Today, we kick off a brand new series titled Beautifully Broken.
What does it mean to be beautifully broken?
Brokenness is the result of the fall of man in the Garden of Eden. Each person’s broken heart or broken life is different. People may have similar stories, but no two stories are the same.
You might have multiple marriages, divorces or you might have experienced abuse in your background. You might have been incarcerated or are working through orphan issues. Or you might have been hurt by the Church.
Each story is unique, and God works to restore each person differently. There is no one-size-fits-all in God’s restoration plan. However, the one thing that is consistent across all of God’s restoration plans is – His Son dying on the cross for each one of us to bring redemption to our lives.
Someone told me not too long ago that restoration is a process, not a destination. We can be restored to something…like a marriage or a ministry position, but the restoration of our hearts is an ongoing process.
When we think about brokenness, we have to go all the way back to the beginning of time – the creation of the universe.
The Beginning of Time
In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.1 God created all that exists as we know it and understand it. This is what I think is interesting, we have just scratched the surface of all that God has created.
In late December 2021, the James Webb Telescope took flight and was launched into space to explore the never-before-seen galaxies. The soon to be retired Hubble Telescope could only go so far in our solar system.
Scholars believe there are hundreds of billions of stars in our galaxy alone, and there are hundreds of billions of galaxies out there. The God of the Universe spoke all that into existence with a few words. That’s incredible!
When God created Adam, He molded and shaped him. It says in Genesis 2:7,
“Then the Lord God formed the man from the dust of the ground. He breathed the breath of life into the man’s nostrils, and the man became a living person.”
A living person. Adam walked throughout the garden naming animals and watching over all that God had entrusted to him. However, over time, Adam became lonely. He wanted a helpmate just like the other animals had.
In Genesis 2:18,
“Then the Lord God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper who is just right for him.”
Later in the chapter, it says,
“So the Lord God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep. While the man slept, the Lord God took out one of the man’s ribs and closed up the opening. Then the Lord God made a woman from the rib, and he brought her to the man.” – Genesis 2:21
Here’s the funniest line of this narrative,
“At last!” the man exclaimed.” – Genesis 2:23a
Adam was overjoyed that he had a helpmate and a life partner. And then…things took a dramatic turn.
Brokenness
God told Adam and Eve they could eat from any tree in the garden except for the one in the center of the garden. There were hundreds, if not thousands of trees with fruit or some type of food on them.
However, they got seduced by the serpent, or rather Satan, into eating from the one tree God instructed them not too, and it opened their eyes to their nakedness.
They hid from the Lord when God called out to them. This was not a surprise to God. He knew where they were, and He knew what they had done – just like He knows what we do.
At the moment when they took a bite of the fruit from the forbidden tree, God was putting into motion His rescue plan for all mankind.
From that moment on, their brokenness spiraled into our brokenness. It paved the way for hard work with the ground or in our roles as men. For women, childbirth became painful.
When God came looking for them, they hid. They realized they were naked. God asked how they knew they were naked? Then the blame game started. This woman you gave me made me eat the forbidden fruit.
The Blame Game
Isn’t that what we do? We blame others for our brokenness. When something doesn’t go our way at work, we look to shift the blame to others rather than take ownership of our failures or mistakes.
When something goes wrong in our relationships or marriages, we look to the other person and ask why they aren’t meeting our needs.
Instead, we should look at ourselves first and figure out where we went wrong. We might need to apologize for something.
Apologies need to occur in all areas of our lives – relationships, work, and even the Church. The blame game serves to continue the cycle of hurt in relationships, and the sooner we get off the blame game train, the sooner we can begin our restoration process.
Restoration
Adam and Eve messed up, there is no mistaking that action. We mess up each day, and we need to seek forgiveness from the Lord and others to help us continue our restoration process.
The power of restoration is two-fold:
- God restores us from something – He can restore us from something in our past. It could be a divorce, a bad marriage, or abuse. He has the power to restore us and create in us a new heart and a new life.
- God continually restores us – He has the power to continually restore us. This could be guiding us to work through body image issues or helping us overcome a lack of love in our lives so we can love others.
In some cases, He made need to restore us from something while continually restoring us. At different times in our lives, we experience different heartaches and need restoration that fits with the time and place of what we are going through.
The question I have for each of us (myself included) is: will we allow Him to enter our hearts and dig out the bad stuff that is holding us back?
Only you can answer that question. I can tell you from first-hand experience that when you allow God to get down into the different parts of your heart and dig out the bad stuff, you are better for it. It will also be painful.
Restoration is not an easy process. When you restore a house, you oftentimes have to take it down to the bare bones to build it back up to its intended beauty.
Allowing God to restore you takes time, perseverance, love, and grace, but when you allow the master craftsman to restore you, there is incredible joy on the other side.
Encouragement
This week, as you think through some of your past experiences, invite God to show you areas of your life that need restoration.
Write those areas down, and begin to work through them to make you a better person. Remember, as my friend said, restoration is a journey, not a destination.
Prayer
Lord, thank you for the blessing of restoration, love, and grace. Please help each one of us to invite you into our hearts and lives, and carve out the bad things that hold us back from living restored lives. You set a plan in motion when Adam & Eve made a mistake in the garden all those years ago. We are so thankful for your rescue plan for our lives. Thank you for Your redemption and Your restoration in our lives. Amen!
Footnotes
- Genesis 1:1 ↩︎
Listen On…
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