Brokenness

This month, I was reminded of the utter brokenness of our humanity, realizing that any discomfort, hurt, and confusion in our lives stems from this source. Amidst it all I wondered, why would a wise God choose to allow a cluster of broken, messy human beings to mingle together on earth, seemingly creating only further mess, and how would this accomplish His purposes in any way?

I doubted my understanding of God’s redemption and began questioning His grace and wisdom. I began to pray for Him to give me answers, to speak directly to my heart, and to reveal Himself to be a personal God.

Where is there purpose in our brokenness? The single aspect I’d like to focus on for this month is that brokenness drives us to desperation and dependence on the Father and places us on our faces before His throne. It reminds us of who we were and who we are in light of Christ and what He’s done for us.

Suddenly, I had come into contact with a God so up-close, a God that knew me so well, that it made me extremely uncomfortable. I was humbled by the very brokenness that I saw within myself and I knew that I needed relief.

In his book titled The Ragamuffin Gospel, Brennan Manning focuses on the subject of brokenness within a Christian’s life. Think on this;

"Relief comes from rigorous honesty with ourselves. It is interesting that whenever the evangelists Mark, Luke, or John mention the apostles, they call the author of the first gospel either Levi or Matthew. But in his own Gospel, he always refers to himself as 'Matthew the publican', never wanting to forget who he was and always wanting to remember how low Jesus stooped to pick him up."

Gaining perspective and humility may not sound much like relief in the way that we’d have it, and it doesn’t seem to offer us any answer as to why God would do things and allow things in this world the way that He has. Perhaps it is because this is not the type of relief we seek, but rather the kind God would seek for our souls and for our character. I believe our brokenness can drive us to the truth that I’ve been clinging to in James 1:2-6;

“Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything. If any of you lacks wisdom, you should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to you.”

Ironically enough, the matured Christian is truly the opposite of the picture that may have been impressed upon our minds. In fact, according to Christian counselor, Dr. Larry Crabb, if you “…ask a mature person when he last sinned…he will smile the smile of a broken but healing person.” The mature Christian, growing in Christ, is rather someone constantly being brought into awareness of their sin, knowing they are always in the process of healing and working against the nature of their flesh in choosing to allow God near enough to transform them from the inside out. I’d say that’s letting Him pretty close.

As I stated before, acknowledging the brokenness of those around me and within myself has driven me to seek answers, and most of them are not simple. But I think that, for a time, it’s enough to sit with our brokenness, appreciating it for the way that it drives us back to the heart of our God as we seek His wisdom and matures us as we understand our need for His grace.

Because He Lives

This past month served as a strong and poignant reminder of all that this past year has held. Certainly for me it was one of the most tumultuous yet, though with each passing year the last seems more and more like some sort of wonderful and frightening roller coaster ride. Looking back on the ups and downs of it all, I was indecisive about the topic of my meditation for this month and felt I had little truly substantial words of encouragement to give. Still, the more I wondered about all I’d seen and learned, only one thing proved certain: the God that keeps us and moves us in this life for His glory.

There is one song whose chorus reads, “Because He lives I can face tomorrow, because He lives, all fear is gone; because I know He holds the future, and life is worth the living, just because He lives!”

This song always offers me encouragement and urges me to look upon the life of Christ; simply the fact that He came to earth and lived in full dependence upon the Father, through it conquering all sin and trials that He knew we would encounter—even death—offers us the hope that the Christian life cannot and will not be lived in futility. We have been given victory through the exchange of our flesh for His blood, and from this we can know and find comfort each moment that our Heavenly Daddy is not only keeping us in the present, but moving us forward to where He has called us, transforming us along the way. Psalm 90:17 says, “Let the favor of the Lord our God be on us; establish for us the work of our hands—establish the work of our hands!”

Not only is God establishing the work He has for us in the future, but He is also establishing us to complete the work He has laid out for us, day by day!

There are plenty of moments in the Christian life when we feel as though we have not the strength to move forward and must gather the discipline from within ourselves to do so. But looking back, I can’t help but believe that even within those seemingly impossible moments, there is one God who is truly feeding us the strength of Christ and moving us. Just looking back to one year ago I know that I did not change myself and move myself through all of those obstacles, big and small, nor did I provide for myself all of those moments that will forever be memories in my heart, moments where my soul was blessed and comforted in a way that only the Lover of my soul knows how to do. Still, there are so many times and places where the Lord has had to make me so uncomfortable in one place so as to give me the courage to move on to the next season of the life that He has for me.

By His grace I am where I am today, having been given the things that I have and seen the things that I was predestined to, in order that I might best “face tomorrow”.