Overcome the Brokenness

January 22

No matter who broke your heart, or how long it takes to heal, you'll never get through it without the Lord, for His love is the dove of peace, the spirit of tenderness and compassion, forgiveness and tolerance that empowers you to traverse the brokenness and embrace the wholeness of His love that makes you new." Anonymous

Each of us needs those lovely qualities that the Lord's presence supplies for us. We need His 'peace that passes understanding,' Philippians 4:7. We need His tenderness that caused Him to abandon Heaven (Philippians 2:6) to dwell with us. We need His compassion that required Him to die in our place 1 Thessalonians 5:10, Romans 5:8. We need His forgiveness that makes us clean and new and we need His tolerance that enables us to say as He did, "they know not what they do." (Luke 23:34.)

Appropriating all that He is in exchange for all that we are enables us to overcome the brokenness of our lives and find ourselves whole again. Only the love of Jesus has the power to transcend the reality of today and transform it into the fulfillment of His promises for tomorrow. Only the love of Jesus can make us new. Only the love of Jesus can give us the reason to desire newness when we have become enmeshed in our problems.

The burden we carry can begin to feel comfortable. We slip into it as we put on a pair of old shoes that don't look fashionable but we wear them often because we’ve ‘broken them in.’ The 'fix' for our brokenness doesn't lie in the comfort of the weight of care we're accustomed to bearing. The fix for our brokenness lies in surrendering it to Jesus' compassion, forgiveness and tolerance. Those things come to us when we grasp the reality of His amazing peace, compassion, forgiveness and love for us.