Sweetly Broken

A few phrases I've been hearing a lot coming out of kids' mouths... (yes, as a matter of fact I DO consider myself a "kid", so I'm not erroneously exempting myself from this statement. haha.) ...Anyway, the phrases are such as these, "Epic Fail", "Faaaaaail.", or this is a good one: "Soandso failed epically." and you get the idea. Failure. Most of the time we use these words just for fun, in sarcasm, or to "embellish" a story. (aka, exaggeration).  But, thinking deeper into what the words really mean, if you were a failure, what would that mean for you?


There are a LOT of examples I could use in my own life to illustrate what failure for me would look like, feel like, and what I could/would do about it. But I'm pretty sure, especially if you happen to be every bit as human as I am, that you have examples from your own life or past or prolonged failures that are surfacing in your mind as you read.
 It's horrible right?! I mean, why does stuff like that happen to us? It was awfully humiliating...We might never live it down! The mess-up practically made the paper! The failure made us feel belittled, stupid, and a whole string of derogatory emotions. And, and, aaaaaaand, you thought I was going to talk about failure being a bad thing, didn't you! Well, surprise, surprise, here I take a turn:
Failure breaks us. 
And God uses broken people.
WHY ON EARTH would God want to use BROKEN people?! What good does THAT do? The answer is "a whole lot, actually". If we are broken, we have come to the accurate realization that we can't handle it all, we are not superheros, and frankly don't know what we are doing compared to an amazing Designer King.


 In the book called The Mystery of God's Providence, it says that "Whole, unbruised, unbroken men are  of little use to God." Sometimes the only way God can work real brokenness in us is by failure. I can look back on my 18 years of life and point out very specific times where I have been broken. The sad thing is that it's happened more than once and God breaking me continues to be necessary because as soon as I "get it together" again, I lose sight of Who is really in charge. Being broken leaves me knowing that I really need God and am utterly dependent on Him to pull me through. It's humiliating,  but I can see that because of my pride, if God wants to use me at all -if I want to bring Him glory with my life- I can't be sporting the attitude of arrogance.
Here's the quote again. "Whole, unbruised, unbroken men are  of little use to God." 


Sometimes the only way God can work real brokenness in us is by failure.
I have heard it said that God created the human spirit so dynamically, so in-depth, so very richly that once sin entered the picture, the human spirit aspires to BE God. And because of that aspiration, sometimes (oftentimes) it is necessary for God (who is WAY more incredible than we are) to break us of our arrogance and pride so that we can actually do incredible things in His power, not our own.


Another thing, (this one is a little intimidating since we pathetic people spend a lot of effort on doing things when it's not about what we've done at all!) but, God is not against using an entire lifetime to break a man or a woman because the ultimate purpose (divine design) is HIS own glory. Thank God that there is Grace! But God is more interested int the worker than the work. He is after the Heart of the worker rather than what the worker (aka you and me) actually do. (That's because if the heart is right, good things will spring from it with the right motivation, but that will probly be a separate post.)


Soooo. I just typed all this out and what was my point? My point is that if you are a person who is broken (like if you have a broken heart, have failed terribly, and feel useless and needy because of it) the YOU are in mint condition for God to work in your life in more incredible ways than you can imagine. I know for myself, that is hard to wrap my head around...but it's true and actually comforting when you think about it more! It's like, "Hey! I don't have to have it all together! Cuz God's gonna work through this!" Just trust Him in your brokenness and through your failures.