trouble, learn to free your heart.

When overwhelmed by trouble, learn to free your heart. Even if you are suffering from the most dreadful illness, when you can hardly stand it anymore, even if you spend the whole day praying and sighing, free your heart. Chase your illness out of your heart. Set your heart on things above and see to it that God reigns in your heart. You can carry your sickness in a bundle on your back if you like, but it does not belong in your heart. Free your heart, I say. Cast out your misery from your heart, and bear your cross.

Let us not be impressed by sickness. For what is sickness anyway? If we live in an atmosphere of life, sickness is dispelled like a mist. We experience this, time and again, and so do doctors. Our mortal mists are not as dense as they seem at first sight. They dissolve. At some point they are there, then they disappear, and no one can tell where they came from or where they have gone.

So free your heart. Let your head be concerned with trifles, if you like, but God the Savior must be in your heart. Don’t let yourself be so hounded by trivialities that you are of no use anymore. Scores of people are paralyzed because they allow so many little things, especially their aches and pains, to enter their hearts.

Keep yourself free so that even in the deepest suffering, in the most unhappy of circumstances, in short, in all situations, you can joyfully serve Christ. Let nothing cloud your heart, least of all yourself – thinking and worrying about yourself. Instead, sacrifice yourself anew to God with prayer and thanksgiving. In this way you will give God the glory on earth, and he will lift you above all that presses down upon you.

 

additional idea
This meant a lot to me because I have been dealing with an illness. My husband and I have found that we have to celebrate each moment just as Jesus did. It is the only way to get past it all. If we live in the moment it helps us to free our hearts as Blumhardt also warns us to do. I believe that illness in the physical is just a way to take our minds and hearts off of God in the spiritual. It is one of the final attacks the devil tries to trump against us when he fails at everything else, and so more important than ever to hear Blumhardt's words and really free our hearts and our minds as our counter-attack from all of it. If you don't know how else to do it, then stop for a minute and find all the things that you are blessed with in that moment--and then really celebrate it. God is the one that gave us those blessings. I mean, if you have to, pull out the wine glasses and fill them with water, and think about the first miracle Jesus performed! He wants us to celebrate each moment and the only way to do that is stay focused on Him. That is what Blumhardt is also saying--keep your hearts free!!! I want to pass this article on to so many friends I know that are suffering with illness right now, because it is the word that we all need to hear in this moment!