The message that plays over and over in my head every single day boils down to this: “You are unworthy and unqualified. You will never amount to anything, so there is no point in trying.”
That sounds really cynical, because it is. But this is a truth that I live by so often.
The hard thing about being a Christian is realizing your own brokenness, and just how very broken you are. It becomes blazingly clear the more you turn your heart to Him. And this can be blazingly discouraging.
How can God use someone as useless as me in His big, glorious, perfect plan? I am far from perfect, and far from the person I want to be. I’m hopeless right?
But somehow, in His infinite glory, He really can use me. He can use me with all of my scars, bumps and bruises. With all of my shame and fear. He doesn’t see me the way I see myself. He knows that where I see emptiness and chaos and pointlessness, there is more to the story. And I need to trust that- I must.
God uses broken people. He uses the unlikely, the outcasts, the marginalized, and He uses the wealthy, the successful, the “perfect” people. Because guess what? We are all broken. Literally all of us. There is not one person who has not been tainted by sin and fear and hurt and loneliness and longing and emptiness. Not one.
We all have stories. And God uses each story to his glory. Whatever your deepest fear, deepest shame, deepest secret- He goes deeper. He turns all our messy and broken and crazy lives into something beautiful; a miracle from a mess. Only He does that. Not you.
Bring it all before Him: everything you’ve been hiding. He can handle it. He really can. He’ll take the broken you and make you new. But it’s a process, and it’s not easy. It requires faith and courage and trust and hope. It requires all of us, our whole selves before Him. We must step into the light and be seen for who we really are, even if we don’t like it.
It is the only way to transformation. To healing, strength, and joy.
I know I want that, I want Him, more than anything in this world, and I will be the first to admit that I am broken. We don’t need a world full of “perfect” people- we need a world full of whole people: people who are whole in Christ and know who they are and what they are called to do- work that always results in beauty and recognition of our Maker.
Let down your walls and be seen, be known, be loved.
rhythms of grace 