Category: storms

Choosing to Walk With the Broken

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It seems the world is divided into two groups.

  1. Those all together, happy, healthy, and reasonably sane.
  2. Those with incredibly significant hang-ups.

We gravitate toward success. Even in a spiritual sense, we do so. No one wants to be associated with a ‘washed-up’ loser.  We expect success (at least in its fundamental form) to ooze out of every preacher, teacher, or ‘wanna-be’ that intends to lead us to ‘the promised land.’ We expect (or demand) it to be so.

But there are those broken ‘on the wheels of life’ who offer nothing at all.

They are busted and broke. They may once have been noble and keen; they might have stared at life as if it were their own already. They were gifted, but breakable. Alas, and they broke. And they have nothing to give. So many things have disintegrated around them, they are left without a clue, and certainly without hope from a ‘fickle’ Church.

What makes a man or woman ‘spiritual’ or holy?

Is it living up to a special standard or calling? Or maybe they look and sound good at what they do? Perhaps it is none of these. Maybe it really comes down to brokenness and humility? Perhaps we’ve looked at it all wrong.

Perhaps the real yardstick is spiritual poverty?

“They are blessed who realize their spiritual poverty, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to them.”

Matthew 5:4, NCV

Make no mistake, the ‘good’ seems very good. It is easy to ‘receive’ from some preachers. They do it so seamlessly, and so correctly. We often wonder why we haven’t been so receptive before. But ‘polish’ can never replace ‘broken’ prayer.

I will trust my soul to those ‘busted’ by the meanness of life, rather than those who pretend that things are ‘rosy’ all over. Brokenness is not a given. But it really is ‘the coin of the realm’. It is how the Kingdom does ‘business.’

 “But he said to me, “My grace is enough for you. When you are weak, my power is made perfect in you.” So I am very happy to brag about my weaknesses. Then Christ’s power can live in me.”

2 Corinthians 12:4, NCV

I hate to say this, but if being broken is the desperate need of the moment, then hammer me over and over again. I can’t imagine or even explain a better calling. “Bring it Father God”, (but help me if I stumble.) Oh, and one more thing: typically ‘mercy’ is absent for those who seem to live so ‘perfectly.’ (You just don’t see them with any.)

Look for mercy, and you will probably find someone truly authentic.

Take your candle, run to the darkness, and light your world, and love the unlovely while on your way.

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“Fine, I’ll Do It Broken” Link

Fine, I’ll Do It Broken

“Fine, I’ll Do It Broken

If you want a woman torn apart inside, weeping at the drop of a pin, confused in her own identity, disqualified in every sense of a leader…you got it!

A great link to a special teaching by Cheryl Meakins. This will bless you.

Fine, I’ll Do It Broken

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Training Your Spirit

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“Through suffering, our bodies continue to share in the death of Jesus so that the life of Jesus may also be seen in our bodies.”

2 Corinthians 4:10, NLT

“Since he himself has gone through suffering and testing, he is able to help us when we are being tested.”

Hebrews 2:18

No book, no tutor will give us the education we need.  We must patiently go through seasons of difficulty and temptation before we can understand what our brother or sister is facing.  Furthermore, we must advance through different levels;  sickness, injury, loss and discouragement.  On top of this, we must be tutored in the language of affliction, till we speak it without an accent.

This is a ‘strange’ school.  We’re watched and observed very closely to see what we will do.  “Will he give $5 to the homeless man, or will he turn away like usual?” There are billions of these scenarios that we get placed in.  And often there are multiple layers of these ‘programs’ running simultaneously.

And yet we are always being evaluated in love.

It is very advantageous for you to pass this way, because it lets you speak the dialect of suffering, with its mixture of pain and joy.  Believers now have a common tongue which in we communicate.

When Lynn and I lost our daughter Elizabeth, it was a deep, dark valley.  But I came to see (understand) that in some obscure way now able to speak into the hearts of those who were lost in pain.  Death has a way of touching us deeply.

There are so many different classes in God’s ‘strange’ university.  You may be enrolled in Compassion 101, or Mercy 410.  Oh, and by the way there is a school counselor available to all students that request Him (the Holy Spirit).

Also, we will do remarkably better if we will befriend others who are also enrolled.  Worshipping and the Word are quite critical as we must keep our spirits clean and right.

“He suffered and endured every test and temptation, so that he can help us every time we pass through the ordeals of life.”

Hebrews 2:18, TPT

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The Blessings of a Long Battle, part 4

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In thinking about this final installment about how God can bring much good out of our protracted struggle with sin, weakness, or a problem, it dawned on me how important it is to see the Big Picture. In some ways this post reiterates truths in part 2 of this series, but also adds important new dimensions to those truths and explores new territory.

When a soldier goes through boot camp, it’s crucial for him or her to see the overall purpose of his training–the Big Picture. He or she is being pushed and tested in different ways to the extreme so that they will be prepared for any situation on the battlefield, won’t crack under pressure, and will be a team player.

In the conquest of Canaan under Joshua’s leadership, the nation of Israel experienced many victories over different hostile nations. However, Judges 3:1–4 says that God did not allow the Israelites to completely triumph but left certain enemies in the land (e.g., the Philistines) so that his chosen people would learn warfare.

When we became Christians, God could have put us in a cocoon of protective grace where we would be insulated from our three primary enemies–the world, the flesh, and the devil–but he didn’t so that we would also learn warfare.

If he would’ve sheltered us from the battle, we would end up like many “trust fund babies,” who, because of their vast inherited wealth, never have to work a day in their lives. They’re protected from the toil and struggle of life and never have to worry about paying the rent or the electric bill.

Often there is something profoundly missing in their lives: many are spoiled, shallow, and have not been battle–tested. Perhaps God designed an existence where we battled the world, the flesh, and the devil so that we would not end up becoming spiritual trust fund babies.

Macarius was a great monk who composed the Macarian Homilies in the 4th century. He was convinced that, if after becoming Christians, we were protected in a cocoon of grace from the temptations of the world, the flesh, and the devil, many of us would soon become conceited and fall as Satan fell. Instead of a three steps forward, two steps back grind that life often is, we would have a series of unbroken successes and become lifted up in pride and fall like Lucifer did.

In seeing the big picture, nothing is more important than understanding that God the Father through the Holy Spirit has been preparing a Bride for his Son in a Marriage that will span eternity. He wants you to be a part of that Bride. The Father wants the Bride to fervently love the Groom.

There is no love without free choice. If we would’ve been protected from the enemies of our soul, and choosing the Groom was exquisitely easy or even automatic, where’s the love that has been tested in the furnace of affliction? Like any spouse, Christ wants to be chosen. If we were automatons or even semi–automatons, where’s the love in that?

When we are in a long struggle with sin or weakness, it is because we have become over–attached to some created thing. Addiction is over–attachment in the extreme (e.g., overeating, alcohol, drugs, pornography, sex, power, work, shopping, etc.)

Christ the Uncreated One wants to be chosen over all the created things. Christ the Groom wants to stand in the midst of all his competitors–i.e. created things–and have the Bride choose him. One of the blessings then of a long battle is this: it’s the vehicle whereby we choose Christ as our Groom, as our only lover.

Does that love somehow go away if you’re a Christian who is up to your eyeballs in sin, addiction, and weakness? If anything God loves you more after you fall, because where sin abounds, grace abounds more. And as the old religious cliché tells us, he loves us in our sin and loves us too much to leave us there.

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Jonathan

Check out Jonathan’s own site at http://www.openheavensblog.com/.

 

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