandria Watkins. Many of you know her personally as she courageously treated thousands of COVID-19 patients all over the United States since March of 2020. She developed a successful protocol for the treatment of COVID-19 early on in 2020. She’s one of the most brilliant and courageous people I know who also has an insatiable hunger for Jesus. She and I are partnering over these next four weeks to write together from both a medical and a spiritual position to touch on this Scripture in Mark. It’s my desire that the Holy Spirit will bring fresh revelation to how we love God with all that we are, beginning today with your whole heart—a heart made whole by His love for us. The word heart is mentioned nearly 1,000 times in the Bible (depending on which translation you read), so it’s something significant to God’s heart for His people. Read Alexandria’s contribution below.

The Medical Reality of Broken Hearts

“Spiritual Cardiology” is a topic of great interest to me. As I have read through Scripture, I find that many of the prominent people in Scripture endured spiritual anguish. As a health care provider, I come across many people with spiritual anguish that produce physical manifestations. There is one such physical manifestation known as broken heart syndrome (takotsubo cardiomyopathy). This syndrome can be induced by spiritual stressors, such as feelings of despair, trepidation, and even episodes of extreme anger.

Broken heart syndrome is a strange phenomenon in the health care field and can be difficult to detect, especially if providers are unaware of how spiritual stressors have a consequential role in physical manifestations. I believe this is why Solomon warns us in Proverbs 4:23, “Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it.” What are the implications when our physical heart is not in line with our spiritual heart and when love is not at the epicenter of our heart? Let us start with what love does not represent. Love does not represent despair, fear, and anger.

In 2016, I worked in oncology and primarily treated terminally ill patients. During this season of my health care career, I noticed an inexplicable trend of friends or family members who had been walking through this season of spiritual distress develop chest pain, shortness of breath, unexplainable sweating, and/or dizziness just minutes after their loved one had passed away—all of which are symptoms of broken heart syndrome. At the time, I was unaware that this spiritual agony had implications on their physical heart.

The Physical Process

The anticipation of or the loss of life triggers spiritual stressors, such as despair, fear, and anger. These stressors can produce hormones and proteins, such as adrenaline and norepinephrine, that are meant to support survival when there is stress on the physical heart. Our physical heart is a muscle that can be overwhelmed, thus yielding discomfort by the substantial amount of adrenaline that is rapidly produced in response to spiritual stressors. C.S. Lewis so eloquently stated that “God whispers to us in our pleasures … but shouts in our pain.” An overload of adrenaline can cause the small arteries to contract. These small arteries supply the heart with blood and oxygenation. When this narrowing of the arteries takes place, it causes a temporary decrease in blood flow to the heart, thus producing discomfort. Alternatively, adrenaline has the potential to bind to the heart cells directly, triggering a large influx of calcium to enter the cells. This influx of calcium prevents the heart cells from beating properly, thus producing discomfort once again.

Do not be disheartened, though. The effects adrenaline has on the physical heart during broken heart syndrome (which I would reclassify as spiritual distress syndrome) are temporary and completely reversible.

People who experience broken heart syndrome commonly have normal coronary arteries (vessels that supply the heart with blood and oxygen), and often no severe blockages or clots are causing the physical symptoms, such as pain. The heart cells of people experiencing broken heart syndrome are stunned by adrenaline and other stress hormones (i.e. cortisol, glucagon, prolactin, testosterone, estrogens, and progesterone). Risk factors for developing this condition include a history of spiritual stressors, such as anxiety, fear, anger, and depression.

God’s Response to Broken Hearts

Scripture is full of both commands and promises as it pertains to this spiritual and physical condition:

• “… casting all your cares [all your anxieties, all your worries, and all your concerns, once and for all] on Him, for He cares about you [with deepest affection, and watches over you very carefully].” -1 Peter 5:7, AMP
• “Do not be anxious about anything … the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.” -Philippians 4:6-7
• “Such love has no fear, because perfect love expels all fear. If we are afraid, it is for fear of punishment, and this shows that we have not fully experienced his perfect love.” -1 John 4:18, NLT
• “The Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit.” -Psalm 34:18

The Transformation of Pain

Although it is estimated that about 15% of people experience the medical definition of broken heart syndrome, I believe that many in the Body of Christ deal with this emotional and spiritual reality. The results of living in a fallen world still impacts believers; we don’t get a pass from that. We still grieve and hurt and navigate pain. But we have an anchor for our lives, deeply rooted and grounded in the extravagant love of God for us that knows no limits. He longs for us to know that just as everything that touches our lives goes through the hand of a loving Father, we can filter broken heartedness through His character and His goodness, His promises and His Word. Emotional challenges will be real for us until we step into eternity. But what is more real for us now is hope and healing; our broken hearts can be made whole.

“Even in our most profound pain, God hears us. He is so intimately tuned to us that He hears our wordless sighs. Not only that, He intercedes for us with wordless groans. And that’s precisely what we would hear if we could hear a little better. We’d also hear those surround-sound songs of deliverance. Just as His mercies are new every morning, His loving intercessions never cease.” -Mark Batterson, “Whisper: How to Hear the Voice of God”

Jesus touched lepers who had no pain sensation and returned to them the feeling of pain so they could be made whole. Mary stood brokenhearted at the death of Lazarus until Jesus showed up to call him out of the tomb. I believe Peter was brokenhearted at his frailty to deny Jesus but received reinstatement and healing. Throughout Scripture, we see Jesus coming to those in pain, whose hearts needed mending and binding up. He is familiar with pain and knew the feeling of being forsaken as He hung on the cross. He is not distant to our pain and our needs.

“Three times I pleaded with the Lord to relieve me of this. But he answered me, ‘My grace is always more than enough for you, and my power finds its full expression through your weakness.’ So I will celebrate my weaknesses, for when I’m weak I sense more deeply the mighty power of Christ living in me. So I’m not defeated by my weakness, but delighted! For when I feel my weakness and endure mistreatment—when I’m surrounded with troubles on every side and face persecution because of my love for Christ—I am made yet stronger. For my weakness becomes a portal to God’s power.” -2 Corinthians 12:8-10, TPT

I believe with all of my heart that your places of pain will be not only redeemed but will be used by the Lord to transform what you know and what you experience from God. If we will let Him inform our pain and offer it to Him as worship, He can do more with it than we could even imagine. But if we hold it close, live in the identity of it, and stake our tent pegs in self-pity, the pain now becomes the anchor of our lives instead of WHO HE IS in the middle of it.

I can recount for you a long season I traversed of broken heartedness and disillusionment in the goodness of God. I had a choice in that season to let pain inform my theology of who God is and His promises in my pain. It was a distinctive decision on my part. God will always show up to mend our broken hearts if we will allow Him to. Sometimes the space of quiet in our pain helps us to lean in at new levels we would not have done otherwise. We wrestle at levels we would not have otherwise roamed, deep unto deep. And those who experience the revelation of the love of the Father in these seasons and places are transformed there. And we come to know and believe and receive this truth: pain can be one of the greatest gifts in the life of a Christ follower. What is born in us in those seasons, when counseled by the Holy Spirit, is holy and sacred. No one and nothing can take us to those levels of intimacy and dependency like pain. And so we begin to rejoice in our sufferings.

If anyone knew pain in Scripture it was Job. But what did he say at the end of it? “My ears had heard of you but now my eyes have seen you (Job 42:5).” I want to implore you in the middle of pain and broken heartedness that Jesus desires to heal your heart. He wants to make you whole so that you can love him and know Him at even deeper depths. You will minister to others with a greater authority and clarity and faith because of this journey of pain. You will actually have something to offer someone else in their suffering. Nothing is wasted. The Spirit of the Lord is on you because the He has anointed you to preach good news to the poor. He is sending you to partner with Him to bind up the brokenhearted and proclaim freedom for the captives and break prisoners free (Isaiah 61:1)! I praise God now for the dark nights of the soul I navigated. I can look back on those valleys of the shadow of death and praise Him. I can speak to others of His faithfulness when He seemed so quiet in my pain. I can testify to His goodness as deliverer and healer and sustainer and protector. He is all these things in our broken heartedness and seasons of deep pain. He will never forsake His own, and I promise you that your tears water the soil of your life so that what springs forth is joy (Psalm 126:5) and praise. People get to sit under the tree of your healing and receive hope because your testimony has deep roots in the character of God! And we experience a bit more of what it means to love Him wholeheartedly.

A Prayer for Healing

Lord, I pray for my sisters who are battling an emotional, physical, or spiritual broken heart syndrome. Would You reveal the depth of Your grace and love to them today? Would You bind them up and heal them and give them a testimony of tasting and seeing the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living? I pray for the tenacity of their faith and bone-deep conviction that You are good no matter what they are walking through. Turn their valleys of the shadow of death into places of rejoicing as they watch You move on their behalf. I pray they would hear the songs of deliverance You are singing over them in this hour. I plead the blood of Jesus over each one reading these words and ask You to come as You always do, to set these ones free to dance and worship You in the healing and in the waiting. I bless them with perseverance and joy and faith, in the mighty and glorious name of Jesus!

A Few Key Notes

• We are still looking for people to join us May 7-8 in Midland, Texas, for Harvest Day. There will be a one-hour training over Zoom leading up to the weekend, and the weekend will kick off at 5 p.m. with a time of gathering, eating, and worshipping together. RSVP by emailing me at [email protected].
• Registration is now open for the Arise spring luncheon on May 13! To register in person, visit www.eastwest.org/ariseluncheon. The cost per person is $10 to attend in person. To attend the event virtually for free, register online.

Date: May 13

Time: 11:30 a.m.

Location: The Hope Center, 2001 W. Plano Parkway, Plano, TX 75075

• We’re also looking for table sponsors for the spring luncheon. If you’re interested in sponsoring, email Stacy Riddick at [email protected] for more information.