Apart from brokenness, how do we know what living life truly is? I have been digging into the Apostle Paul in the book of Acts. This is what Christ said of the Apostle Paul.
Acts 9:16 “For I will show him how much he must suffer for the sake of my name.
To me, that is a scary scary thing. We, as Christians here in the West, live in a bubble compared to the rest of the Christian world. Pastors are arrested and tortured just for preaching the Gospel. We must get past the trails we face and realize that the brokenness we go through is to break open the pride so we can grasp the magnitude of God’s mercy and grace.
I use this analogy a lot when explaining the bad in the world. If you ate a medium rare, steak baked potato and bowl of beans every day. Now, the steak and sides are cooked perfectly and the exact same every time. How would you know that you had a bad steak? You would never know until you had a bad steak.
How do we know that God is loving and merciful? Because we see the fallen world around us. For us to truly grasp who God is, we must be broken from our pride. I say that because we want to see God from our standpoint and based on what we think our needs our. So, when my father passed away, I had every right to be mad at God for taking my father. If my father were here, I could reach out to him. I could ask him what to do and how to move forward. I could call him when I am frustrated. I could hear once again that voice that I so long to hear. That need of his presence in my life to tell me that I am screwing up. I have every right to be mad at God.
So then, if my father was still here, how would I grow into the leader of our family? How would God mold me into what He wants me to be if there is no room to grow? From pain, there is always growth. So, God breaks us to see growth. When a new limb grows from a tree, that limb must break through the bark of the tree.
True brokenness that pain that is in that moment is ugly and violent. But, the beauty that comes from it is wrapped in glory for the heavens. When we start seeing the one who created us and the one who is changing us instead of seeing our hurt and our pain, that is when we see growth.
Psalms 51 is the greatest Psalm King David wrote. He wrote Psalm 51 one year after he slepted with Bathsheba. And in verse 8 he says to God let me hear joy and gladness, let the bones you have broken rejoice. LET THE BONES YOU HAVE BROKEN GOD REJOICE. Not the bones the world broke or our family broke, but that God has broken.
The world we live in is fallen, and bad things happen. But good always comes from it. I relapsed on my wife’s birthday years ago. Because of that relapse, she is a biblical counselor and is helping men and women every day. God is using the brokenness from the hurt I caused her to help others. People have had their lives changed because of my wife. We can choose to live in the brokenness or grow from it.
No matter what, it will never be forgotten. We have scars from our past because sin scares us. Now hear me when I say this because all scars are not our own sin, but some are from others’ sins toward us. I was raped and molested for months when I was a child in 3rd grade to be truthful. That traumatic event has left scars that I am still trying to heal today. That wasn’t my sin; that was someone else’s. I was the target of that sin, not the sinner.
Our sin scars us as well. Yes, God throws are sin as far as the East is from the West. God forgets our sin through Christ Jesus only. But we don’t. When we sin, especially sexual sin, it is forever burned into our soul. We lie we repent we forget it the next day. If we forgot all our sin, how would we know where we came from? How would we know what God has brought us through? It is in the brokenness that true worship of God our creator the Most High is the purest form.
Without brokenness, we are not able to see God in His Holy Glory. We tend to be blinded by pride and selfishness before we can truly be broken. Brokenness in the potters hand is a masterpiece in the making.
Grace of The King 