When You Are Feeling Shattered

“God said, ‘My grace is sufficient for thee,’ for in your weakness My strength is made perfect. In your brokenness, My light shines forth. In your affliction, My power flows out. In your brokenness and insufficiency, My sufficiency is evidenced. In your lack of power, My power is seen.”

“Many times those who are unbroken sit in judgment of those whom God has broken. He has shattered them and leveled them and taken all their pride away. Now they are more useful than ever. Instead of us praising God for His grace and the usefulness, we sit in judgment of the shattering experience.”

“Those that have broken hearts and shattered dreams, those whose lives have been leveled, make the best servants of God because they realize that they have nothing of their own.”

“God can get more glory out of you when you praise Him in brokenness, than when you praise Him on the mountaintop. Anybody can praise God in the good times, but when you are broken, your will is broken, your life is broken, your dreams are shattered, and you praise God, He gets more glory.” (excerpts “Weathering the Storms of Life” by Dennis Corle)

 

In this season of Thanksgiving, even if you are broken and shattered, give God the glory. He is preparing you for great things when everything that YOU are is out of His way to make room for all that HE is.

The Soundtrack of My Life

Sometimes it is difficult to choose a song to sing for church.  For times like that, every singer has a “go to” song…or two. 🙂  This is one of mine.  The reason that I choose this song again and again is because every single word of it is true, and it has resonated in my heart many times over the years.

If I want anything to be true about my life it is this:

I want to live so that others can see how thankful I am for Jesus dying in my place and paying the price for my sin.

May this song be my constant refrain:

When Others Judge My Broken Heart

[67] Before I was afflicted I went astray: but now have I kept thy word.
[68] Thou art good, and doest good; teach me thy statutes.
[69] The proud have forged a lie against me: but I will keep thy precepts with my whole heart.
[70] Their heart is as fat as grease; but I delight in thy law.
[71] It is good for me that I have been afflicted; that I might learn thy statutes.

“It is a rather humbling thing when God begins to break us.  Sometimes the very thing that God uses to make us good Christians is the thing that everybody else will sit in judgment of.”

~ Dennis Corle from Weathering the Storms of Life

If God is working in your life…let Him work!  Don’t be embarrassed by what He is doing, even if He is chastening you.  That chastening work, when you respond to it properly, will make you more like Christ.  Ignore what others say, and what their opinions are of your brokenness.

Let Christ work to make you more like Himself, that He can draw others to Himself, through the light that is shining out from your broken vessel.

All that He is = All that you Need

He is everything you need.

He is healing to the sick.

He’s sight to the blind.

He’s life to the dead.

He’s salvation to the lost and forgiveness to the fallen.

He’s rest to the weary.

He’s peace to the troubled heart.

He’s hope to the hopeless.

He’s love to the unlovely.

He’s deliverance to the captive.

He’s grace to the broken heart.

He’s everything thing I need in crisis.

Nothing takes Him by surprise.

There is nothing He can’t handle.

He is everything I need.

~ Weathering the Storms of Life by Dennis Corle

Love notes

Does the Lord ever put a little blessing in your life?  Just a little something that you weren’t expecting, and something that you know was directly from His hand?

He does that for me occasionally.  I think it’s usually when I’m at a particularly hard spot, and I am trusting Him, despite the circumstances; but my faith is weak and He knows it.  So, He drops something into my every day life that is just short of miraculous.

And it probably wouldn’t be significant to anyone else, or maybe it wouldn’t even seem like something God would do.

But that’s how I know it’s just for me!

I have a favorite necklace.  It’s a sterling chain and a round disk with my monogram.  I won it from a blog giveaway, believe it or not! 🙂

Recently, after coming home from church, I removed the chain and realized the charm disk was gone.  It’s a tiny little thing.  I did look around my room and over the path I’d taken into the house; but I didn’t find it and basically totally dismissed it from my mind.

I knew I’d never find such a tiny piece of silver in my house.  And I wasn’t as diligent as the woman in the Bible who swept her entire house to look for it either!

Well, today, Doug drove home at lunch time to pick up the checkbook.  I took it out to him when he pulled in the drive.  As I was coming back in the house, I caught just a glimpse of something under the back of my recliner.

Guess what it was!

disk3

Yep, my monogram charm.  Just laying there.  Not damaged at all.

disk2

I know beyond a shadow of a doubt, that was the Lord speaking to me today, in His still small voice, “Be patient.  I’ve got this.  If I can protect and reveal such a tiny piece of jewelry to you, I can take care of everything else too.”  Not audibly, of course, but I felt the message deep in my heart.

He is such a good God.  I am in awe and amazed by His love for me.