Living Life for Christ Alone

“Abba, Father… when I bring broken things to You, don’t You heal? But why at times do You hold the broken things in Your hands -still broken? Why when I hand You the broken things, do You carry all the pieces, yet do nothing to put them back together?” I ask this question one morning, heart aching, hurt rising. “I know some pain isn’t meant to necessarily go away…” I try again, “But what is it for?” The question echoes deep in the chambers of my heart. What of the pain of seeing brokenness and not being able to do anything about it? What of the pain of seeing the broken people and circumstances God cares about and knowing that unless He works impossible miracles, nothing good can come out of brokenness? Sometimes, there are unnamed pains and brokenness deep within that are too deep to even describe with words. Grief that rises when least expected, grief of ongoing suffering of the silent kind. And I wonder… does God have a purpose in that kind of pain? I look around and...

The g rave.   The place of the dead.   The place of no going back.   Many times, this last year, I’ve voiced this very thought to God.   “I have died,” I thought. “I am not the same.”   I would look at the terrain of my soul and not recognize myself.   Trauma, the fires of difficulty, the deep pain of seeing your children struggle, the sorrow of letting go of people you love , the daily in-your-face weakness , a numbing grief ... these were enough to cause pieces of me to die.   Being “hard-pressed on every side,” as Paul put it, “yet not crushed.” And now I find myself “perplexed, yet not in despair.”   I wanted to go back for the longest time, to put pieces of me back together, to make it like it used to be, but the more I dig around in the rubble of my broken self, the more impossible it seems.   I knew it before all of this happened, that going up close to the broken –becoming a part of brokenness- means you are broken too.   But kn...

  "Do not stay so far from me, for trouble is near, and no one else can help me." (Psalm 22:11) "...No one else can help me." No hope anywhere but in Him. No help unless He helps. No joy unless He supplies it. No endurance, no patience, no peace, no goodness... unless it comes from His hand. No joy, no faith, no purpose in challenges unless He Himself gives it to us. The process to get to this place is arduous. It's one we don't ask for, but as Christians we need.  You see, when trouble is near, and we find that our resources are running out, we have whatever veiled our vision of Him removed so we can really see Him. He IS all -we just don't tend to see Him that way. He is our soul's answer -but we usually just have Him in our minds as a plan B. It's usually something else and  Him we depend on -not just Him. The Christian life is a process of growing in exclusive dependence on the One who is all we need. (Read John 15 for more on this.) And some...