How can our brokenness be useful to others? Offering our broken hearts to the Lord as a sacrifice and a praise is one thing. But, giving ourselves to others when we’re messy and vulnerable is another.
Though we shouldn’t recklessly hand over the reins to our heart or carelessly welcome anyone’s influence into to our hurts, there is a place for being broken among people. Scripture allows for this, explicitly and implicitly:
“Mourn with those who mourn. Live in harmony with one another.” –Romans 12:15-16
We are to share in other’s sufferings and grief. At the same time, sharing even in Christ’s sufferings, we are to be those who mourn and who need others to mourn alongside us. That’s part of living in harmony. According to Christ, it’s part of living in this world:
“In this world you will have trouble.” –John 16:33
Recognizing that fact and admitting to broken-heartedness is part of witnessing to others, Christian and unbelieving alike.
Unfortunately, there are two lies we believe that stop us from living and proclaiming Him to others even when we’re a mess.
The lies?
- To make anyone want the Gospel, we have to make it attractive by having it all together.
- No one else will understand anyway. Our comfort isn’t in this world.
Half-truths are deceptive lies, aren’t they? That anyone understands, and cares, and has been messy and broken and vulnerable –that’s what we need to hear. That’s what the unsaved and the struggling believer needs to know before they can live the end of John 16:33:
“But take heart! I have overcome the world.”
Living as those who know that He has overcome the world, our brokenness is a testimony to the Lord and to the realities of this world that many people deny. It means that in our brokenness, we still have hope to offer because:
- We can be broken but not destroyed.
- Our brokenness does not cause us to be useless and abandoned, but loved and sufficient in weakness because our strength is in Him.
- The stream of living water in you and me doesn’t cease to flow when our persons of clay pottery shatter. It flows all the more freely.
- Defenses down, hearts exposed, the honesty of being broken is something this world doesn’t admit or acknowledge -not with any hope.
BUT in our brokenness, we continue. We fix our eyes. We smile. We pray. We offer ourselves to others anyway, because our worth isn’t found in the all-together we have to give. Our worth, to others and in our innermost being, is bound up in the one who was broken for us.
That’s why our brokenness offers hope. His body and Spirit were broken, separated from God Himself, rejected. Offered as a sacrifice, as our broken hearts are to be. God uses that sacrifice, raw and messy in our lives and others’ to help restore life, revert perspective, and bring us into a more intimate reliance on Him.
Imagine- when your broken heart is sacrificed to the Lord, He uses the mess to let others know the truth, His presence, and the hope He has to offer all of us. The hope we need. The hope even we as believers ignore when we pretend that brokenness doesn’t come before redemption.
This post is being shared on: #Thought-Provoking Thursday #Faith-Filled Friday, and #DanceWithJesus.
Thank you for sharing how our brokenness can help others! It is hard to believe that it does. but God does use it to help others and to restore us! Visiting from Thought Provoking Thursday! God bless:)
It is hard to believe -but true : ) Thank you!!
I’m encouraged… in fact I’m moved to make others know how my brokenness can help them understand the unfailing love of Christ.
Thank you, Stephen! I pray the Lord will use you in this way!
I think our brokenness unites us in ways nothing else ever could. When we know others suffer along side us, we can be encouraged to endure because we are not alone.
Amen, Liz. Amen.
Important truth because we are all broken in some way, and there is nothing beyond the reach of God’s healing power. He will use our brokenness as it is offered to Him. Thanks for your words of hope.
Yes, Michele! Brokenness shared allows us to connect on a human level. Thanks for your encouragement!