4. Find a Christian hymn or song that resonates while accurately communicating God’s truth. Play it until you can sing it unaccompanied in your own head.
Music is incredibly powerful and helps us to regulate our emotions. In a 2013 study (Chanda & Levitin), researchers reported that when we begin to play a song in our own minds, we are using the area of our brain called the “moral reasoning center.” That doesn’t mean that if you listen to explicit material, you are doomed to commit those acts—we are not slaves to the music to which we listen. However, it can knit our hearts more closely to those actions and make them seem more acceptable.
The opposite is true as well. If we listen to music and are able to sing songs that reinforce the truths of Scripture, then we can find ourselves that much more resilient in troubling times, and God’s promises can feel that much more relevant to our hurting hearts. There is a reason, after all, that the largest book in the Bible (Psalms) is a book of songs. God didn’t need an MRI machine to know how your mind works.
5. Find some place to plug in and serve for God’s glory.
C.S. Lewis once said that as Christians we are not called to think less of ourselves but to think of ourselves less. Christ speaks similarly in Matthew 20. When we prioritize other people above ourselves it can help us to get out of the quicksand of our own self-pity and help us to realize that we are not alone in our suffering. Also, as we try to lift up others by applying God’s promises to their lives, we often find ourselves being sustained. Therefore, when we purposefully serve, we talk about it being a greater ministry to us than to those that we served.
Applying God’s promises of grace and comfort to our hurting, fearful or angry hearts is where the rubber meets the road for many Christians. While these five suggestions may not change you overnight from grieving to giddy, they might help you to more acutely feel the safety of God’s promises and the tenderness of his care.
