The Broken Way

Safe Places

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“…maybe on the days we want out of our lives — it isn’t so much that we want to die from shame, but *hide* from shame. But let’s remember: shame gets unspeakable power only if it’s unspeakable. Shame dies when stories are told in safe places.
You know what? Your scars are proof that you’re a kind of bulletproof — because living through the hardest battles proves you can live through any battle. You can trace those scars and let it feed your courage and feel no shame for the wars you’ve come through, no shame for any of your broken.
And tonight we’re just going to take heart — take His heart
and pour a brave and willing love like His
over all the open wounds…
that we may even now
take hope” (Ann Voskamp, The Broken Way). #TheBrokenWay #StrengethingPrayers

Normally, I like to share my own thoughts, but this one practically begged me to share it. I’m positive that someone out there needs this tonight, someone who’s battled shame for a long time and needs to know that there’s hope and freedom just around the corner in one of those safe places.

You’ll never know the freedom over the power of shame until you can find your brave and share your stories– even the hardest and most shameful ones. As my pastor said, healing takes place when the worst moment of your life that you never thought you’d ever share with another living soul becomes the first line of your testimony of God’s deliverance.

My prayer is that you’ll find someone and somewhere safe to tell your shameful secrets so that they no longer hold you captive. Then perhaps your story will encourage someone else to tell his or her story. Someone will her their own story in your words and find their own healing.

 

An Inconvenient Life

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“It’s never too late to live a remarkable, inconvenient life given to the interruptions of now.
Love is the willingness to be interrupted.
Love is the willingness to be broken into.
There are never interruptions in a day—only manifestations of Christ.
And the truth is? Your theology is best expressed in your availability and your interruptability—and ability to be broken into.
This is the broken way.
This is all love.
Loving people without expecting anything in return always turns out to have the greatest returns.
Let’s do this today? Continuously make the ever-present Christ present. The hands of every clock never stop signing this: the best use of your hands is always *love*. The best way to say you love is always *time*. The best time to love is always *now*” (Ann Voskamp, The Broken Way).

My prayer that we will see interruptions not as diversions from our work, but as our actual work and labor of love that God has placed in front of us in the moment.

We’re always choosing whom we will serve, whether it be the never-ending to-do list that keeps getting interrupted or those interruptions that are God breaking into our sphere of influence and wrecking our world.

I confess that I’m not a fan of people barging in when I’m in the middle of trying to accomplish something, even if it’s reading a book or binge-watching Netflix. It gets on my nerves sometimes.

Yet that may be the chance I get to serve Christ in disguise. That may be the chance I get to pay forward a blessing that will come back to me a thousand times multiplied.

I want to be broken into in such a way that both I and the people who I come in contact with are never the same again.

 

Empty Bucket Lists

/ Ragamuffingospelfan / 1 Comment

“The best lives don’t have Bucket Lists as much as they have Empty Bucket lists.

Because the thing is when I kick the bucket, I don’t want there to be anything left in my bucket. When I kick the bucket, I want the bucket right empty.

I don’t want my life to be how I took experiences — but that I gave exceedingly.

That I gave every last drop, that I poured it all out, that I held nothing back. Because the way to really live is not to try to fill your life up — but to spill your life out” (Ann Voskamp).

Very rarely anymore do I read words that completely blow up my world as these did.

I was all about my bucket list. I may not have written it all down, but I had it all up in my noggin and just waiting for the right opportunities.

I keep thinking about the acronym for GIFT– Give it Forward Today. That’s the best way to a fulfilled life. Pour yourself out for the sake of others and ultimately for the sake of Christ.

I’m all about experiencing life and trying new things. I’m all for not sitting on your couch in front of Netflix, waiting to die but confronting your fears and living each day to the fullest. But it’s not about hoarding life as much as it is giving it away every single day.

I do think though that life isn’t about filling up your bucket but about emptying it out so that at the end, there’s nothing left. I hope that at the end when I take my last breath, I will have been all used up for God with nothing left to spare.

PS I still recommend the book The Broken Way by Ann Voskamp if you haven’t already read it. I put the link to buy it off amazon.com on my last blog post.