When People Hurt Your Heart

I scooted closer to my mother as I felt the power of God in my six-year-old body. Moved by the preaching of my daddy, I could sense God’s power within me as a little child. Things changed, though, when I began to realize my dad, the pastor, was not all I thought he was. His choices proved something much different.

Ponytail swinging, ruffles bouncing, and giggles abounding, I ran into life without a problem in the world. Then suddenly right before my eyes, everything I knew about God shattered. I woke up to a new home with one bedroom I shared with my brother and my mom. Dad was gone. 

I could give you the gory details, but perhaps you’ve heard stories like mine. A man of God makes a bad choice that causes him to lose his ministry, his family, and his future of what could have been.

Though this sounds heart-wrenching and dreadfully sorrowful, God has redeemed my story and my life. He has taken something that could have sent my brother, my mother, and me into a life of despair and instead transformed it into a beautiful picture of His grace.

I had a faithful, godly mother who pointed me to God’s Word. She reminded me often that “God didn’t bring us this far to leave us.” Then came Clay, a man only God could have chosen to help rescue us. He walked into our lives and adopted us. He gave us a new name and identity. He taught us godly men don’t have to stand on a stage to be heard, but they can sit in the life of a child who is desperate for love and let God’s light shine brightly in that small place.

By God’s grace, both my brother and I are serving in church ministry. We have been given the gift of being able to share our story so others may see God is bigger than the pain of this world. When sin threatens to take everything comfortable away, God offers the grace, mercy, and comfort we truly need. 

People are going to make mistakes and hurt your heart deeply, but I want to offer you this truth: “God didn’t bring you this far to leave you.” He has a plan greater than we will ever know. Don’t let the mistakes of man make you someone you never intended to be.

I don’t know what you have been through in your life, but I know this: God is faithful. He binds up wounds when we think we will never heal. He mends our hearts when we think they are too broken to bind. He offers His grace when life gives us so much more than we can handle alone. 

God is not done with your life. He can take the most broken and bruised and transform it into the most beautiful. 

For in the day of trouble he will keep me safe in his dwelling; he will hide me in the shelter of his sacred tent and set me high upon a rock. Psalm 27:5 (NIV)

Excerpt from Anchored In: Experience a Power-Full Life in a Problem-Filled World by Micah Maddox, copyright © 2017, Abingdon Press. Used by permission.