In December of 2013, I had a disc in my back trimmed to relieve the pressure on a nerve that was causing me pain. The relief I received lasted less than a year and I began receiving injections in my spinal column to easy the pain. Finally, in June of 2015, I had surgery to fuse three of my vertebrae together.
Three weeks after the surgery, I found myself pacing around my home in the middle of the night in more pain than I had every experienced. I waited for as long as I could before awakening Cindy to take me back to the hospital. Tests quickly revealed that the screws used to hold the apparatus in my back in place had pulled out and, in the process, broken the vertebrae. I was back in surgery in just a few hours to repair the damage and get the fusion back in place.
I learned many lessons during the forced down time in that summer. The one lesson is obvious, brokenness hurts. But I also learned another important lesson. If you let it, brokenness can result in coming out on the other side much wiser and stronger than you were before.
As men, we do all we can to keep our lives together and looking strong. For the most part, this is exactly the thing to do. God calls us to be leaders in our home, ministries, and other relationships and this often requires strength and endurance. This is so ingrained in us, that there are times when we will not admit our brokenness. This time of struggle may come in physical, emotional, or even spiritual pain that we just cannot make go away. Although I understand the need at times to suck it up and soldier on, I also believe we may miss something very important from God if we don’t at least investigate if the brokenness in our lives is being allowed by him for our own good and his glory.
The prophet Jeremiah is known as the “weeping prophet” because of the level of struggle his life endured. This was not struggle caused by his own sin, but because he spoke God’s truth to a people who were not all that excited to hear what he had to say. Many times he cried out to God in his torment. In chapter 18 of his prophecy, God sends him to the house of a potter to learn a lesson. As the potter was forming the pot, he noticed an imperfection and so he took a hammer and broke the pot into tiny pieces. He incorporated those pieces back into the lump of clay to form a new pot, this one more perfect. Jeremiah learned that at times, God, the shaper of our lives must break us to eliminate the imperfections and recreate us into something stronger and better for his purpose.
The Apostle Paul explains it like this in 2 Corinthians 1:8-10, We do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about the hardships we suffered in the province of Asia. We were under great pressure, far beyond our ability to endure, so that we despaired even of life. 9Indeed, in our hearts we felt the sentence of death. But this happened that we might not rely on ourselves but on God, who raises the dead. 10He has delivered us from such a deadly peril, and he will deliver us. On him we have set our hope that he will continue to deliver us,
What kind of a man are you willing to become? What will you allow God to do in your life to make you into that man? It may mean he has to break you a bit to get rid of the imperfections. When things are not as comfortable as you would like them to be in your life, ask these questions. “God, what do you want me to get rid of and what do your want me to allow you to develop?”