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Monday, July 20, 2009

Brokenness

We hate it. To lose a loved one. To be less attractive, strong, smart, funny, or musical than other people. To be different. Of course we hate it. But if you are a Christian and this is all you see, you are missing something huge.

The fact is that God ordains and uses our brokenness for His greater purposes. When we accept and celebrate this, we finally realize that we are not missing out, in the big scheme of things. With God's purposes as our joy, we can finally face the pain. Yes, it remains painfully real and really painful. But those areas of pain are not meaningless pockets of God's neglect or absent-mindedness, but rather they are part of God's purposes. Furthermore, the pain actually works to our ultimate good (Romans 8:28).

Paul was given some kind of physical and/or mental anguish in order to keep Him humble in light of the increasingly great revelations he was experiencing. As God's power in Paul's life grew, Paul's sense of self-reliance and self-sufficiency had to be done away with. Paul understood. He begged for it not to be that way, but he understood.

Where do YOU stand?

You can embrace God in and through the pain or you can become a depressed, self-centered, worldly Christian. He designs our pain so that our affections would go to Him rather than to this world and this life. I have learned this is the only way. I didn't ask for my brokenness and I've tried to fight off my brokenness. But I see as clear as day the greater advantage of it. I gain something of eternal value; I lose something of temporary value. I am enabled to identify myself in no way other than as Christ's. I have less of a “me” to present to people and more of a Christ to present to people.

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