Beauty in my brokenness. When you think about your broken times, does beauty come to mind? Probably not.
Humor me a moment for a personal story that might connect the words for us.
If you ask each of my four grown daughters, "What one thing do you remember your mother teaching you?" I fear that you'll hear: "She taught us, 'Waste not, want not!'" It's true that they heard that statement as I scraped the sides of jars, turned bottles upside down, or added water and shook free the last remnants of food particles from containers. I genuinely don't like to waste anything. Want taught me that lesson.
My Heavenly Father doesn't like waste either. How do I know that? In the presence of the most challenging trials and the brokenness of life, I have found the sweetest, most satisfying Life that I have ever tasted--I've eaten of His abundant goodness. And when I reach the other side of trials and brokenness, I've found that for His children, He goes after every particle of the experience to use for our good and His glory. I invite you to accompany me as we explore Beauty in My Brokenness. Let's begin with a song:
The one thing I'd like to pass along to you in this post is that trials and brokenness are how the Father positions us to receive the sweetest taste of Him that we'll ever eat. Why is that? Because when we're wholly emptied or, humanly speaking, irreparably broken, we have a total capacity to receive His fullness. Do we have to reach the breaking point to receive from Him? No.
Having said this, many of us are so self-reliant and headstrong that it takes breaking us to get us to turn to Him to ask for help. Beyond that, sometimes our relationship with Him is superficial, like praying dutiful or crisis prayers. He doesn't want to be a vending machine to us: prayer, in/answer, out. He wants to have an intimate relationship with us. That was always His intention for His beautiful creation, man. If you want to read more about His Divine Plan for us, please read my post: https://www.moveyourheartministries.com/blog/the-divine-design-broken-mankind/.
Where Are You?
That's the question God asked Adam and Eve after they chose to listen to the Serpent's lie about God holding out on them; they deliberately disobeyed the one command and warning God had given them: Don't eat from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Instantly, they were transferred from living in intimate connectedness with their Creator, who had given them every good and beautiful provision, and transformed into wayward and independent individuals, scratching out their living as best they could. They found that Life apart from God is challenging in every way.
Where are you in connection with God? Not sure? Locating you is actually very easy. Let's activate a remote, spiritual GPS, and we'll find you. Like your distant relatives, Adam and Eve, there are only two possible camps where you might be living:
- Independent from God; or
- Inextricably Connected to Him.
Living independently makes you think you're in control, and the conclusion is partially correct. You're independent, sure enough, but you are very definitely NOT in control.
If you live independently from God, how is life working for you? What is the health of your relationships, finances, life goals, physical health, habits, and mental and emotional status, to name a few areas?
Living connected to God might sound limiting, but in truth, freedom opens up for those who entrust to God the areas of life we just inventoried.
With 100% honesty, I can tell you that I have never regretted the day I completely sold out to follow Jesus as the only way back to my Creator.
