Brokeness can be described as a state of strong emotional pain that stops someone from living a normal or healthy life.
And Brokenness can also be a state of being financially ruined; bankrupt, legally declared insolvent because of inability to pay debts.
I’ve been both in different ways, in different seasons but also at the same time. Being broken is to watch your life fall apart bit by bit, to be emotionally, mentally, physically and sometimes spiritually depleted at the same time.
I never knew how broken I was until I found myself at my wit’s end and had a true encounter with Jesus.
Are you familiar with the story of the woman at the well? Like the woman at the well, for years I hid in my pain and my shame, I tried to hide it, I avoided others, but just like with her…He came looking for me…
Like the Samaritan woman, at the beginning l felt unworthy, too broken to be useful, fallen too far.
You see, I knew my brokenness was partly caused by others and partly caused by my own poor choices and decisions. No matter which part of my brokenness it was, the result was always the same, I felt abandoned, rejected, unworthy, misunderstood, unlovable, lonely and hurt. But Jesus did not only want me to encounter Him, He wanted to heal me. In John 4, the story of the woman at the well teaches us that God loves us in spite of our bankrupt lives. God values us enough to actively seek us, to welcome us to intimacy, and to rejoice in our worship. As a result of Jesus’ conversation, only a person like the Samaritan woman, an outcast from her own people, could understand what this means. To be wanted, to be cared for when no one, not even herself, could see anything of value in her—this is grace indeed!
Do you know the story of the bleeding woman? After twelve years of suffering, she was obviously desperate for a miracle.
I’ve been desperate too!!!! In fact so desperate that even without knowing Jesus I knelt at the foot of my bed after more than a decade of being a functional alcoholic and I asked for him to heal me. “When she heard about Jesus (notice that she didn’t really know him yet), she came up behind him in the crowd and touched his cloak, because she thought, ‘If I just touch his clothes, I will be healed”(Mark 5:27–28). Jesus immediately responds to the woman who touched His clothing and was healed. People were pushing and pressing into Him from all over, yet He stops, turns, and asks, “Who touched my clothes?” (Mark 5:30). The disciples were incredulous, but Jesus knew that healing power had gone out of Him. We can’t “steal” a miracle from God. After the woman comes forward and explains herself, Jesus clears up any misconceptions about her healing, saying, “Daughter, your faith has healed you. Go in peace and be freed from your affliction” (Mark 5:34). God is moved to action by our faith, even when He’s in the middle of doing something else! …At different times in my life I’ve been afflicted by so many things and at times all I could do was muster enough faith to reach the end of HIS garment. But time and time again, HE stopped and encountered me there.
Are you familiar with the story of Mary and Martha? The story of Mary and Martha in the Bible shows us two different approaches to following Jesus. In Luke 10:38-42, Martha works hard to welcome Jesus to her home. Her sister, Mary simply sits at his feet and listens. Both Mary and Martha serve, yet Mary understands the priority and necessity of choosing to abide with Christ. Sitting at the feet of Jesus prevents Mary’s service from becoming distracted and unhealthy. In our desire to follow God’s call by serving him with everything we have, we can easily find ourselves over committed, “worried and troubled about many things.” Distracted. The word “distracted” means to be drawn away, driven about mentally, over-occupied. Very literally, it means to be pulled and dragged in different directions. I am guilty of being distracted. Distraction is a hindrance, hampering, and obstruction.
How might our hampered and hindered lives stand as an obstruction to the lasting fruit Christ desires to bear in and through us? What might it look like for us to abide at the feet of Jesus and to receive his invitation to be unencumbered by the weight of self-imposed responsibility, anxiety, and control? How many times distraction leads us to a sense of aloneness and self-righteousness, to self-focus, resentment, bitterness and questions about our value or even Jesus’s care towards us.
I too, have been a Martha, in fact still is a struggle with this. One of my core fears is to be rejected, unworthy of love, dispensable and unwanted. So in my humanness I can very often fall into codependency or most commonly known as people pleasing. Growing up I always felt like I had to perform to a certain standard to be accepted and loved, I thought I had to do more for people in order for them to want me or love me.
Then when I first became a Christian I thought I had to do the same with God. I thought if I serve more, I could win His approval, His love, His care, even salvation. Until I took a hard inventory on myself, my brokenness, my flaws, my failures and my debt…and I realized there was absolutely NO WAY I could ever serve or work hard or long enough to repay ALL HE HAS done for me.
I cried…I wept…I struggled to accept HIS love, forgiveness and grace. I could not understand how I in my broken state could be the recipient of HIS unending care and love. He highlighted a verse in the bible- 2 Kings 20: 5 “I have heard your prayer; I have seen your tears. I will surely heal you”. And then He took me to Psalm 56:8 “ You keep track of all my sorrows. You have collected all my tears in your bottle”.
It was then when God reminded me of the story of the Woman with the Jar of Perfume. In Luke 7:36-39, a broken, sobbing, unnamed woman enters the home where Jesus is dining. She kneels at the feet of Jesus, this time with understanding of who he truly was and in a beautiful act of faith, she broke a costly jar of perfume and anointed Jesus. In a beautiful expression of humility, she cried at his feet, she anointed his feet with oil and tears. In a beautiful moment of repentance, she dried his feet with her own hair.
There are different bible versions that call her “immoral,” and there is a lot of speculation around her character. All manner of assumptions about the root of her “bad reputation” are heaped upon her. The man present talked about her like she wasn’t even there. They were offended by the “sinner” in their presence, they went as far as questioning if she belonged there…So Jesus told them a story that He knew they would understand. He said- “Two people owed money to a certain moneylender. One owed him five hundred denarii, and the other fifty. Neither of them had the money to pay him back, so he forgave the debts of both. Now which of them will love him more?” Simon replied, “I suppose the one who had the bigger debt forgiven.” “You have judged correctly,” Jesus said. Then he turned toward the woman and said to Simon, “Do you see this woman? I came into your house. You did not give me any water for my feet, but she wet my feet with her tears and wiped them with her hair. You did not give me a kiss, but this woman, from the time I entered, has not stopped kissing my feet. You did not put oil on my head, but she has poured perfume on my feet. Therefore, I tell you, her many sins have been forgiven—as her great love has shown. But whoever has been forgiven little loves little.”
We all have been saddled with a debt that we have no chance of repaying. The debt of our wrong decisions, of mistakes, of times where we choose ourselves above others…above God, of moments where we hurt other people, of times where we knew the right thing to do and chose the wrong thing anyway.
Jesus walks into the darkest places of our sin and brokenness and pays every debt of our sin, our disobedience, wrongdoing, pride, selfishness…all we owe. Nothing we do can earn us enough to repay the debt we’ve accumulated. Nothing can redeem us but the power of Jesus’ death at the cross. Nothing can provide us with saving grace but Jesus’s death and resurrection.
Jesus knows we don’t deserve it and we never will, yet he paid the price and cleared our debts anyway. He knows HE is the ONLY ONE who can offer such settlement…such forgiveness. He stands with open arms for all of us, to stop betting in our own abilities and strength to make anything right. He invites us all to come to HIM and experience the freedom of our souls being released from our debts.
I know first hand why the woman was at Jesus’s feet washing his feet with her tears. She couldn’t wait to be good enough, clean enough, deserving enough, to have it together enough. She could no longer wait for the proper time to express to Jesus how this freedom and forgiveness had changed her life and her story. When is the proper time anyway to be grateful or the proper way to say thank you when you have been relieved of the weight of everything you owe.
With everything you have, with all the words you can muster and with the words your tears prevent you from saying. Jesus is also saying to you “Your sins are forgiven” Let your faith in HIM save you too! Let HIS blood pay your debt!
Your freedom and salvation are paid in full. John 8:36 says “So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed” and in Matthew 10:8 says: “Freely you have received; freely give”
Now you know… I’ve been forgiven much therefore I love much! The bible tells us that If God has redeemed you from something then you are called to declare His mighty works. Psalm 107:2 is a call to respond to the mighty acts of GOD and because I know that I will never be able to repay God for what He has done for me. I will for the rest of my days testify of His goodness. Who knows, perhaps He can use my story, the accounting of all my debts and the tears that He collected in a bottle to wash someone else’ feet.
If God could do it for me, HE can do it for anyone! Anyone who chooses to believe.
I am inviting you- come, see a man who told me all the things that I have done, He is the Christ! The one who accepts and loves me regardless of my brokenness! Come and see for yourself and find love and acceptance too, find yourself FREE of debt in the only one that can pay it all for YOU!
“Let the redeemed of the LORD say so, whom He has redeemed from the hand of the adversary”. – Psalm 107:2-3
