Heal my heart and make me clean
Open up my eyes to the things unseen
Show me how to love like you have loved me
Break my heart for what breaks yours
Everything I am for your kingdom’s cause
As I walk from earth into eternity
(Hosanna, Hillsong United)
Prayer is dangerous: it can sometimes make things happen that we don’t expect or necessarily even want, but we pray for them to happen anyway.
Take, for instance, the words to the song above. Those are pretty big prayers, not mere statements to be made lightly. For the last few years, I’ve said prayers similar to those. Seemingly insignificant, one-line prayers like “God, break my heart” or “God, I want to love people like You love them.” And there were times He would answer, and my heart would break momentarily for someone or something. But eventually I would forget that prayer, forget that I had even said anything.
God doesn’t forget, though. And sometimes His answers are long in coming. Sometimes He’ll wait a while to give an answer because we’re not ready for it when we ask. That’s what happened to me recently.
My heart broke. And not from anything I was expecting, not from me praying “that prayer” over myself. Saturday night I went to church and the sermon was on 1 John 4:19-21 (keep in mind that a pretty big chunk of 1 John is about love):
We love because He first loved us. If anyone says, “I love God,”
yet hates his brother, he is a liar. For anyone who does not love his brother,
whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen.
And he has given us this command:
Whoever loves God must also love his brother.
Basically, we’re all orphans, adopted in to the family of God. We can only love because God loved us so much that He gave Himself up for us. And as orphans, adopted and redeemed, we’re called to love other orphans…those who are not yet part of His family.
So the pastor starts talking about orphaned, enslaved, trafficked, fatherless, impoverished children of God. Our brothers and sisters are in bondage. They are forced to do things they do not want to take part in. They are hungry and homeless. And we, as Christ-followers, are called to love them with the love of God.
And it hit me, somewhere in the midst of the statistics that were read, that these are the ones God’s heart breaks for. And something happened inside me that night – my heart started breaking. I tried to ignore it, tried to suppress the tears, so that I could look like I had it all together. But I was broken. Completely broken. I cried myself to sleep, asking God Why do these little ones have to suffer? Why are they ignored, cast out, forgotten about? What can I do?
Pray for them.
Never stop thinking about them.
Share their stories.
Advocate for them.
Above all else, LOVE THEM with My love.
I can be Jesus to the least of these. I can love them and care for them and pray life over them and proclaim freedom for them and help set them free. And I can only do it because God broke my heart for something that is dearly important to Him. And it’s all because of a “little” prayer I prayed – Jesus, break my heart for the things that break yours.
