Friday Fight 120: Benefitting from Brokenness: Who's Benefiting?
Every Friday, when I wake and pray, God places something on my heart to help me fight darkness beginning in our minds. Today is FF120.
How many of us can think about a time when we struggled tremendously and felt like the brokenness in our life would remain forever? Maybe it wasn't us, but someone close whose hurt caused them to lash out in every direction. Without realizing it, we look back and know we're on the other side of it and walking in healing. It is often hard to imagine that things can change or that God can turn things around and use them for glory, but He does. What can we hide in our hearts to help us during these times?
Benefitting from Brokenness: Who's Benefiting?
Who exactly benefits from our brokenness? If we remember a time in our lives that was the most painful, the first thing many of us did was distance ourselves from God while others experienced God for the first time. God remains faithful regardless of our circumstances, so we must recognize how our painful season ended. God will bring peace to our struggles and comfort our pain when we lean on the truth of His word. Perhaps we can't feel Him in those times, but we can choose to remain faithful to Him. Maybe we can't trace Him in the moment, but we must trust Him continually. We can be angry but remember that God is still on the throne. Without this surrender, darkness benefits from our pain by trying to put more and more distance between us and God. Unfortunately, this will continue until we surrender control and allow God's healing. Continued submission allows God to heal the precise area Satan attempted to destroy. God's light always shines in the darkness.
We all struggle with brokenness because of sin, but we don't have to remain there and carry the hurt from those sins. In Mark 2:17, Jesus says, "It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners." When invited, Christ can transform the most broken things in our life into the most beautiful and fruitful. Something as painful as a broken marriage but followed by a forever partner or being unfairly fired, but God opens the door to something better in the same building. Healing after addiction can spread beautifully to others because God uses us to encourage those still struggling. Extending forgiveness to an abuser who stole from our life will birth seeds of spiritual pardon rather than harboring bitterness and pain. We could all list endless things because nothing is impossible with God. He heals our wounds, then uses our stories and struggles to help restore others. We benefit in more ways than we can understand because it becomes generational. Our children and grandchildren watch as we extend the grace of God and remain faithful regardless of our circumstances.
Many things change as a result of our faithfulness to God. Most importantly, our prayer life. This change happens as we learn to rely on God's strength instead of our own. Our mindset towards everything changes. Our new lens of God's mercy and gracious healing choke out seeds of pride within us that we didn't even know were planted.
Our lives remain fruitful as we stay faithful and trust that He will continually restore what darkness has stolen. We are blessed with the opportunity to practice humility. Let's celebrate walking in His joy, not judgment, and God's presence over pride. We experience this by admitting we are nothing without Him, then allowing Him to restore our lives. Let's be used to testify to God's goodness!
Pastor Shannon
New Life Calvert
Photo Credit: Mikey Gable