The Lord is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit.
(Psalm 34:18 ESV)
There may come a time when you lie in your bed at night, and in the quiet, you breathe out an honest assessment: my spirit is crushed.
The crushing of your spirit may leave your pillow soaked in tears. Or the crushing may have emptied your store of tears, and you have none left—just a blank mind, an exhausted heart, and a body glued to your bed.
Some wind of pain has blown out the flame of your passion for life. You may find it hard to rise in the morning. You may find it hard to sleep at night. Or sleep may be your only refuge, because it only requires surrender.
You may be able to identify what broke your heart. You may be able to list the blows that one by one weakened and shattered your heart. You may be able to say my heart is broken.
But something else has happened that disturbs you and may even frighten you—your spirit is crushed.
The Unnerving Experience of Being Crushed in Spirit
It would be one thing to sail on with a broken heart, like a ship gliding onward with a frayed mast, still carried by the wind.
But your state feels more severe. Instead, you find that not only are the sails of your heart torn, but the wind has also ceased. You cannot find nor muster any blast of will; you hear no inner breath when you lay your ear to your soul’s chest; and though you hear sounds of war, you have no courage to fight.
You find that though your heart hurts, you’re experiencing something worse: a broken will.
You may have weathered many difficult things—sailed through many storms, and maybe even come out battered and broken. But you have never experienced this. This is different; this is frightening. For who can bear a crushed spirit (Proverbs 18:14)?
What God Says About Your Crushed Spirit
Friend, if this time comes, or if this time is upon you, know first that you are not lost. For here in the Bible, in Psalm 34:18, God identifies your state as common to man. By including this verse in the Bible, he tells you that he knows that a crushed spirit often follows a broken heart. You are not in uncharted emotional territory—God knows right where you are, and he has written about this very place in his Word.
In this one sentence of the Bible, God not only brings you peace by telling you that your experience fits into the book of normal, common, human experience. He also—well, look at what he says to you.
What God Does for Your Crushed Spirit
God is “near to the brokenhearted”—he is the friend who comes to sit with us in our pain. But notice he does not choose the same word “near” to describe how he will minister to the crushed in spirit. For a broken heart can hobble on with its arm around the shoulder of a soul-friend. But if your spirit is crushed, a present friend must do more than be near; they must lift you out of the dust and carry you.
What does God do for those whose spirits are crushed? Well, he altogether rescues them. He saves the crushed in spirit. God’s ministry to the crushed in spirit is to come and save them—to utterly resurrect them (Romans 8:11).
In fact, Psalm 34 as a whole is a testimony of how one of God’s people prayed in desperation, and God listened, saving him from all his troubles (Psalm 34:6). He tells us that the Lord’s ears are open to our cries for help. For, “The Lord hears his people when they call to him for help. He rescues them from all their troubles” (Psalm 34:7 NLT).
People in need of rescue are helpless. Often all they have left is their voice, with which to cry for help, whether in great cries or a whimper. The Lord’s ears are listening for the cries of his children, to hear even their faintest cry for help.
What peace this brings to our crushed spirits! Lie there in the dust, friend, weak, broken, unable to rise—cry “help” unto the Lord if even in your heart, and then wait for God’s strong arms to pick you up and his Spirit to resurrect yours.
How You Can Expect God to Care for Your Crushed Spirit
If you are crushed, friend, Jesus does not hold a megaphone to your face and say “Get up, friend! Call to mind my promises! You’ll get through this! You’re tougher than this!” Cast away any awful thought of such insensitivity on the Savior’s part. And drive from your mind the idea that God’s response to your crushed spirit is “try harder; be better.”
If you are crushed, friend, cry out to Jesus, and he will rescue you. Jesus saves all who call upon him (Romans 10:13). It is in his very nature to rescue, and rescue is even his name—“Yeshua,” which means salvation (Matthew 1:21).
Jesus knows what it is to have a crushed spirit, and a broken heart (Psalm 22:14-15; Psalm 69:20). And he only knows these things because he accepted them willingly so that he might rescue you when you are crushed.
If you have put your faith in Jesus’ ultimate rescue of your soul from sin and hell, then he lives to keep saving you, for you belong to him. You are his child. When you are crushed, he comes to save you and to revive you. This is his promise:
“‘I dwell in the high and holy place, and also with him who is of a contrite [crushed][1] and lowly spirit, to revive the spirit of the lowly, and to revive the heart of the contrite’” (Isaiah 57:15 ESV)
Is your spirit crushed, friend? The Lord saves those who are crushed in spirit. Call on Jesus, even if in only a whisper, or with the groanings of your heart, and wait in faith. He will save you. For he is watching over his word, to perform it (Jeremiah 1:12).
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Source
[1] https://www.blueletterbible.org/lexicon/h1793/kjv/wlc/0-1/