on broken things breaking...

Lately, God has been teaching me a lot about strength to endure the brokenness.

Strength, in all its forms, is coveted. We spend hundreds of dollars a year on weights and gym memberships in order to gain muscle and endurance, signs of physical strength. We spend time in the Word and in community to form a strong relationship with Jesus. We ask for strength daily as we encounter the broken, hard things of this world. Strength, in all its capacities, is valued.

But, if you are anything like me, sometimes our muscles aren’t as big as we think they are and our bodies are weary and spent; things seem too hard and too broken and too big. Spiritual warfare becomes all too real; we face opposition, we pray, and we plead for God to take the pain and brokenness away, asking Him to fix things, and if we are honest, asking God that we be the means of the fixing and not Him. But friends, we are not strong enough to mend the broken things, only God has that ability, and that is humbling. The Gospel is extravagantly on display through our weakness and I am sobered by the truth found in these words:

“My grace is sufficient for you, for My power is

made perfect in your weakness…”

If we rely on our own strength, we will end up feeling hopeless and helpless, and that is not the God that we serve. He is full of hope and help, even when things are broken and hard.

This year, social media and news sites have been overrun with devastating and depressing, broken news; we hear about ISIS, sex scandals, Boko Haram, Planned Parenthood, and relentless crime, both international and domestic. Then, there is the brokenness that plagues our own lives, the kind that is personal and not popular on Facebook or broadcasted for the world. There is death, sickness, addiction, infertility, singleness, and a million other struggles and sins that entangle our everyday lives.

Broken things break; our world is broken, and we should expect to encounter brokenness. But, God knows it was broken, and He chose to fix it, to redeem the fractured parts of humanity, through Jesus.

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Broken things break; but our God is a firm foundation,

unwavering, unshaken, unbroken.

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I rarely keep anything that is broken. Once something is past repair, I tend to write it off and toss it in the trash. But, this is not the case with our God. Instead of tossing us and our brokenness aside, He chose to repair and allow us to endure. Often, broken things become useless, but with sin, that is not the case; although we live in a broken world, it serves a purpose. We only have a short time hear on earth, and there will come a day when we no longer have the chance to glorify God in the midst of pain, suffering, and brokenness. Soon we will be with our sweet Savior, but until then, we endure the brokenness, knowing that our goal is to glorify God in the midst of that. Broken things break; but our God is a firm foundation, unwavering, unshaken, unbroken.

I want to remember that even when things break, when the cookies are burnt, when family seems to fall apart, when sickness strikes, when finances dwindle and my strength is limited, that God is in control and sovereign and strong enough to handle my weakness. He can mend the broken and fill me with strength and rejoice over me with song.

jesus, just please...

You would have no idea. You would have no idea that right now I am in one of the hardest seasons of my life, emotionally and sort of spiritually. The LORD has gifted me with joy, and sometimes, because of that, my life seems joyful through and through. It’s not.

My inner people, my kindreds, know this. They know that I just don’t know right now. They know that I am in an overwhelmingly painful and numbing season, which doesn’t make sense but also makes all the sense at the same time.

My prayers are short and small and simple. Because I don’t know how to pray through this. My role, my responsibility, my identity…

I just don’t know how.

Through this season, I am learning the immense truth of His strength versus my own. A lot of times, we diminish God’s strength into a strength that gets us through busy days without coffee or other trivial means, but friends, His strength was never meant to replace a cup of coffee, it is meant to carry you through the trials and burdens of this fallen world; His strength is meant to replace our weakness. In the moments where we just really don’t know how to and the moments where we just simply can’t, He knows and He can.

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...His strength was never meant to replace a cup of coffee, it is meant 

to carry you through the trials and burdens of this fallen world; 

His strength is meant to replace our weakness...

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My prayer for the past weeks has been, “Jesus, just please.” I may not know how, but He does, and there is power in the name of Jesus when we call on it.

Jesus, just please for strength.

Jesus, just please for comfort.

Jesus, just please for hope.

Jesus, just please for wisdom.

Jesus, just please.

Let’s remember the strength of Christ, the kind that bled and died up on His Cross, not the kind that we think we can replace with a cup of coffee. Let’s remember that when we ask Him to just please, He will, even if we don’t know what that means.