Broken to Bless

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Welcome everyone to my blog today! If you are visiting from the Keeping It Personal site I am so glad you stopped by. If you haven’t been to the KIP blog check out my guest post here. I hope you enjoy it.

 

God has been messing with me. He has been up in my grill in the best kind of way. First His word has been searing and slaying and breaking up the fallow soil in my soul. Then He is using His servants and their words. Ann Voskamp’s book One Thousand Gifts, my friends, and pastors.

While pondering God’s word and the words of His servants I see His truth. I am broken that I may bless others.

When my soul crack and breaks I empty of myself then I may be filled with Him. Only when I am full of Him am I able to bless others. Only in the blessing of others does true joy come.

I see it in Psalm 119:71 “It was good for me to be afflicted so that I might learn your decrees.” It beckons from James 1:2 “Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds.” Joy and trials broken that we may bless. I see it in the beauty God brings from ashes. It is there and yet I do not live it out.

I get frustrated and break and crack because I cling to my way or my time. I slay joy as I break instead of trusting Him who allowed my breaking to fill me with Himself. Isn’t that what I really want anyway? To be filled with Him.

The brokenness hurts and is vulnerable. I prefer to hide it away in the depths of me. I don’t want to walk others down that same path because it brings up the pain I thought long buried and dead. Oh, but God wants to transform our splintered, shattered places into beauty. How can He if we refuse to bless others through our brokenness?

Have you found it true?

My heart still squeezes tight when I hear about another friend’s pregnancy. Joy for her, but pain for me. A broken place where I can bless others whose hearts squeeze like mine and I can bless those whose joy brings the pain.

Yes the broken places are the places He uses most. The true places when we admit we struggle with anxiety and we need someone who heals body and soul. The shattered places where we mess up and marriage becomes hard and reconciliation seems a pipe dream. Yet there in the brokenness God offers hope, in the messiness God offers joy, in the shattered dreams God can use us to bless others.

Are you allowing God to use your brokenness to bless others? Can you tell me how you have lived that out?

Angela Mackey

Author and Speaker

Angela is a stumbling woman in need of God’s scandalous grace. Through faith in Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross, she bears the name Christian. She speaks and writes to make much of this God, His only Son, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit who lives in her. She graduated college with a Bachelor’s Degree in Nursing and is a Registered Nurse. She also obtained her Masters of Arts in Biblical and Theological Studies through Knox Theological Seminary.