When you feel broken, you must remember these truths.
Feeling broken is normal. It will help if you remember that very few are immune to this feeling of brokenness. Some have experienced brokenness because of a failed relationship, a financial setback, a shattered dream, or a deep emotional wound.
Feelings of brokenness are often temporary. On my twenty-fifth birthday, I remember feeling broken. My career path was ending, and my father was diagnosed with cancer. But in the next five years, I became a father to two beautiful children and embraced a career change that lasted twenty-eight years. Not only was my feeling temporary, but it also did not reflect reality.
When you feel broken, remember God uses broken and imperfect people. We are all broken to some extent. If God didn’t work through broken people, nothing would get done.
Broken people are still capable of doing good. However, the story of the Good Samaritan surprised the audience by showing a person they considered godless doing good.
Reasonable people can sometimes do bad things, and those we believe to be bad people can sometimes do good things.
If God has used sound and bad people to help you, it should not surprise you that God can and will use you to help others.
Remember, God uses imperfect and broken people to accomplish his redemptive purposes. Therefore, you can be helpful since you are a person who feels broken.
When You Feel Broken, Do Good To Others
When I feel broken, I long for a way to demonstrate my value to others and myself. I think you know what I mean.
Doing good toward others is my favorite remedy for my feelings of brokenness. I may feel broken, but I am helping someone.
One of my favorite passages in the Bible provides a roadmap to doing good.
Micah 6:8 says, “He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?”
Doing good toward others is my favorite remedy for my feelings of brokenness. I may feel broken, but helping others make me feel whole.
We Do Justice. To do justice means that we act to make things right.
Often this requires we see where damage has occurred, where value has diminished, and pursue steps toward restoration or restitution.
We will never do away with injustice, but we must not turn a blind eye because it is hard.
Our feelings of brokenness can make us sensitive to the hurts others do not see.
We Love Kindness. To love kindness means being passionate about being friendly, generous, and considerate to others.
Kindness is our first and last response. But, even when it is not earned or expected, it still may be given.
Kindness embraces the command to love God and our neighbor. It allows us the opportunity to forgive and find meaningful relationships with others.
Kindness is the opposite of the cancel culture.
Our feelings of brokenness can cause us to consider those in need.
We walk humbly with our God. Walking humbly with God means thinking rightly of ourselves and others.
Too often, we find our value in what others say about us. As a result, we are exalted or diminished by others who don’t know us well.
But the only entity that can rightly think about our value in creation is our creator. We are neither worthless nor God’s single greatest gift to humanity.
We are his creation; he loves us even when we feel broken and useless.
We are all created in his image and have infinite value to him and implications for each other.
Our feelings of brokenness equip us to recognize when others feel worthless and take action to remedy the situation.
Conclusion
When you feel broken, remember while some were storming the nation’s capital, others were feeding the poor, working toward racial reconciliation, advocating justice for the oppressed, and demonstrating that we can do well even in our brokenness.
I pray this week that amid brokenness, you will also find a way to do good to others.
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My mission is to help individuals and churches become safe havens for the broken.