We are all broken people! We all have our cracks and imperfections, even gaping big holes. Not one of us is perfect. Yet God loves us anyway. He loves us all the same. He is no respecter of persons; a poor man or woman who seems to have nothing is as much the focus of God’s attention and as able to be a recipient of His love as the man or woman living in the mansion in the posh suburb with the cars, pool, tennis courts, boats and whatever else money can buy. Sometimes it’s easy to forget but brokenness transcends race, creed and socio-economic background.
It is something that affects us all but none of us like to admit we are broken. The thing with being broken is that it means something isn’t functioning the way it is meant to. Smashed to pieces or a loose wire, a stereo won’t work properly either way. Lots of things are the same, including people. Not everyone is smashed but I’m pretty sure most of us have, or have had at some time, a loose wire or two. These may not stop you functioning but they may mean you’re not functioning to the capacity for which you were made.
Broken in relation to a person, can cover such a vast number of things; from abused and crushed to those things which cause us to hold back from engaging with others. It can also include that drive inside us that seems to lead us to; relationships with the wrong people, hurting others before they can hurt you, addictions. The list can go on.
But no matter what the brokenness is they all have a couple of things in common: 1. the only person who can instigate the healing process is ourselves; 2. not one of us is so broken that God can’t love us and make it so we can function at our own personal capacity.
Let’s focus one point one for a minute. We are the only one who can make the decision to not allow our brokenness to hinder us. Others can tell us what the problem is or what to do about it but unless we acknowledge the problem and chose to do something about it, nothing will change. There are a couple of steps here, acknowledge and change. You can’t chose to change if you don’t first acknowledge and acknowledging can be embarrassing. We don’t want people to know we have a problem even if it’s obvious to them. We’d much rather have others think nothing is wrong or that we are happy being broken, no matter how much hurt we cause ourselves and others in the process.
Once we have acknowledged our brokenness one of the choices we can make is to allow God to step into our lives, take our brokenness and make something whole, beautiful and unique out of it. We can go down into the pit of blame, excuses and victim mentality or we can go up and know that with help we can reach our fulfilment and probably somewhere along the way the beautiful creation we’ve become, scarred though we may be, will be able to reach out to someone else and offer them a hand as they try to scramble out of the pit.
God is able to heal and renew, He loves us that much, but He also loves us so much He allows us to experience the things that cause us to grow. We need to remember here that many things happen in our lives because of the choices we make. God won’t take our free will and ability to think for ourselves away from us when we choose to follow Him. Despite this He is able to take the bad situation, however we got there, and turn it around.
You intended it to harm me, but God intended it for
good to accomplish what is now being done, the
saving of many lives.
Genesis 50:20
And we know that in all things God works for the
good of those who love him, who have been called
according to his purpose.
Romans 8:28
Following this train of thought, if we choose these things can help us to flourish, even though it may be extremely difficult to see how at times. All these things contribute to our uniqueness. No brokenness is beyond God’s ability to repair if we are just willing to work with Him. It’s not God who puts us one the shelf to be forgotten and collect dust, nor does He put us in the ‘too hard’ basket, we do a good enough job of that ourselves. It isn’t God who expects us to be perfect, it’s us. God isn’t one to wrinkle His nose up at our perceived imperfections, rather He sees them as the very things that give us value and uniquely suit us to the purpose He has for us.
It’s important to remember that God likes to work through His children. We are here to help each other, not to stand in isolation like an ornament on a shelf. Like the wire that has been resoldered you can see where the fault was and the repair has been made, so it is with us. If we embrace our repairs we can help others find the way to the repair shop and they will know, because of how we function, that they are in good hands.
It is something that affects us all but none of us like to admit we are broken. The thing with being broken is that it means something isn’t functioning the way it is meant to. Smashed to pieces or a loose wire, a stereo won’t work properly either way. Lots of things are the same, including people. Not everyone is smashed but I’m pretty sure most of us have, or have had at some time, a loose wire or two. These may not stop you functioning but they may mean you’re not functioning to the capacity for which you were made.
Broken in relation to a person, can cover such a vast number of things; from abused and crushed to those things which cause us to hold back from engaging with others. It can also include that drive inside us that seems to lead us to; relationships with the wrong people, hurting others before they can hurt you, addictions. The list can go on.
But no matter what the brokenness is they all have a couple of things in common: 1. the only person who can instigate the healing process is ourselves; 2. not one of us is so broken that God can’t love us and make it so we can function at our own personal capacity.
Let’s focus one point one for a minute. We are the only one who can make the decision to not allow our brokenness to hinder us. Others can tell us what the problem is or what to do about it but unless we acknowledge the problem and chose to do something about it, nothing will change. There are a couple of steps here, acknowledge and change. You can’t chose to change if you don’t first acknowledge and acknowledging can be embarrassing. We don’t want people to know we have a problem even if it’s obvious to them. We’d much rather have others think nothing is wrong or that we are happy being broken, no matter how much hurt we cause ourselves and others in the process.
Once we have acknowledged our brokenness one of the choices we can make is to allow God to step into our lives, take our brokenness and make something whole, beautiful and unique out of it. We can go down into the pit of blame, excuses and victim mentality or we can go up and know that with help we can reach our fulfilment and probably somewhere along the way the beautiful creation we’ve become, scarred though we may be, will be able to reach out to someone else and offer them a hand as they try to scramble out of the pit.
God is able to heal and renew, He loves us that much, but He also loves us so much He allows us to experience the things that cause us to grow. We need to remember here that many things happen in our lives because of the choices we make. God won’t take our free will and ability to think for ourselves away from us when we choose to follow Him. Despite this He is able to take the bad situation, however we got there, and turn it around.
You intended it to harm me, but God intended it for
good to accomplish what is now being done, the
saving of many lives.
Genesis 50:20
And we know that in all things God works for the
good of those who love him, who have been called
according to his purpose.
Romans 8:28
Following this train of thought, if we choose these things can help us to flourish, even though it may be extremely difficult to see how at times. All these things contribute to our uniqueness. No brokenness is beyond God’s ability to repair if we are just willing to work with Him. It’s not God who puts us one the shelf to be forgotten and collect dust, nor does He put us in the ‘too hard’ basket, we do a good enough job of that ourselves. It isn’t God who expects us to be perfect, it’s us. God isn’t one to wrinkle His nose up at our perceived imperfections, rather He sees them as the very things that give us value and uniquely suit us to the purpose He has for us.
It’s important to remember that God likes to work through His children. We are here to help each other, not to stand in isolation like an ornament on a shelf. Like the wire that has been resoldered you can see where the fault was and the repair has been made, so it is with us. If we embrace our repairs we can help others find the way to the repair shop and they will know, because of how we function, that they are in good hands.
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