There are many ways Christians live out their lives. Some have so much given their lives to Christ, and perhaps travel to other cities or countries, while their families wait for their return. Some accept the awesome gift of salvation, and do very little with it. And there are many other examples.
Brokenness: The Story’s Beginning
Let’s begin with the believer has been saved for some time whose life shows very little fruit. Family members may have to actually stop and look around this person’s life to find fruit, because it isn’t easily evident. The person I’m trying to describe may be on the edge of salvation, having crossed from the dead life, into the new life, but only by a footstep or 2. This believer may still be able to easily see their old life, and their family may see many evidences of this person putting off that old and putting on the new (Ephesians 4:22–24).
Brokenness: Thinking Outside of Ourselves
With this beginning, let’s shift to God’s point of view. Many of us are familiar with the term “God’s will” meaning that he has a planned desire and design for our lives, and part of it can also be viewed as a permanent map which never changes, along which all paths are established in their perfection. The believer we were just talking about, let’s call him JS, is not going to be ready for much that the Lord has for him, besides improvement. At some point God may grow tired of waiting for JS to walk farther away from his old life and into the incomparable light of his new life, and let’s imagine JS has been like this for 15 years and our Lord won’t wait any longer. For him time has no meaning, but the longer he waits for JS, the less of his short time on earth is left to carry out the plans God has for him. What if JS decides at 90 to pick up his bible and start reading? Maybe he gets 2 years into knowing the Lord more deeply, and gets a sense of the wonderful relationship he’s put on hold during his entire life — he’d be devastated. Moreover, if God’s plan was for JS to begin a ministry at 45 and he waits for JS to take action, there’s a much smaller window for him to be used.
Obviously, there are things God can do to use JS for the little time he has left to glorify God and talk about Jesus, and as God he has lots of options being sovereign, omnipotent, and omniscient. However, there is another sense where God has let this person pass through life with little blessing instead of with the blessing filled life he had in mind (John 10:10), even though JS had that limited free will to choose that path.
Now we have seen that if God doesn’t take action, things can veer away from his desire to give that abundant life, and let’s not also forget not only for JS, but to all of the people he could have blessed through knowing Jesus deeply. When you are judged and you see your life from beginning to end, imagine right now how it might feel to be saved at 20, and put the pause button on knowing the Lord until you were 90. Imagine also, you could be shown all of the blessings both for you, and for others through your life with Christ that were missed — it would be sad indeed. Keeping this in mind, let’s not forget Hebrews 12:7-8 which points out that fathers discipline their children (scriptures says sons, but also applies to daughters), and all receive it, however if you do not receive it you are an illegitimate child.
Enter Brokenness
Let’s go back to the part where JS sees his entire life, and realizes all of the missed blessings in his life that his choice thwarted, but also, the deeper loss of all of the blessings he could have been to others. Do you think there’s a good chance that JS might be heartbroken at that moment and wish he could go back and make things right with the Lord now that he understands the consequence of his inaction? I think its rather obvious that JS would wish that, but this isn’t a Time Travel story. We only have this one life to get it right.
Since the Lord cares so much for us, and the lives of the others that ours touches (Mark 4:21), if our limited will conflicts with his plan he could simply choose someone else, and in some cases he surely does. But at some point, if JS is fortunate, Jesus won’t let it play out until 90 when he picks the bible up and intently starts reading. In this case as JS is finally starting to get to know the Lord, he will soon be face-to-face with him, his life lived less abundantly than Jesus offered, and what of all of the others who were going to be blessed by him?
Brokenness Introduced
In our story here, to describe brokenness, since we’ve discussed it and its consequences, lets now view our holy savior who loves us more than anyone ever could, and instead of waiting for JS to come around early enough to be used well he intervenes. I don’t claim this is typical, but imagine that tragedy, and the eventual blessing. JS has rented a boat to visit some islands he knows of where he can take a relaxing vacation. He thinks about taking his bible since he’ll have plenty of time to read it while he’s gone, but decides he has plenty of time left in life to read it later. JS takes the boat out, and as he is heading toward his chosen island, the boat explodes. The boat has drifted for days and ends up on the beaches of an island nation far south where someone find him, barely alive in the wreckage of the boat after its washed ashore. The man gets him to a hospital as quickly as possible, and he is quickly rushed into a room. A hospital worker with paperwork smiles at him one morning as he awakes in a soft bed, the sound of a heart monitor slowly blipping off JS’s heartbeats. Seeing JS has awakened, the hospital work leans in and says, “You are safe in our hospital, and you will be with us for some time as you recover. Let’s get you in the system first, what is your name” … but JS doesn’t understand a word. Through the ringing in his ears and the pain coursing through his body, he manages a short reply, “I can’t understand you, what?” After the Realizing JS is a foreigner, after the hospital workers has left, a friendly janitor who recognized JC’s language brings in a radio and tunes it to the only station he can find in JS’s language. It is a radio show where the bible is read and discussed, guests are invited to talk about the gospel, and spirit-filled music is played. For 6 months, this is the only contact he has in his language, and God has him as a sort of captive audience. At first he resents what has happened, blaming God through his poor understanding of who he is, but during these 6 months he realizes he has wasted so much time. One day he thanks the Lord that he is only 28 and has so much time to live yet.