4 Reasons God Loves a Broken Heart

According to the Bible, God loves a broken heart. Here are 4 reasons why.

1. God Loves a Broken Heart Because It Causes You to Depend Fully on Him and Not Yourself

We don’t come into this world with an eagerness to depend on God. Rather, in pride, our sin nature’s (Psalm 51:5) default position is to depend on ourselves. This is so dangerous because God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble (James 4:6). Psalm 51:17, “The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.” This also means God does despise an unbroken and prideful heart.

In love, therefore, God allows our hearts to get broken so our prideful self-dependence will be shattered as well. As 2 Corinthians 1:8-9 states:

For we do not want you to be unaware, brothers, of the affliction we experienced in Asia. For we were so utterly burdened beyond our strength that we despaired of life itself. Indeed, we felt that we had received the sentence of death. But that was to make us rely not on ourselves but on God who raises the dead.”

Without a broken heart, we are often stuck with a stubborn heart. Rarely will we turn to God until we get broken. In human weakness, not human strength, does God choose to empower us through his Spirit (2 Corinthians 12:7-10). Depending on ourselves makes us weak. Depending on God make us strong. In love, God lets us get broken so we can become stronger through his healing power.

Psalm 73:6, “My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.”

2. God Loves a Broken Heart Because It Opens You to His Healing in Areas of Your Life that You Didn’t Even Know Were Broken

Sometimes God has to allow the pain to become unbearable so that we become aware of a whole host of other problems we’ve been ignoring for years. Perhaps that one breakup crushes you, but in your healing God mends issues that occurred in your childhood. Or maybe a human relationship failed you but this then helped you realize you had been running from the Lord for years.

As Psalm 119:71 says, “It is good for me that I was afflicted, that I might learn your statutes.” Psalm 34:8 also says, “Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good! Blessed is the man who takes refuge in him!” And Psalm 147:3 proclaims, “He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds.”

3. God Loves a Broken Heart Because It Prepares You for His Calling on Your Life

As A.W. Tozer famously wrote, “It is doubtful whether God can bless a man greatly until he has hurt him deeply.” How can you lead people to the healing love of God if you have not yet been healed yourself? As 2 Corinthians 1:3-4 explains:

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God.”

When Jesus was beginning his public ministry, he read from the Isaiah 61:1, “The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me to bring good news to the poor; he has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives . . .”

Likewise, as his disciples, once we have been healed by Christ, we too are to help others receive the good news. 

4. God Loves a Broken Heart Because It Causes Your Closeness with Christ to Increase

As the classic hymn states, “Prone to wander, Lord I feel it. Prone to leave the God I love. Here’s my heart, oh take and seal it. Seal it for Thy courts above.”

In Jeremiah 29:13, God says, “You will seek me and find me, when you seek me with all your heart.” Oftentimes we will not seek God with all our hearts until our hearts are broken. In love, God uses our brokenness to discipline us to him:

For the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it. Therefore lift your drooping hands and strengthen your weak knees, and make straight paths for your feet, so that what is lame may not be put out of joint but rather be healed.” (Hebrews 12:11-13)

Only when we cry our for help will we receive that help. Psalm 34:17-18, “When the righteous cry for help, the Lord hears and delivers them out of all their troubles. The Lord is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit.”

If your heart is broken, this is God’s invitation to you to experience his love in an even deeper way. As Jesus said, “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest” (Matthew 11:28).