Rise Up! Lessons From Ezra On Walking With Your Head Held HighSample

Heartbreak happens to everyone. We drop our kids off at college. Our companies downsize. Our friends move. Our marriages struggle. We may not be able to control our circumstances, but we can control our responses. 

Ezra was heartbroken, too. The circumstances were out of his control. The choices were not his own. The situation was beyond what he could manage. He couldn’t change it. He couldn’t manipulate it. He couldn’t fix it. He could only choose how he would respond to it. 

We often find ourselves in the same spot. Circumstances are out of our control. The situation is beyond what we can manage. We can’t change it. We can’t manipulate it. We can’t fix it. But we can choose how we will respond. Are we going to stay defeated, disappointed, and destroyed, or are we going to let God do a work in our heartbreak? 

There is a beautiful section of scripture in Isaiah 61 that speaks of the Messiah. Jesus wants to enter into our heartbreak. He wants to give us comfort, a crown of beauty, joyous blessing, and festive praise. But first, we need to hand Him our broken hearts, give Him our ashes, present Him with our mourning, and relinquish our despair. 

Many times, we simply don’t want to make that exchange. We have become addicted to our pain. We find comfort in our hurt instead of our Comforter. We daily don our crowns of disappointment and dance in our despair. We choose to remain stuck in the all too familiar heartbreak. 

But Jesus has something so much better for us. When life gives you ashes, He will trade them for a crown of beauty. When people break your heart, He will make an exchange for comfort. When you face mourning, He will swap that mourning for joyous blessing. When your circumstances cause you to wear despair, He will interchange it with festive praise. 

This doesn’t mean we should stuff our feelings and ignore our pain. We need to grieve, cry, be angry, and just simply feel. We need to let ourselves hurt; we just can’t live in that hurt permanently. We can’t allow a season of mourning to turn into a lifetime of heartbreak. 

No more clinging to the ashes. No more holding tightly to our heartbreak. No more hanging on to our despair. Let’s choose today, tomorrow, and every day after to give our broken hearts to Jesus. Let’s rise up.