DEAL WITH YOUR OWN BROKENNESS:

The first task for the redeemed

"Just because it's not 

all about you, 

doesn't mean it's not

about you at all"

~ Sandy Gross, author of You Are Potential

My friend Sandy Gross and I, the author and teacher I quote above, were once part a conversation, held at her house, with a mutual friend who is now deceased.  Our friend, Glenn Rogers, quoted Isaiah 42:3 and then said the Holy Spirit had been showing him the most amazing things about it.

"A bruised reed he will not break,
    and a smoldering wick he will not snuff out.

In faithfulness he will bring forth justice;"

Isaiah 42:3 

When God makes us born again, a new creation, born of God's Spirit, what we were before, broken by our sins and the sins of others, doesn't simply evaporate.  When God speaks of the future work of Jesus in Isaiah 42:3 the matter of our damaged past is presented.  The coming of Jesus, his teaching, works, the beatings leading to his death, burial, and resurrection don't simply lock away our pasts for us.  It is true Jesus really has done everything necessary for us to be free, but that doesn't cut off the past for me, at least not in my thinking.  The problem isn't what Jesus has accomplished, but, rather, what I believe.  2 Corinthians 4:16

 2 "Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will." 

Romans 12:2

Jesus has indeed accomplished all the work needing to be done, for us, but we must put what Jesus has completed into our minds and thereby into the fabric of our lives.  Our bruised souls and the smoldering ruins of our lives can't merely be shoved under the Church's carpet.  I like what a Christian counselor said recently, "If you bury something alive, it has a tendency to dig itself out and come after you."  When we bury secrets they don't stay buried.  It's our secrets, our deep shameful pasts which hold us back from believing Jesus and allowing him to come and enable us to deal with what is in the dark past. 

Sandy also talks about the matter of unbelief.  Unbelief is not simply about a refusal to believe something.  Unbelief in us is much more a matter of attempting to hold opposite and competing beliefs.  I may have allowed someone in my past to convince me I am totally unlovable, but God tells me, "God so loves the world (Lonnie), that he sent Jesus."  When I allow both pieces of data to inform the way I think and live I've entered into the state the Bible calls, "being double-minded."  We're told in James 1:18 that a double-minded person is unstable in all their ways.  

For years I was so mad at my fellow Christians.  I was continually thinking, "You (Church) have an eternal relationship with the one true God, and you won't give it!  The Church has become so good at putting up a facade in front of their own brokenness that I couldn't see they were just as broken as everyone else.  The Church can't give the eternal relationship with God, because that relationship has broken down.  Christians can't reach, with the life transforming love, mercy, and grace of Jesus Christ to gay people, hooker people, drug addicted people, hardcore drunk people, spouse abusing people, and the like, because the Church doesn't really have that relationship themselves.  

So come out of the church closets and come into the light of Jesus Christ.  We are broken, and so let us come out and be what we are.  In the light Jesus can truly begin the work of freeing and redeeming us.

"Shame is one of the enemy's greatest weapons.  He wants us hiding and passive."


"Christ pursues the shamed."

~ Chris Woods

Church leave the shadows of secrecy, and confess your brokenness.  The world around us knows we are broken, because we've showed them all we can ever do is either condemn them or simply accept sin.  What we, the Church, cannot do is overcome sin, because of a breakdown in our relationship with God.  I think it would be much better to come out and confess brokenness then to have the world drag us out into the open.  

The good news is that Christ will be with the Church, because Jesus pursues the shamed.

For more information and real help:  http://www.renewingme.com/