What does the Bible say about a broken heart? Here are 4 possible reasons for why God let your heart get broken by someone.
1. God May Have Let You Get Your Heart Broken to Show You He Works All Things for Good “for Those Who Love Him”
There are spiritual, eternal truths that are so important that God will allow painful earthly circumstances to occur if we need it to learn these truths. God will allow emotionally difficult things to occur in your life if it means you will learn an eternal truth that will benefit you forever. One of those truths which is that important is that God can turn bad into good for those who love him.
You have probably heard that truth before, but I want to reemphasize the phrase “for those who love him.” God is not just cutting blank checks for everyone in the world. God’s goodness extends to humanity in many ways, but his special grace only affects those who love him.
Water has the power to refresh anyone, but water only refreshes those who drink it. Likewise, God can turn anything for good for anyone, but according to Romans 8:28 only those who love God will experience God’s power working for them in this way. It states, “And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.”
You have to remain faithful to God to experience Romans 8:28. You will not experience the full goodness of God unless you truly love and follow him through the storms of life. Through every experience in life, including through the pain of a broken heart, God is constantly seeking to show us that he can turn anything for good if we keep loving him no matter what. If you let a heartbreak turn you from God, you will not experience his goodness.
What does it mean to love God? 1 John 5:3, “For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments.” To experience Romans 8:28, you can’t rebel against God when your relationships fail. When you don’t get what you really wanted, you have to keep loving God so he can show you that he alone is what our hearts need most.
2. God May Have Let You Get Your Heart Broken By Someone to Expose a Relationship Idol in Your Life
An idol is when we love something more than we love God. When we choose to love something more than God, the Lord will often show us our mistake by allowing that idol to carry the weight of our deepest hopes. Whenever you put a false god to the test, it will always fail you.
Do you remember those toys as a child where you place the shapes in the holes that fit those shapes? The circle shape fits in the circle hole. The triangle shape fits in the triangle hole. The rectangle shape fits in the rectangle hole.
Likewise, the hole in your heart is a God-shaped hole. And if you try to fill that hole with a false god, it is too small and simply falls through that hole rather than fitting properly and filling it. Sometimes the only way you will realize you have a false god in the shape of a relationship is when God lets that idol fail you.
God could have let someone break your heart to teach you no human can fill your heart. As 1 John 5:20-21 proclaims:
And we know that the Son of God has come and has given us understanding, so that we may know him who is true; and we are in him who is true, in his Son Jesus Christ. He is the true God and eternal life. Little children, keep yourselves from idols.”
3. God May Have Let You Get Your Heart Broken By Someone to Teach You to Listen to His Warnings
God will only warn us so many times before allowing us to learn the hard way. For example, in Mark 14:26-31 Jesus did warn Peter that Peter was going to betray Jesus, but Peter didn’t listen. In Mark 14:32-42, Jesus then warned Peter three times to pray for strength to overcome the temptations ahead, but each time Peter fell asleep again. And then in Mark 14:66-72, just as Jesus warned, Peter did end up denying him.
Likewise, if we ignore God’s warnings long enough, eventually we will experience the thing God was trying to warn us about.
I grew up playing hockey, and in practice my coach would tell me not to skate across the middle of the rink with my head down because in a game someone from the other team would see me as an easy target to body check. The coach could only warn me so many times in practice; eventually it was time to play the game. Sure enough, I got lit up by an opposing player because I was skating with my head down. The coach tried to verbally warn me, but I can tell you I only needed to make that mistake once in a game before learning my lesson.
You can only ignore God’s warning so long before he lets you learn the lesson the harder way. Oftentimes, God lets someone’s get hurt because that person kept ignoring God’s warnings.
4. God May Have Let You Get Your Heart Broken Because He Overruled Your Desires in Kindness
Relationships are so difficult to maintain over time because the two people in those relationships always change over time. Humans never remain exactly the same. Who you are today will be a little different than who you are tomorrow. And who you are in 10 years will be very different than who you are in 1 year.
My point is, God alone knows the future, and in kindness God often looks ahead in ways that we cannot do. When he sees something down the line that we are unable to see, he takes that into account in ways that we are unable to do. So God in kindness often says “no” to things we want now because he knows in the future we won’t feel the same way.
When you remain faithful to God after a relationship heartbreak, oftentimes he will give you an even better relationship with someone that you do end up marrying. You will then realize why God said no to you in the past. You will understand that God let your heart get broken then because he wanted to give your heart to someone completely different later.
And even when things do not play out just like this, though they often do, we can still trust that God’s ways are better than our ways because he knows things that we don’t know. As Isaiah 55:8-9 teaches us:
For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.”