What God Does With Broken Things
Scripture: “He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds.” — Psalm 147:3
I want to show you something this morning that I think will change the way you see the broken places in your life. God has a pattern. It runs from Genesis to Revelation and it never changes. And once you see it you cannot unsee it.
The pattern is this: God does not wait for things to be fixed before He uses them. He does His greatest work through the broken ones. Not in spite of the brokenness. Through it. Because of it. In ways that the unbroken version never could have produced. This morning I want to show you that the broken thing you’ve been hiding the wound, the failure, the season that left a mark is not what disqualifies you from God’s purposes. It may be the very thing that most qualifies you for them.
Every newsletter I write takes real time, real prayer, and real heart. Please consider upgrading for only $3 here:
The Sermon
In John 6 a crowd of five thousand people are hungry and the disciples have nothing to feed them with. A boy offers what he has five loaves of bread and two fish. And Andrew says to Jesus: “But how far will they go among so many?” Practical question. Reasonable question. Five loaves and two fish for five thousand people is not a solution. It is a reminder of how insufficient the available resources are.
And Jesus takes the insufficient offering the small, the inadequate, the not-nearly-enough and breaks it. He breaks it before He multiplies it. The breaking is not incidental. It is the point. Because bread that is not broken cannot be distributed. The loaf that stays whole feeds one person the one holding it. The loaf that is broken in the hands of Jesus feeds thousands. This is the pattern. God takes what is offered however small, however insufficient, however inadequate it seems breaks it, and multiplies it into something that goes further than the unbroken version ever could have reached.
Your brokenness is not the obstacle to your usefulness in the kingdom. It is the prerequisite for it.
The Hard Truth
I want to show you something in the life of the apostle Paul that most people miss. Paul had what he called a thorn in the flesh. He never told us what it was. He asked God three times to remove it. And God said no. And then God said this: “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” My power is made perfect in weakness. Not despite weakness. In it.
Here is the theological reality that most of us spend our Christian lives trying to avoid: God’s power is most visible in the places where human strength is most obviously absent. When you have enough, enough talent, enough resources, enough strength, enough ability to manage the situation on your own, the glory can go to you. But when you are clearly and obviously not enough when the brokenness is visible, when the insufficiency is undeniable and something remarkable happens anyway, there is only one place the glory can go.
Paul came to understand this so fully that he said something almost impossible: “I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me.” He stopped trying to hide the thorn. He stopped managing the brokenness out of public view. He offered it specifically, honestly, without pretense and found that the power of God rested most fully on the places where his own power was most completely absent. Your brokenness is not something to be hidden until you are whole enough to be useful. It is something to be offered specifically, honestly, without pretense to a God whose power is most perfectly displayed in the places where yours runs out.
The Real Word
I want to speak to someone specifically this morning. You have a broken place. And you have concluded somewhere in the quiet, in the private accounting of your own worth that the broken place disqualifies you. That God can use the people who have it together. The people with the clean story and the impressive testimony and the life that demonstrates His goodness without complication. But not you. Not with what you’ve been through. Not with what you’ve done. Not with what was done to you. Not with the wound that has never fully healed and the scar that is still visible and the chapter of your story you’d rather not have anyone read. I want to dismantle that conclusion this morning using the most basic pattern in Scripture.
Moses had a speech impediment and a criminal record. God used him to deliver a nation. Rahab was a prostitute. God put her in the lineage of Jesus. David was an adulterer and a murderer. God called him a man after His own heart. Peter denied Jesus three times publicly. God built His church on him. Paul held the coats of people who murdered Christians. God made him the greatest missionary in history. Every single person God used significantly had a broken place that should have disqualified them by any human accounting. The broken place was not what God worked around. It was what God worked through. Psalm 147:3 says He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds. The word heals in the original Hebrew is rapha which means to restore to wholeness, to make thoroughly well. And the word binds up is the word a physician uses to dress a wound to wrap it, to stop the bleeding, to begin the process of healing.
God is not repulsed by your wounds. He is the physician who moves toward them. Who wraps them. Who heals them. And who then uses the healed wound as the very credential that gives you access to people in the same place that nobody else can reach. Your greatest ministry will almost always come out of your deepest wound. Not because suffering is good. But because the healed wound is the most powerful evidence of the God who heals.
The Call
I want to close with an invitation. Stop hiding the broken place. Stop waiting until you are fully healed before you allow God to use you. Stop disqualifying yourself from the calling because of the chapter you’re ashamed of. Offer it. The broken loaves. The insufficient offering. The five loaves and two fish of your cracked and wounded and not-nearly-enough life. Put it in the hands of Jesus and step back. Because the God who fed five thousand with a boy’s lunch is the same God who takes broken offerings and multiplies them into something that goes further than the whole version ever could have.
He is not looking for perfect. He never was. He is looking for available. He is looking for the person who will stop hiding what is broken and start offering it specifically, honestly, without pretense. Be that person. Offer what you have. Even the broken parts. Especially the broken parts. Watch what He does with them.
Reflection Questions
What is the broken place in your life that you have been hiding or using to disqualify yourself from God’s purposes?
Looking at the biblical pattern Moses, Rahab, David, Peter, Paul what does it tell you about how God feels about using broken people?
What would it look like to offer your brokenness to God specifically this week not waiting until you are healed but bringing the wound itself as the offering?
Today’s Prayer:Lord I have been hiding the broken places. Waiting until I am whole enough to be useful. Convinced that what is cracked in me is what disqualifies me from what You are calling me toward. Today I am offering it. The broken loaves. The insufficient and the wounded and the not-what-I-wished-it-was version of my life. Take it. Break it further if You need to. And multiply it into something that goes further than the unbroken version ever could have reached. I am available. Broken and available. Use me. Amen.
Comments