Encouragement

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Brokenness comes to us in many ways. Sometimes, we come from broken homes and are the result of broken relationships. Perhaps physical ailments and limitations break the spirit which resides in a broken body. Maybe you broke yourself by living hard and fast and loose. Whatever the case, we each have some hidden (or not so hidden) weakness.

**A quick aside, if you are one of the ‘lucky’ ones who feels whole, I have two suggestions. One, don’t presume brokenness is necessarily due to a lack of faith and/or relationship with Christ. Please refer to Job! Two, give it time. If God is working in your life, he will remodel you in such a way as to glorify him. A little word of wisdom, remodeling is, at best, uncomfortable! Wholeness in and of yourself does not equal rightness with God.

At any rate, brokenness from a first person perspective is humiliating and leaves the sufferer with shame to deal with as the cherry on top of all of the other ‘fun’ of seeking healing. Each day can feel like a year for those struggling to overcome what is insurmountable without God’s help and it takes all of a person’s emotional strength to gut it through until bedtime.

I have a little sister. When she was younger, she turned to drugs and alcohol, amongst other things, to cope with the stresses of being in a highly dysfunctional family. Decades later, she is fighting daily to crawl out of a very deep, dark hole. We talk on the phone a lot and I feel as though she is beset with a trio of battles: 1) forgiving herself, 2) accepting Christ’s forgiveness, and 3) setting a new and unerring course with the past sucking at each step she takes like quicksand.

One night recently she was on a certain social network and she saw a woman whom she did not know crying out, contemplating suicide. This woman was living in a pay-by-the week hotel and attempting to sever a relationship with an abusive ‘lover.’ In addition to the obvious, her secondary problem was she had no where else to turn for help and no external support. Having an intimate knowledge of being in that darkest of places, my sister sent an instant message with her cell number and told the woman to call her if she needed to talk. This woman called and my sister was able to share her own very similar story-common ground that many within the church might not have had with her. And then my sister shared Jesus Christ and the hope of salvation with someone as equally broken as herself. The despairing woman ended up with a thimbleful of hope offered by someone who had shared experiences with her. Help and hope not offered from a position of condescension but from the very level ground found at the foot of the cross. Does that not mirror salvation offered by Christ who chose to become fully man so that He might save us? Is there anything more beautiful?

When we talked later, my sister said, “I have always felt like I was too broken for God to use for anything. But maybe I am just broken enough that he can use me after all.” Friends, truer words have never been spoken! God longs for us to humbly approach him with our broken pieces. He may not use those pieces the way we want him to, but he will use them to reflect his glory. If we call him Savior, we are NEVER beyond his ability to redeem us and use our experiences, no matter how base they are, for his glory.

I truly believe this story encapsulates who God is, who Jesus is, and the plan he has for all of us no matter who we are or where we have been. When it comes to God the Father, it only matters where we are going! Let us share our food and water as well as our hope with other seekers along the way. Amen!

Romans 8:1 “For there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.”

2 Corinthians 4:7-11 “But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all surpassing power is from God and not from us. We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed, perplexed but not in despair, persecuted but not abandoned, struck down but not destroyed.”

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