Dennis Edwards
Here’s a nice
little song that has been a great help to me in times of trouble, in times of
mental or emotional anguish or turmoil. It was written by Alfred Henry Ackley
who lived from 1887-1960. Born January 21st in Pennsylvania, he
studied music at the Royal Academy of Music in London and graduated from
Westminster Theological Seminary in Maryland. He was ordained a Presbyterian
minister in 1914 and served churches in Pennsylvania and California. He wrote around
1,500 Christian songs, pouring out his heart to God and ministering to others through
music. He also worked with Billy Sunday’s evangelistic team. [1]
"HEARTACHES"
When your heart is aching, turn to Jesus,
He's the dearest Friend that you can know;
-You will find Him standing close beside you,
Waiting peace and comfort to bestow.
Chorus
Heartaches, take them all to Jesus,
Go to Him today,
Do it now without delay.
Heartaches, take them all to Jesus,
He will take your heartaches all away.
There is joy for ev'ry troubled sorrow,
Sweet relief for ev'ry bitter pain,
Jesus Christ is still the great Physician,
No one ever sought His help in vain.
[Repeat Chorus]
Heartaches, take them all to Jesus,
Go to Him today,
Do it now without delay.
Heartaches, take them all to Jesus,
He will take your heartaches all away.
Jesus understands, whate'er the trouble,
And He waits to heal your wounded soul.
Will you trust His love so strong and tender?
He alone can make your spirit whole.
[Repeat Chorus]
Heartaches, take them all to Jesus,
Go to Him today,
Do it now without delay.
Heartaches, take them all to Jesus,
He will take your heartaches all away.
Take them all to Jesus,
He will take your heartaches all away.
You can listen to the song at the following link, song Nº 4.
https://www.nubeat.org/abwnmt.html
Heartaches is one of those beautiful songs similar to those
we find in the Bible in the Book of Psalms. The Psalms were actually prayers
that were sung. Many were written by David and later Asaph. Throughout the
Christian Church history others have added their songs and prayers to God and
that is what we have in the song above. “Heartaches” has been a great help to
me in my times of trouble and affliction.
It is Jesus who is the one that is going to take those
heartaches all away. Whatever heartache we go through in life, and we all go
through many different heartaches, Jesus is going to help us. He promises to
help us. The Bible is full of those promises. He tells us that when we are
faint, He is going to lift us up. He tells us not to be weary and faint in our
minds, because He is going to uphold us with the right-hand of His
righteousness. Let us go over a few verses that assure us of the truth that God
will be with us and help us through whatever heartache we may be going through,
or may go through in the future.
Proverbs 14:13 “Even in laughter the heart is sorrowful; and
the end of that mirth is heaviness.”
If we don’t have God in our hearts, we can be there at a
party having a great time apparently, but without having a personal
relationship with God through Jesus and the Holy Spirit, the world and all it
offers, ends up being nothing but emptiness and loneliness. Without God in our
lives, all our goals end up being or seeming superficial. They do not fulfil the
deepest longing of our heart and soul for total love and understanding.
We can be within a group of people at some event, but feel
totally alone, and yet we make-believe we are having a great time. However, deep
down within us, our hearts are aching. We lack that closeness that we long to
have and need with someone. The relationships that we have in our search for
comfort and total understanding often fall flat, or fall apart completely. They
don’t satisfy the deepest yearning of our hearts for love and truth. We are
spiritual beings made in the image of God and only God Himself can fulfil or
fill that void within our hearts for total love and understanding.
Ecclesiastes 7:3 “Sorrow is better than laughter: for by the
sadness of the countenance the heart is made better.”
The heartaches we go through deepen us spiritually. They
deepen our character. They actually make our hearts better, because they can
help remove the froth, superficiality, and vanity, that cause our hearts to be
sick spiritually.
Psalm 34:18 “The Lord is nigh unto them that are of a broken
heart; and saves such as be of a contrite spirit.”
We need to let our heartaches humble us and break us. We cannot
let them harden us or cause a root of bitterness to spring up within us, which
will not only affect us negatively, but all those around us. We need to let our
heartaches soften our hard hearts, that God may come and comfort us.
Jesus said, “Let not your hearts be troubled: you believe in
God, believe also in Me. … I will not leave you comfortless. I will come to you,”
John 14:1&18.
Jesus promises to not leave us comfortless. He will come to
us.
Psalm 147:3 “The Lord heals the broken in heart, and binds
up their wounds.”
God has promised to heal our broken hearts and to bind up
our mental and emotional wounds.
2 Corinthians 1:4 “Who comforts us in all our tribulation,
that we may be able to comfort them which are in any trouble, by the comfort
wherewith we ourselves have been comforted of God.”
God is going to comfort us in our afflictions, so that we
will be able to comfort others in their afflictions. When we are going through
a heartache or trial or affliction, God is using it to break us. He is using it
to break our hearts of stone, so that we will be able to be instruments of love
and encouragement to others. He is doing a retooling of our hearts. Maybe we
have strayed away from the Lord and haven’t kept Him in first place. We have
let the cares of this world, and the deceitfulness of riches, and the lust of
other things choke out God from our lives.
Maybe we have gotten so busy with His work, that we have
neglected Him, or in some way we have been off track, or we have not been as
diligent as we should have been. Therefore, God lets us go through a breaking.
During that strong, heavy breaking, that heart-breaking experience, God retools
us. He is taking away the heart of stone and replacing it with a heart of
flesh, a heart that can love and empathize with other weary and broken hearts.
He remakes us, and comforts us, so that we can be instruments of comfort and
encouragement to others who are going through similar problems. God comforts
us, so that we can comfort others.
Hebrews 13:5b “I will never leave you or forsake you.”
The Lord is not going to leave us comfortless. He said He
would come to us. He will never leave us or forsake us.
Psalm 119:50 “This is my comfort in my affliction: for Your Word
has quickened me.”
I want to share a little about when my son died, to show
that these promises from God’s word are true. Here is how the Lord comforted me
when I was faced with the sudden unexpected death of my 27-year-old son.
How did God comfort me? The first way was through His
written word. It is from reading God’s word, God promises, that we will receive
strength and comfort. God’s word speaks to our hearts and sends the healing
balm of the Holy Spirit through His word which in turn works the curing that we
need. Reading God’s word when we are going through a difficult time will help us.
When my son died, I was comforted through reading God’s word. His word
ministered to my broken heart and strengthened me. His word comforted me.
Hearing His voice through His word comforted me. His word quickened me, or
brought me back to life when I felt like dying. His word spoke to my heart and
comforted me. Reading and hearing His word was one of the first ways God
comforted me in my affliction.
The second way was through prayer, through desperately
seeking God in prayer. When my son died, I prayed. I got down on my hands and
knees and called out to God in prayer. God says, “You shall seek Me and find
Me, when you shall search for Me with all your heart,” Jeremiah 29:13. I poured
out my heart in prayer to the Lord. In Psalm 34:6 we read, “This poor man
cried, and the Lord heard him, and saved him out of all of his troubles.” I prayed
and cried out to God desperately in my affliction. God heard me and sent the
comforting balm of the Holy Spirit that brought a supernatural peace of heart
and mind to my soul.
However, besides giving me peace of heart and mind, He also
gave me a vision, a supernatural experience. I have since talked to others who
have shared with me the supernatural experience, they had around the death of
their loved one. I had just received a telephone call that my son had not gone
to work. His clothes were found on a beachfront not far from the bungalow he
shared with friends. He was missing. I put the phone down and immediately got
down on my knees in prayer crying out to God to save my son and help him to be
found.
Instantly, I had a vision in my mind’s eye. I am not the
type of person that gets visions. I am sceptical of people who say they have had
a vision. Nevertheless, I had a vision and saw my son getting off a boat and
entering into heaven. Ready to receive him was a whole group of people waiting
on the landing, including my father and my mother and other family loved ones
and a friend who had just recently died. They were all hugging him, and loving
him, and comforting him. It was a big celebration, a welcoming party. In that
moment, I knew my son was in heaven. I knew he would not be found alive.
That is exactly what happened. Eight days later his body was
found some twenty-one miles away by a German couple, tourists, who were walking
along the beach. The police said it was a miracle that they found the body, as
in other occasions, the body does not always wash back to the shore. My son had
been living and working in Bermuda, an island in the Atlantic Ocean about 650
miles off the coast of North Carolina. It was a comfort that we found the body
and were able to give him a proper burial.
God comforted me through His word, through prayer, and through
a vision. The next way God comforted me was through the love I received from
people all around, many times, people I did not even know. I remember I walked
into a grocery store not far from where my son had worked. I was asking the
shop keeper for directions, when I noticed the local newspaper with a small photo
of my son on the front page saying that his body had been found. I pointed to
the picture and told the shop keeper, a heavy-set young woman from Jamacia,
that the picture was of my son.
She responded, “You poor thing. Do you mind if I come around
from the counter and give you a hug?” I burst into tears as her strong solid
arms embraced me in a hug of love. Yes, God did love me and was sending a
complete stranger in a foreign land to manifest it. Other times during my week
stay on the island, other people, whom I did not know, gave me hugs of
encouragement. God indeed does comfort His children. The love I received in the
forms of hugs was one of the most visible and tangible ways God manifested His
love to me at that moment of deep despair.
God comforts us. However, I was honest with my situation,
and did not try to cover up my broken-heartedness. The Bible says, “Confess
your faults one to another, pray one for another,” James 5:16a. I confessed to
others my need for comforting and God sent individuals to comfort me. I let my
suffering hang out for others to see, and they responded. Had I been able to
hide my condition, I would not have received all the comfort that I did. “The
Lord’s hand is not shortened, that it cannot save; neither His ear heavy, that
it cannot hear,” Isaiah 59:1. “Has He said, and shall He not do it? Or has He
spoken, and shall He not make it good?” Numbers 23:19b. God fulfilled His
promises and sent the comfort that I needed.
So far, the ways God comforted me were through reading and
hearing His word, through prayer, by giving me a vision, through my confessing
my situation to others that they might be instruments of love and encouragement
to me. I, also, cried. I cried at night. I remember I was packing up my son’s
things to give them to the local Salvation Army to be used for the poor, when I
was overcome with waves of despair and almost uncontrollable anguish and grief.
I did not know how I was going to get through those moments. It was then that the
sweet soft voice of the Lord told me to stop and check my e-mails on my laptop.
I opened up my computer and found a message from a former girlfriend of my son.
I clicked on the e-mail and opened up the message. She
shared with me a dream or vision she had had as she woke up early that morning.
In the dream my son came to her and said, “Tell my father that everything is
alright, that I’m okay. Now I understand everything he was trying to teach me.
Tell my father not to worry, I’m okay.” Here, I had been having a horrible
battle of uncontrollable emotion and grief, and God sent me a message through
my son’s former girlfriend. God sent her a dream which she was faithful to
share with me. The message sent me again into tears, but this time, tears of
joy and thanksgiving. My son Martin was with God in the heavenly realm. I need
not worry.
I ended up lifting up my hands in praise and thanksgiving. I
believed the messages He had sent me. Everything was okay and would be okay.
God’s comforting love had and would conquer my grief. Death had been swallowed
up in victory when Christ died and rose again. I believed and I would keep on
believing. Because I believed, I was able to receive the comfort the Holy
Spirit was sending me.
Jesus said, “Blessed are those that mourn, for they shall be
comforted,” Matthew 5:4. We have got to do the mourning, the crying, and God
will send the comfort we need through the power of the Holy Spirit. As I, the
poor man cried, the Lord heard, and saved me out of all my troubles. We have
got to cry out to God and He will hear us. He is not deaf that He cannot hear.
He will fulfil all His good promises. We need to draw nigh to Him and He will
draw nigh to us. Not one of all His good promises to us will fail. He has said,
and He will make it good. “He that has begun a good work in us will perform it
until the day of Jesus Christ,” Philippians 1:6.
The final verses I want to share today are about joy. Psalm 30:5, “Weeping
shall endure for a night, but joy comes in the morning.” God’s joy does return.
At times we need to fight for it, and fight away the clouds of discouragement
and despair. David prayed, “Lord, make me to hear joy and gladness, that the
bones which You have broken may rejoice….Restore unto me the joy of my
salvation,” Psalm 51:8&12a. We may need to fight for joy, but we have been
called into the Lord’s army, and soldiers need to be prepared to fight. We need
to fight the good fight of faith and not give in to despair and discouragement.
“The joy of the Lord is our strength,” Nehemiah 8:10.
I had to confront my mistakes as a parent and as a father. I
had to let God do the retooling of my heart, mind, and behaviour. I was not
able to make those things up to my son who was gone, but I took it to heart and
tried to learn the lessons, so that I could be a better father, a better
husband, a better friend, a better teacher, a better person. The joy of the
Lord does return. Psalm 16:11a says, “You Lord will show me the path of life: in
Your presence is fulness of joy.” As we draw close to Jesus day by day, His
presence in our lives gives us joy and helps us to carry on in spite of life’s difficulties
and problems. “The joy of the Lord is our strength.” His joy does come again,
our broken heart is healed and restored to God once more.
Let us therefore, make a joyful noise unto the Lord. Let us
enter into His presence with thanksgiving and singing. For the Lord is good; His mercy is everlasting;
and His truth endures to all generations, Psalm 100:1,2,5.
[1] Dianne Shapiro (from ackleygenealogy.com by
Ed Ackley and Allen C. Ackley)
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