Growth and Brokenness

“I know that I deserve to die
For the murder in my heart
So be gentle with me Jesus
As you tear me apart”
~JJ Heller

You grow, get better, become stronger and then right when you feel like you have got things down and can relax, you break or more accurately get broken. God breaks you. He sees that you can accomplish so much more, be better, grow closer to Him, so He breaks you.

Right now, I am definitely going through a period of God breaking me. I had been trying so hard for a long time to be open and inviting people to really get to know me, and recently I began to feel like I was making progress, things were going well. I decided I didn’t need to try as hard anymore, and then God broke me. Or I guess it was more like God gave me an opportunity to be more open and share a lot more than I had become comfortable with, an opportunity to grow, and when I rejected that opportunity, multiple times, God broke me.

God breaks you, not out of spite but out of necessity. For if God had not broken you, you would have stopped trying to do more, to improve yourself, and grow closer to Him, merely our of comfort. If it were not for all the times that God has broken you in the past, you would not be who you are today.

Getting broken hurts, even when you know it is for the best. It is easy to give into the thoughts of doubt that you will never make it, you can never achieve what it is you are striving for, that you aren’t good enough. Instead, what you are challenged to do is to pick yourself up and keep walking. Don’t sit to entertain these thoughts of self-doubt, for they aren’t true. It is written that “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me” (Philippians 4:13). Start walking, let Christ be the arm to steady you, the friend to pick you up when you have gone astray. Even if you do not know your destination, or where you are headed, start walking. The longer you wait to pick up where your journey left off, the more difficult it will be to begin again.

May the peace of Christ reign in your heart wherever you may be in this circle of life.