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Tag Archives: god makes us whole
Embracing Your Brokenness
We’ve all read the story of Humpty Dumpty. I’m not sure why he was up on that wall or what caused him to fall. What we do know is that when an egg has a sudden stop against the ground, it creates quite a mess. Shell gets sent in every direction and in every size. It’s an impossible task for anyone to pick up all the pieces and put them together again so we don’t try. Something that’s just as impossible is to try to fix the brokenness in our own life, but we try to do it all the time. We think that if people see the cracks in our shell or that our life is in pieces, they’ll reject us, so we try to fix our brokenness.
The truth is that we are all broken. Some of us are more broken than others. Some of us are better at hiding it. Some of us look at the mess and give up, but every one of us find some type of coping mechanism to appease either guilt we feel or the hurt left over from our brokenness. We all have that inner desire to be made whole. We’re afraid that our brokenness or way of coping with it will be exposed, so we cover it up and try to make everything look like it’s perfect. It’s impossible for you and I to heal our own brokenness and to make ourselves whole.
The good news is that God is able to pick up the pieces of your life and put them back together into a beautiful mosaic work of art. You see, your brokenness is what makes you human and in need of God. It’s what makes you approachable by others in their brokenness. In Psalm 25:21 David cried out to God regarding his own brokenness, “Use all your skill to put me together; I wait to see your finished product” (MSG). When God puts us back together, he leaves the cracks and the lines to do away with the facade that we’re perfect. Don’t try to cover them up, for through your brokenness others will find their wholeness.
Photo by Chris Barbalis on Unsplash
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Fixing Our Brokenness
My son is very interested in bells. He loves learning about them and watching them ring. When we went on vacation, he found a porcelain bell and wanted to get it. I tried to talk him into one of the metallic bells, but they weren’t as pretty. When we got home, my fears were confirmed as I unwrapped the porcelain bell. It was broken. I didn’t have the heart to tell him what had happened and I hoped he wouldn’t ask for it.
I went to the store and bought some gorilla glue. Before we left for school, I ran back into my room and glued it back together. When I got home, I went to check on it. The glue left a white streak all the way around it. When I tried to make it ring, it didn’t sound like it had. I was disappointed in my ability to try to put it back together. In my effort to fix it, I was hoping to make it as good as new, but I couldn’t.
Because of Adam and Eve’s sin, you and I are born broken. We spend a lifetime trying to compensate for our brokenness, and we do everything that we can to fix or cover up our brokenness. The problem with fixing things like brokenness is that we never return to our initial potential. We think we need to be fixed, but the truth is that we need to be healed. We need to be made whole, and only God can do that.
Isaiah 9:7 contains one of the most famous prophesies of Jesus. It says, “For a child has been born—for us! the gift of a son—for us! He’ll take over the running of the world. His names will be: Amazing Counselor, Strong God, Eternal Father, Prince of Wholeness. His ruling authority will grow, and there’ll be no limits to the wholeness he brings” (MSG). I love that God’s desire wasn’t to fix us. It was to make us whole. He knows that each of us are broken, and He sent His Son to bring the healing that we desperately need.
Photo by Daniel Tafjord on Unsplash
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Restoring The Broken
Being a father of a boy with toys means that I have to always have superglue on hand. I can’t tell you how many times he’s handed me toys that were broken in pieces. With tears in his eyes, “Can you fix this please?” Sometimes I can do it, and other times I have to tell him that it’s beyond my ability to repair. He doesn’t understand why there are some things that are just too broken and superglue just won’t work.
Like him, many times we have to take the broken pieces of our lives to God and ask Him to fix it. I don’t know if God has some kind of spiritual superglue or what, but I do know that He’s pretty good at taking our broken pieces and putting them back together again. In fact, there’s no life so broken that it’s beyond His ability to repair. He specializes in putting our shattered pieces back together and making our life better than it was. We just have to be willing to hand Him the pieces.
Here are some Bible verses on God repairing our broken pieces and making us whole again.
1. GOD made my life complete when I placed all the pieces before him. When I got my act together, he gave me a fresh start. Now I’m alert to GOD ’s ways; I don’t take God for granted. Every day I review the ways he works; I try not to miss a trick. I feel put back together, and I’m watching my step. GOD rewrote the text of my life when I opened the book of my heart to his eyes.
Psalm 18:20-24 MSG
2. He heals the broken-hearted and bandages their wounds.
Psalm 147:3 GNT
3. A Message from Israel’s GOD -of-the-Angel-Armies: “When I’ve turned everything around and brought my people back, the old expressions will be heard on the streets: ‘ GOD bless you!’… ‘O True Home!’… ‘O Holy Mountain!’ All Judah’s people, whether in town or country, will get along just fine with each other. I’ll refresh tired bodies; I’ll restore tired souls.”
Jeremiah 31:23-25 MSG
4. But because of our sins he was wounded, beaten because of the evil we did. We are healed by the punishment he suffered, made whole by the blows he received.
Isaiah 53:5 GNT
5. For a child has been born—for us! the gift of a son—for us! He’ll take over the running of the world. His names will be: Amazing Counselor, Strong God, Eternal Father, Prince of Wholeness. His ruling authority will grow, and there’ll be no limits to the wholeness he brings.
Isaiah 9:6 MSG
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Devotions by Chris Hendrix 