Brokenness in Community

I wrote this first part several years ago while I was still in college. I found that it still rings true today. None of the original words were changed.

Brokenness in Community

I have seen and known the beauty of brokenness. But what is this brokenness that I’m talking about? When many people hear about being broken before the Lord they think of people wearing ashes, tearing their clothes, and being all together miserable. But what they fail to realize is the true meaning behind brokenness. Brokenness is being brought to true humility before the Lord and before the Body of Christ. And humility is not thinking less of yourself but thinking of yourself less. Brokenness and humility go hand-in-hand with each other and they both lead to a beauty that is so indescribable that it can only be God.

Again I ask you, what is brokenness? Brokenness is coming before the Lord with what little you truly have and offering it all to Him. Brokenness is bowing down before God and acknowledging Him as Almighty God, King of all Kings, and the Lord of all Lords. Brokenness is coming before God with all your sins and depravity, placing it all at His feet and knowing through faith that He has already destroyed your sins and forgiven you, and has replaced all those faults with His unfailing, radical love. And brokenness is healing.

But what does brokenness have to do with community? I will tell you through my own personal application.

When I first came into Bethel I had my own certain view of the world, a certain view of people, a certain view of Christians, and I was firmly grounded in that view. But along with all my clothes and books that I brought with me in my suitcase to Bethel I also brought with me all my prejudices, judgments, viewpoints, and even my own sinful struggles. I saw myself as being a pretty good Christian – I mean I didn’t listen to single secular song, I didn’t watch the movies with murderous or sensual scenes in it, I didn’t swear, and I didn’t purposely try to act prideful. But Bethel being a pretty liberal university placed me into a whole new world where I was surrounded by Christians who did not all act like me in my conservative, strict ways and it kind of shook me up. Amidst this shaking God brought me into a safe haven with Pray First, where I was surrounded by people who eagerly wanted to learn more about prayer and to pray for other people. This was my community that I ran to whenever the pressure was so great I could collapse.

But what I found in this community was a group of people who saw me for who I really was along with all my faults and failures and still did not judge me. I found a community where you could go up to someone when you were struggling with sin, confess it to them, and have them look at you with this love that can only come from God, confess how much they love you, and then gently correct you through prayer and scripture. There was no condemnation, there was no judgment, and there was no rejection. This community accepted me just as I was and I have experienced freedom from so many wounds, so many prejudices, and they have taught me how to love with a God kind of love.

This is brokenness within community. It’s being able to go to each other, confess your sins, and confess that you need help, tell how wonderful or how poorly your day is going, and have the other(s) lavish God’s love on you in such a way that walls can’t help but come crumbling down. It’s speaking truth to each other, it’s speaking life to each other, and it’s expressing God’s fierce and radical love to each other.

What is sad, however, is that this type of community is pretty rare. How many people have tried to go to someone for help and ended up getting judged and walk away wounded. This is NOT the love that God wants us to lavish on each other. 1 Corinthians 13 says “Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, and always perseveres. Love never fails.” This is what love is, God’s love. I myself am convicted of not loving in this way. In fact, I have sinned by not loving in every possible way listed above. I have been impatient, unkind envious, boastful, proud. When my “enemies” are hurt I have rejoiced in them being hurt instead of rejoicing with the truth. I have not protected, I have not trusted, I have not hoped, and I have given up. But praise God we have a God who truly knows how to love and has forgiven me of every wrong I have committed.

How many of us claim to be Christians and yet do not love with the God kind of love? How can we say that Christ lives in us if we do not show God’s love to others? I had a girl approach me with tears the other day during Vespers because she was confused as to why the church could not love her just because she was a little different. And it broke my heart. Have we as a community, as the Body of Christ, strayed so far from love and truth that we have to turn around and hurt our brothers and sisters? This is not the love that God intended to be in the church. And I am truly sorry if you have been hurt by Christians because of their lack of love.

Now, I know it seems like I’ve taken a bunny trail but I actually turned a corner here in what I’m about to tell you. You see, God intended community to be a safe haven from the sins and turmoil of the world around you. And how can it be a safe haven if people are thrown out of the haven because of their faults and sins and differences. Matthew 7:1-2 says “Do not judge, or you too will be judged. For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.” To say it bluntly, don’t judge because you yourself are just as guilty of sin as that other person is. Sin is sin. But God’s love is radical and life changing.

If we as Christians ALL learned how to live within community with brokenness and humility before God and each other think of how incredibly powerful this would be! I mean if Jesus could love with God’s love (being only one person) and give an entire humanity freedom and salvation from sin and acceptance into this radical kind of love how much more can an entire population of people who love with God’s love do to this world. This may sound completely impossible, because after all we are human, but it all starts with your own brokenness and your own humility before God. And out of that brokenness the love that God lavishes on you will spill over and into the lives of everyone you are in contact with. Imagine, a whole world freed from every sin, every pain, and every wall of injustice and selfish ambitions; and imagine a world where brother could go to brother, sister to sister, and even brother to sister and everyone giving each other this kind of radical love and being broken before each other. This is the beauty of brokenness in community.

Being

It was several years ago I came into an awakening of sorts. An awakening of me, an awakening of others, and the experiences I had walked through for most of my life. I would look at myself in the mirror and hate what I saw peering back. My eyes were clouded by lenses I believed I should have been wearing, dictated by what was around me and what I believed was right and wrong. I used to spend so much energy trying to fit myself into who others believed I should be and my reputation was held with such high priority that I learned to constantly be concerned with what people thought of me. I built myself a pedestal and stood up on it believing that was where I was supposed to be and thought I was being the dutiful, obedient, well-mannered young woman that I always dreamed I would be. And yet I hated who I was. I couldn't even allow myself to enter into being human, the experience of enduring humanity with all of it's foibles and frailty and beauty.

I recently saw "Wonder Woman" and it it was this message of whether man is good but deceived by an evil being or are they truly inherently evil and just tempted by an evil being. And if they are inherently evil are they worthy of being saved? It's a question worth pondering. Just talk to any parent and they will tell you that humans are inherently sinful. Worthy of being saved? If we were to truly look at ourselves, see ourselves staring back in that mirror would we be able to say that we are worthy of being saved? Maybe some would question the reasoning behind needing to be saved. Maybe some would question why worth is even a question. But it is still a question we each have to ask. Are humans worthy of being saved? Am I worthy of being saved?

It has been a journey to say the least of finding beauty in the brokenness, finding worth in the filth, and believing ashes could be turned into diamonds. Learning to look in the mirror and find worth and beauty in the flaws and imperfections of all of my being staring back. Being honest about the truth of what is in my heart. Honest about what it means to have this body and it's humanness. Discerning about my tendencies versus what I truly desire in every way - body, mind, spirit, will, emotions, etc. Radically accepting my story as my story, that it is a part of me and makes up my present experience. But that I am more than my story. Which means the present sadness, anger, happiness, excitement, bitterness, etc., that I am currently experiencing isn't where I'm going to stay. Nothing brings me more joy than knowing that God can use any of it and all of it for something beautiful. I just have to surrender to Him.

There have been recent events that happened that revealed to me that even painful things can produce beautiful fruit. Like a friend's hurtful words, spurring me towards making some changes that God has been speaking to me about for some time. Or an anxious spell that revealed several beautiful gifts in my life that I didn't notice before. Or my PTSD pushing me to dig deep into God's heart so I can be set free to be me as a woman of God. You learn a lot about yourself and about God when suffering has a place at the dinner table.

I have a tendency to find my life in the extremes. But what I noticed was so do so many other people. And I think it's because we try to avoid the pain, the suffering and the brokenness. We don't know how to take it by it's hand and let it be a close friend. Instead we are afraid, chaotic, confused and full of shame. Pain, suffering, brokenness becomes too much on top of that. Just as the Israelites cried out for God to deliver them from Egypt, they had to endure more pain and suffering for them to be rid of their slave mentality. God desired for them to enter into the Promised Land, but first they had to learn to be who they really were. And that took stripping away their current identity for their true identity - a Light to the Nations.

"It is suffering that has the realist possibility to bear down and deliver grace. And grace that chooses to bear the cross of suffering overcomes that suffering." ~ Ann Voskamp One Thousand Gifts.

Joy and grace are found in the suffering, in accepting that to live is to endure pain. And just as Christ bore the pain of the cross for our freedom, so too must we enter into His death so we can enter into His resurrection. The brokenness in our lives become breaks in the veil to peer into the Holy One's heart, an invitation to draw near to Him and listen closely to His voice. It causes us to be transformed as it slowly strips away pieces of ourselves so that God can fill the voids in our lives with His love and grace. The pain and suffering may not go away, we may have to endure our entire lives with an ongoing place of suffering. "God is our refuge and strength, always ready to help in times of trouble. So we will not fear when earthquakes come and the mountains crumble into the sea." Psalms 46:1. Without God our suffering has no meaning. There is no purpose to the pain and troubles that come into our lives without the Cross, without God's redemption. To know that the pain and brokenness in our lives has a purpose and can be used by God offers us a profound hope in the midst of our darkness. Even Jesus had to suffer so we could be set free. We are not alone.

God can do something beautiful with it in the midst of our suffering. Only in accepting  and making room for our pain, suffering, brokenness, frailty and failure will we ever be free to truly live and be. Only in surrendering and accepting the pain, brokenness and ugliness of the Cross can our pain be redeemed and made into a mosaic of beauty.