Broken

We Christians are so eager to share our "mountain top" experiences...those moments when our prayers were answered the way we wanted them to be....or some retreat where we "saw Jesus"....when some loved one was healed, restored, saved or their prayer was answered the way they thought it should be. And I am not saying these things should not be shared...they should! Praise God for answered prayers, for lives saved and healed and restored.



But what about the prayers that are not answered the way we wanted them to be? Or haven't been answered at all yet? Or maybe, the answer was no? God answers all prayers, but we Christians rarely talk about those other answers....the no, the wait and the maybe. We tend not to talk about the dark moments in our spiritual lives, the times in the valley. We don't talk about devastation, hopelessness, fear, anger, pain, abandonment......why? Every Bible character we read about experienced and spoke about these things.....read the Psalms, King David did it A LOT.



Lately, life has been painful for me....physically, emotionally and spiritually. I cry quite a bit and pray even more. There are moments, especially at night when there is nothing else to distract me, that words escape me.....I can't pray, I can barely think. I become overwhelmed with emotion. In these times, it usually starts with anger (doesn't it always seem to start there when we don't understand what's going on?)....the words start rolling then! I rail against God, I yell at Him,"Why me? Why now? How could this happen to me? Where is my abundant life, huh? Where are all these promises and blessings I read about in your word? Do you hear me? Do you care?". Why do I yell at God? Because I can. Because He is big enough and strong enough to take anything I throw at Him and He loves me enough to let me. Because He knows my heart.



The anger usually fades fairly quickly...that is when the sadness begins, the fear, the pain...the heartache so intense that I can physically feel it. I can feel my heart breaking. My body becomes limp and the sobbing begins. Those gut wrenching sobs so deep, so painful that you're not really even breathing, you are gasping for air. The weight of my pain, my anguish presses on me so strongly that I regress to the fetal position in some sort of hope that this old childhood position will somehow bring me comfort. It doesn't. And that's when I feel Him, my Jesus, His presence. I can almost feel Him laying with me, an arm wrapped around me as though I was a child. I can almost feel Him brushing the hair from my face. He's not there to whisper meaningless platitudes in my ear, to quote scripture after scripture to me, telling me to suck it up, just hang in there or have a little faith. No, my Jesus is there to weep with me, my heartache is His as well, He feels my pain, anger, grief and confusion. And it's ok. He comforts me with His presence, words are not necessary. Does it make it all better, all go away? Nope, sure doesn't. But it makes it bearable...He makes all this heartache worth it, because my faith is not based in or on how I feel. I can have moments of feeling hopeless desperation. Because in the end, my God is a really big God and I will be ok. He is faithful and true. He is all that I need.

If Jesus based His faith and ministry on this earth on how He felt or how others treated Him, He probably would not have made it to the cross. We know from scripture that He felt emotion, our human emotion. We are told that He wept more than once, we are told of His anger and even of His fear. None of that stopped Him. Faith in God transcends feelings. I know and believe in Gods' promise to lead me, guide me, never forsake me and unconditionally love me. He has a plan for me, a plan even for this painful circumstance.

And I believe that God wants us to share these things with others. As I mentioned above, King David poured it all out to God and it is a part of the Bible. God wanted us to read it. Why? Because we can relate. King David was every bit the doofus that I am. And yet he was a man after Gods' own heart. Because from start to finish, David relied on faith, not feelings. Just as we can relate to David, so can others relate to our heartaches and fears, and once that bond is shared, then we get to introduce them to Jesus.....who came to set the captives free.

Psalm 34:18 says, "The Lord is close to the broken hearted and saves those that are crushed in spirit. Psalm 51:17, "My sacrifice, O God, is a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart you, God, will not despise". Psalm 147:3, "He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds". See a pattern here? We don't have to pretend to be strong, He is waiting to be strong for us. When we are in pain, the Lord God Almighty, Creator of all things, is close to us. I want Him to be close to me. I want my broken heart healed and my wounds bound. I want to sacrifice my broken spirit and rest back upon the Lord. However, that can't happen if I don't admit my brokenness, if I don't bring it to Him, to the only One that can make ALL things good.

There is a song out called "Better than a Hallelujah". A part of the chorus says, "We pour out our misery and God just hears a melody. Beautiful the mess we are, the honest cries of breaking hearts....is better than a Hallelujah". God wants our messes, our misery, our broken hearts, our brokenness in general.....because He can do something with it.

I am broken and that's a good thing.