Broken and Blessed are two words don't seem to go together. If anything, they seem to be exact opposites. We all know what it means to be broken---to be shattered, to feel as if our entire world has fallen apart, or perhaps been blown apart. We all have times in our lives when we don't want to raise our heads off the pillow, and when we feel certain the tears will never stop flowing. Brokenness is often accompanied by emptiness-a void that cannot be filled, a sorrow that cannot be comforted, a wound for which there is no balm.
Nothing feels blessed about being broken. The most painful and difficult times of my life have been those times when I felt broken. I don't like pain, suffering, or feelings of brokenness any more than anybody else does. Certain circumstances in life hurt, at times so intensely that we think we will never heal.
One of the things I have discovered through being broken, however, is that after brokenness we can experience God's greatest blessings. After brokenness our lives can be the most fruitful and have the most purpose. The dawn after a very dark and storm-wreaked night is glorious. Feeling joy again after a period of intense mourning can be ecstatic. A blessing can come in the wake of being broken.
But this blessing comes only if we experience brokenness fully and confront why it is that God has allowed us to be broken. If we allow God to do his complete work in us, blessing will follow brokenness.
Bishop TD Jakes spoke a message on the Order of the Breaking of Bread and he brought our attention to the similarities surrounding How God deals with us as His children.
Jesus took the bread, He blessed the bread, He broke the bread, He gave the bread. Luke 24:13-31
The Taking Stage: This is the stage where He pulls you from familiar and reliable circumstances to unfamiliar and unreliable circumstances.
The Blessing Stage: This is the stage where He seems to bless everything you are doing. You seem to without effort be having everything given to you.
The Breaking Stage: This is the stage where everything seems to be a mess, and things seem to just be taken from you. It is the fellowship of His suffering.
The Giving Stage: This is the stage where you have been broken enough for Him to give you to others who need you.
What stage does God have you in right now?
Read God's Word
Saturday, July 09, 2011
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About Me
- J.A. Vazquez
- I'm just, a nobody, trying to tell everybody, about Somebody who can save anybody. First I want to give love to the Father for giving me the opportunity to be an instrument for him to live in and live through for the glory that belongs to only him and Him alone. I served in the United States Navy for twenty one years and retired September 2003. During the last 3 years of my naval career, I served as co-pastor of Greater New Refuge COGIC in Fallon, Nevada under the tutelage of Pastor Gregory L. Brown. While there, I diligently served my pastor and church with the construction of a new sanctuary, and caring for the needs of all ministries, while simultaneously striving to stay focused on the mandate that the Lord had placed upon my life to preach the Word of God without compromise. I was licensed to preach November 2002 and Ordained June 2003. While stationed in Virginia Beach, Virginia, I proudly served and as constituent of Pleasant Grove Baptist Church for seventeen years under the leadership of Bishop Elect W. D. Scott, Sr. and presently serve under the leadership of Bishop B. Courtney McBath at Calvary Revival Church in Norfolk, Virginia.