If you haven't had this happen to your phone yet consider yourself blessed. No one likes brokenness... well, almost no one... God loves you more than words and wants to help you in all areas of your life. Here's the thing about God's love... It's never pushy, it doesn't force anything and it always gives you a choice. You can see this type of love in 1 Corinthians 13. God obviously knows and wants the absolute very best for us as His creations on this planet but He never removes the choice from us. That's another way He loves us - He lets us choose. Many times in the bible this crossroad is pitched at us as "Choose life or death, choose peace or war, choose pleasure or promise" (Deuteronomy 30:19). God is a good God who loves to save and deliver us as many times as we call on Him - after all that's why Jesus is called our Saviour - because He saves us over and over. That said, there are a few things that can stop God working from in your life and bringing you the healing, restoration, peace and the provision you need and you might be surprised what they are. The average person would immediately think it's gotta be sin. It must be that if I'm a bad person and have done too many bad things then I've blown my chances with God and He's not interested in me anymore.
A lot of people think that God is counting up all the good and bad things you've done like Santa with a Christmas list and weighing up which of us is "better stock" from the human race and which ones need to be discarded. The truth is actually that none of us are any good, none of us measure up, none of us have any merit of our own even if we spent our entire life trying to be the best we can. Even more truth to add to that is that God has no problem pouring out His grace and love on us while we are in the middle of doing the wrong thing. Often it is His very grace when we don't deserve it that changes us the most. An amazing truth about God is that while God was speaking to Moses on the mountain giving Him the Ten Commandments for how we should live together and towards God, Aaron was down below on the plain led by the devil to create the idol of a golden calf and said to the people "Here, this is the god that rescued you out of Egypt...worship it". God sees and knows everything and could see exactly what Aaron was doing yet He was instructing Moses to put Aaron in charge of all the laws and the upkeep of God's ways. God's grace is that radical - it sees with eyes beyond who we are now and into who God sees us to be. He sees us for who we are as broken people that need help and wants to do exactly that as our loving Heavenly Father.
There are two things I've found that will stop God working in your life from my own personal experience and from what God showed me from the Bible. One is pride. God says in the bible "He resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble" (James 4:6). The other is unbelief. The Bible also says "without faith it's impossible to please God" (Hebrews 11:6). Jesus highlighted this when He said that He couldn't do many miracles in His own home town because they only chose to see Him as a Jewish carpenters son and not the Son of God. In the bible there is a very powerful story in Matthew 15 of a Canaanite woman who comes to Jesus pleading on His mercy that He helps her daughter who is terribly oppressed and tormented by a demon. This woman had no hope for a cure outside of Jesus and she wasn't planning on taking no for an answer. She knew that Jesus held the power to heal and save her daughter because she saw Jesus not as a man but as the King of all Kings and the Son of God. Jesus then tells this woman "I wasn't sent by God to foreigners, I was sent first to my people the Israelites..." But it's the woman's reply to what Jesus said that is truly mind blowing. She says "Yes...but all I need is a crumb from the Kings table... just a crumb and I know it will save my daughter!" She believed so much in who Jesus really was that even the smallest fragment from Him would change her and her daughters world forever. And she was right.
The same happened with the woman that suffered with the blood disease for 12 years in Luke chapter 8. She said to herself "If I can only just touch the corner of Jesus cloak... just to brush my finger on the very corner of the Kings robe then I'll be healed." Both of these women got exactly what they needed from Jesus. Were these women perfect? No. But pride had died and faith was motivating them to move to Jesus. Jesus saw the brokenness of both these women and responded in love and mercy giving them the healing they needed. This is what God is looking for in us. Brokenness. He knows we are all just broken people, it's just us that need to get that revelation that we are broken and need God's help. Without adding to the Bible I wonder if there was a conversation in Heaven between God and the Angels... I wonder if He looked down and saw us on this planet dying, killing, stealing, hurting each other and said "Look at them, they are all so broken... someone needs to help them get back to what they're meant to be" I wonder if there were voices saying "But who will go? Who will help them...?"
I know who it was that would have been the reply. Jesus would have said "I'll go... I'll go and help them... After all I made them and I've never stopped loving them..." Other voices may have said "But they will kill you... they'll hurt you... they'll shame you... they'll betray you... they'll take everything from you and leave you..." Jesus would have replied "Yes... I know they will. They will do all those things because they're broken. But I'm still going. I'm going to help them because they're worth it. They're worth more than they know and I'm going to show them that... I'll go and die for them to save them" So if you need God to help youtoday, be broken before Him. He finds brokenness irresistible and loves to save all who call on His Name. Jesus became brokenness for you so that you can be whole. God loves you
A lot of people think that God is counting up all the good and bad things you've done like Santa with a Christmas list and weighing up which of us is "better stock" from the human race and which ones need to be discarded. The truth is actually that none of us are any good, none of us measure up, none of us have any merit of our own even if we spent our entire life trying to be the best we can. Even more truth to add to that is that God has no problem pouring out His grace and love on us while we are in the middle of doing the wrong thing. Often it is His very grace when we don't deserve it that changes us the most. An amazing truth about God is that while God was speaking to Moses on the mountain giving Him the Ten Commandments for how we should live together and towards God, Aaron was down below on the plain led by the devil to create the idol of a golden calf and said to the people "Here, this is the god that rescued you out of Egypt...worship it". God sees and knows everything and could see exactly what Aaron was doing yet He was instructing Moses to put Aaron in charge of all the laws and the upkeep of God's ways. God's grace is that radical - it sees with eyes beyond who we are now and into who God sees us to be. He sees us for who we are as broken people that need help and wants to do exactly that as our loving Heavenly Father.
There are two things I've found that will stop God working in your life from my own personal experience and from what God showed me from the Bible. One is pride. God says in the bible "He resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble" (James 4:6). The other is unbelief. The Bible also says "without faith it's impossible to please God" (Hebrews 11:6). Jesus highlighted this when He said that He couldn't do many miracles in His own home town because they only chose to see Him as a Jewish carpenters son and not the Son of God. In the bible there is a very powerful story in Matthew 15 of a Canaanite woman who comes to Jesus pleading on His mercy that He helps her daughter who is terribly oppressed and tormented by a demon. This woman had no hope for a cure outside of Jesus and she wasn't planning on taking no for an answer. She knew that Jesus held the power to heal and save her daughter because she saw Jesus not as a man but as the King of all Kings and the Son of God. Jesus then tells this woman "I wasn't sent by God to foreigners, I was sent first to my people the Israelites..." But it's the woman's reply to what Jesus said that is truly mind blowing. She says "Yes...but all I need is a crumb from the Kings table... just a crumb and I know it will save my daughter!" She believed so much in who Jesus really was that even the smallest fragment from Him would change her and her daughters world forever. And she was right.
The same happened with the woman that suffered with the blood disease for 12 years in Luke chapter 8. She said to herself "If I can only just touch the corner of Jesus cloak... just to brush my finger on the very corner of the Kings robe then I'll be healed." Both of these women got exactly what they needed from Jesus. Were these women perfect? No. But pride had died and faith was motivating them to move to Jesus. Jesus saw the brokenness of both these women and responded in love and mercy giving them the healing they needed. This is what God is looking for in us. Brokenness. He knows we are all just broken people, it's just us that need to get that revelation that we are broken and need God's help. Without adding to the Bible I wonder if there was a conversation in Heaven between God and the Angels... I wonder if He looked down and saw us on this planet dying, killing, stealing, hurting each other and said "Look at them, they are all so broken... someone needs to help them get back to what they're meant to be" I wonder if there were voices saying "But who will go? Who will help them...?"
I know who it was that would have been the reply. Jesus would have said "I'll go... I'll go and help them... After all I made them and I've never stopped loving them..." Other voices may have said "But they will kill you... they'll hurt you... they'll shame you... they'll betray you... they'll take everything from you and leave you..." Jesus would have replied "Yes... I know they will. They will do all those things because they're broken. But I'm still going. I'm going to help them because they're worth it. They're worth more than they know and I'm going to show them that... I'll go and die for them to save them" So if you need God to help youtoday, be broken before Him. He finds brokenness irresistible and loves to save all who call on His Name. Jesus became brokenness for you so that you can be whole. God loves you
[ The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise. - Psalm 51:17 ]
