Charles F. Stanley - Finding Gods Blessings in Brokenness: How Pain Reveals His Deepest Love

B roken.

Blessed.

The two words dont seem to go together.

We all know what it means to be broken, to be shattered, to feel as if our entire world has fallen apart or perhaps been blown apart. We all have times in our lives when we dont want to raise our heads off the pillow and when we are certain the tears will never stop flowing. We feel a void that cannot be filled, a sorrow that cannot be comforted, a wound for which there seems no balm.

Nothing feels blessed about being broken. In fact, certain circumstances in life hurt so intensely that we think we will never heal. But blessing can come in the wake of our being broken.

And this blessing is richest when we not only let ourselves fully experience the brokenness but also wrestle with God over why he allowed us to be broken. When we cooperate with God as he does his refining and transformational work in us, his blessing will follow our brokenness.

As we journey through this lifethrough the easy times and the painful timesGod is fashioning us into people who are like his Son, Jesus. That means God is in the process of changing what we desire far more than he is in the process of giving us what we desire.

Part of being like Jesus is being willing to do whatever God desires: Not my will, but yours be done (Luke 22:42).

Now, if I asked you, Do you really want Gods best for your life? I feel confident that you would say, Yes, of course!

But if I asked you, Are you willing to let God do anything necessary to bring you to total surrender so that he is free to accomplish all that he wants to do for you and all he wants to make out of you? I wonder what your response might be.

To have Gods very best, we must be willing to submit our all to him.

Our submission will mean our growth, and that growth is a processone that includes setbacks, failures, hard lessons, and, yes, brokenness. Our growth includes not only spiritual growth but also the renewal of our minds and emotions.

Again and again, we find ourselves being broken so that our old nature might be chipped away or a rough spot in our character might be sanded smooth.

The process is painful and difficult.

Nevertheless, it is good.

Brokenness is not something to be shunned or avoided at all costs. Rather, it is something we are to face with faith. If we truly want to be all that God designed us to be, and therefore all that God desires for us to be, we must submit to him during times of brokenness and allow him to reveal to us why we are going through this hard season and what he wants us to learn.

God declared long ago, Like clay in the hand of the potter, so are you in my hand (Jeremiah 18:6).

God is at work in our lives, shaping and making us into the people he longs for us to be, so that we might bring glory to him and be of maximum use to him in the building of his kingdom.

Which would you rather be? A vessel of your own design, based on your finite mind and limited creativity, power, and wisdom; a vessel of limited use and fading value? Or a vessel of Gods design, based on his infinite wisdom, love, and power; a vessel of unlimited use and eternal value?

In choosing to be fashioned by God, we inevitably must choose to yield to brokenness and to allow God to remake us and renew us as he desires. And that will mean suffering, pain, hardship, and trials.