Unbridled

How can our weakness bring glory to God? How can we in our failures be the body of Christ? Can our failures be a tool that God uses to express His love to His people?

Think of it this way. Say you have struggled through an addiction of say... alcohol. God has given you freedom from that addiction and someone who is currently battling that affliction comes to you. They share their struggles with you, all the horrible lies, abuses and behaviors that are associated with alcoholism, they dump out their junk to you. Will you be shocked at the revelation of these things or will you be able to see beyond the affliction and all the horrible things it produces and see how this person is suffering. You have a compassion that is not obscured by the ugliness of the “sin” and instead you can focus on the effects to the person suffering from it. No judgement. No condemnation. Only love, compassion and understanding paired with the amazing hope of healing that you have been able to experience through your own life.

Now say that person comes and shares the same problems and behaviors, I on the other hand am not an alcoholic, I don’t drink and don’t know what it means to experience the pain of detox, or the shame of waking up drunk, covered in vomit having missed my child’s little league baseball championship, all because I just stopped off to have a beer with some friends. I may have compassion for your problem, but it is your problem, I don’t know what that is, I’ve never experienced it. To be honest, it would be hard for me to focus on how you feel, because I am still processing what you did.

You see, I believe that we have endured consequences of the choices we make apart from Christ, notice I didn’t say we are punished by God, because God is not in the punitive business, but that is a discussion for later. But through our trials, through the sufferings of the consequences of our self-life (our life apart from Christ), God can use the power of His grace, love and mercy through us as we are vessels of ministry He uses to heal His children. He uses broken vessels to minister to other broken vessels because His love can be shared through them without judgment or condemnation.

Let conclude by saying this, God does not put us through things for the benefit of other. He doesn’t give you cancer so you can minister to people with cancer. You are not a pawn He uses to reach the other guy. Your affliction is for the sole purpose of building your relationship and dependence on Him. It is very personal, He doesn’t use you as a sacrifice for others. However, as He is revealing Himself to you, He is able to express Himself through you to minister to others with love and compassion because of the work He is doing in you. Again, I don’t believe that God brings suffering onto you for the sole benefit of reaching someone else, He loves you so much more than that. What He does in your life is exclusively for drawing you into greater intimacy with Him. God doesn’t need you to suffer to reach others, he allows your suffering to draw you closer to Him, and in the process, He uses your life as a testimony to His grace, love and mercy.

Unbridled in Him,

Mark