Broken By Grace

(Some reflections that I found on my laptop from a couple years ago)

        

        When I think of the word broken, images of my kitchen covered with the debris of my 9x13 glass dish come to mind. I remember that day like it was yesterday. I was in such a frantic hurry. I had just gotten home from the grocery store, and I was trying to quickly make my husband a breakfast of hard-boiled eggs. I put the eggs into a pot and filled it with cold water. Now onto the stove on the back burner. I made a mental note of the dirty 9x13 glass dish on the front burner still sitting where I had set it yesterday after pulling it from the oven. Yesterday it had been the source of culinary delight as it wafted with the lovely smells of finely cooked Tilapia (aka a quick, easy dinner of frozen fish fillets sprinkled with whatever I could find amidst the seasonings strewn about my messy kitchen as my two children fussed and cried for my attention); but now, it was the source of the fishy smell in my kitchen that I needed to address as soon as possible.

Well, I stepped out of the kitchen for a few moments, and that’s all it took. My glass pan exploded all over the stove, the counters, the sink, the floor, and about every square inch of my kitchen! I was shocked and speechless. How could this have happened? Then I realized that I had turned the wrong burner on for my hard-boiled eggs. In my frenzied rush, I had turned the burner on that my glass dish had been sitting on, and it had heated up and exploded all over the place leaving glass chunks and shards in its wake. I was so thankful that no one was in the kitchen at the time that it happened, but what a mess my kitchen was that day! As a matter of fact, what a mess I was in too as I cleaned it all up with my husband’s help.

A lot of times in my life, I feel like that broken glass dish. My life feels like it has exploded into a million pieces. Being broken does not seem like a good thing to me on most days, but maybe I just need a new perspective on what it means to be broken.

         Perhaps when God’s grace overtakes my life and leaves me broken, maybe the picture He envisions is that of a barren field instead of a broken dish. The ground is hard and unyielding, but He sees what is not there. God sees what He is going to create, but first He must break up the hard ground so that it will be ready to be transformed into a beautiful work for His glory. God breaks me in a million ways, and a lot of the time it’s not always big and dramatic. God uses the mundane moments, the quiet boring days, the burnt pot of beans on the stove (for the one-hundredth time!), the disappointments of life, the fussy children, the failures I see in myself, the wrinkles I see in the mirror, the loneliness I feel in the depths of my soul, the sleepless nights, the messy house and all the trials and suffering of this life to break up the hard soul-soil of my heart so that He can transform me into the image of His precious Son. The Lord turns up the hard soul-soil of my heart one shovel full at a time. Slowly. Little by little and day by day. Purposefully. Faithfully.

I once listened to a message by Elisabeth Elliott, and she defined suffering as having something we don’t like or wanting something that we don’t have. All of us can identify with that definition of suffering in some way or another, and so we can all take to heart the words that James wrote in James 1:2-4, “Count it all joy…when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.” My response to all these hard moments and difficult days needs to be one of counting them all joy, which would place me right in Jesus’ footsteps as He endured the cross for the joy set before Him (Hebrews 12:2).

 My initial thought about what it means for my life to be broken parallels the image of my broken dish. I look at being broken as taking something useful, strong, and beautiful and destroying it so that it cannot be used anymore. However, God’s vantage point on this is quite different when viewed through the picture of the broken ground. God takes something hard and barren and breaks it so that it can be used for His glory. My faulty point of view does not start when everything crashes down around me, but long before when I think that my hardness is strength. God lovingly breaks me of my pride and my false hopes so that I learn to look to Him alone and point to Him alone. He graciously breaks me so that I might be pierced by His Word and filled up with His love. He mercifully breaks me so that I may be transformed into a garden for His glory!

In Ezekiel 36:26, the Lord paints a clear picture of what our sinful hearts look like in talking of His people Israel: “I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.” The Lord sees the depths of our soul and apart from Christ, it is not a beautiful picture. He knows us more than we know ourselves for He knows us fully; and when He sees our hearts, He sees a hard stone that is unyielding and defiant to His touch. Yet how gracious our God is that He sent His only Son, Jesus Christ, to die for sinners like me! What I could never do by myself, the Lord Jesus accomplished on my behalf through the cross. Jesus took upon Himself all my sin, and the Father poured upon Him all His righteous wrath that should have been mine to bear, and Jesus was crushed on my behalf. Jesus “was pierced for our transgressions; He was crushed for our iniquities…” (Isaiah 53:5) so that the way would be made to the Father for us to be saved.

        If I am to see my brokenness through God’s eyes, I must rewind the video back before my heart was broken and start by seeing my hard, stony heart as I defiantly seek my way, stubbornly grasp for my own glory, greedily build my own kingdom. This is how God sees me for this is the truth of my condition before God breaks me by His grace. In God’s eyes, I stand with Jesus glorified for He sees the finished work that He will accomplish in me for He is faithful to complete the work that He started in me (Philippians 1:6). However, down here on earth, I see my sanctification worked out in slow motion. I must learn to trust my Heavenly Father that He will work in me to will and to act according to His good purpose (Philippians 2:13). Often, I want to speed things up. I want to find the sanctification shortcut but remembering back to my childhood when my dad would take my siblings and I out on road trip adventures, the shortcuts always seemed to turn out to be longer. My responsibility in growing to be like Jesus is not to do the “working in” but to do the “working out”. God will bring into my life whatever He decides is best in any given day. For me that often looks like your basic, vanilla kind of days. Sometimes though things really get turned upside down! These are the sandpaper moments of life when the kids wake up all throughout the night, when they are fussy all day long, when loneliness claws at my heart like a ferocious tiger, when my husband is sent far away from home because of his job in the Army, and when my 9x13 glass dish explodes all over my kitchen! At the end of the day, I must hold fast to God’s Word that He works all things out for good for those who love Him (Romans 8:28).

My job in this whole process goes back to what James said in his epistle to count it all joy or to put it into the Apostle Paul’s words in 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18, “Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.” My natural response to circumstances that do not make sense is to put on my detective hat and start looking for clues to solve the mystery. However, God calls to me to do something quite different, “Be still and know that I am God…” (Psalm 46:10). The mysteries of my life belong to God, but my response to the mysteries and my attitude in the storms belongs to me. I can trust God and cry out to Him for help. In my brokenness, I can wait upon Him to fill my broken heart with His Word and love. I can lift my broken heart up as a living sacrifice of praise to the Lord. The other option is usually what I would naturally opt for, which is to try and fix my broken heart myself. I try to fill in all the broken places of my life with things, people, hobbies, books, and a million other things that end up leaving me empty and hopeless

In God’s Kingdom to be broken is a beautiful thing, and David attests to this in Psalm 34:18, “The LORD is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit.” This truth in Scripture goes against all of my feelings and senses because when my world falls apart and I am left with a broken heart and a crushed spirit, I feel alone, and all seems dark around me. However, the truth is that in my brokenness God is near and waiting for me to draw near to Him. James also tells the believers: “Draw near to God, and He will draw near to you” (James 4:8). In faith I need to step out in my brokenness to draw near to my Heavenly Father, believing His Word that He is near and that He will save me. In faith I can also offer my broken heart up to the Lord as a sacrifice to bring Him praise. In Psalm 51:17, David says: “The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.” When our lips cannot sing joyful praises, we can still lift our broken hearts up to God as our living sacrifice to bless His name (Romans 12:1).

Amid my brokenness, I must remember that the glorious message of the Gospel is for the brokenhearted. Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners, and when in my brokenness I realize how desperately lost and sinful I am, the truth of the Gospel pours over my soul that I need a Savior. Suddenly, I am like the blind man in the street crying out, “Jesus! Son of David, have mercy on me!”  I waste so much time trying to fix my broken heart so that I can go to Jesus that I miss the entire point that God breaks me so that I realize how much I need Him to save me in the first place.

In Psalm 147:3 we see that it is God who “heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds.” Jesus came to be broken for the brokenhearted. Jesus is like the broken pieces of bread that fed the multitude of hungry people. So even in the moments when my tears are my food day and night like the psalmist says in Psalm 42, I can also tell my soul to “hope in God; for I shall again praise him, my salvation and my God” (Psalm 42:5). Indeed, to be broken is a blessed thing for I am seeing myself as I truly am before God in desperate need of His help.

When life does not make sense, when you come to the end of yourself, when you have nowhere else to turn, and when your brokenness is all that, you can see, fall upon the Lord Jesus and rest upon the rock of His Word. Sit before Him broken and raw and watch for Him. For that is what I am doing now, and like the Psalmist I whisper from the quiet place in my soul, “O my Strength, I will watch for You, for You, O God, are my fortress. My God in His steadfast love will meet me…” (Psalm 59:10). The Lord will make everything beautiful in its time (Ecclesiastes 3:11)! “Those who plant in tears will harvest with shouts of joy. They weep as they go to plant their seed, but they sing as they return with the harvest” (Psalm 126:5-6).