After posting the previous blog I wrote, I just prayed.
Prayed and asked God, how can I humbly lead people to Jesus?
“Welcome them,” He said.
Welcome others in their brokenness with your’s to help them understand that it’s okay to be broken and simultaneously in love with Jesus. But it doesn’t stop there…
We can choose to use our brokenness to relate to others, do life with them, and point them to hope found in Jesus.
That day, my team and I went to tutor at an after school program in a high school. A girl in the front of the class asked me for help with her homework. I sat down and started working with her, then all of the sudden she bursted into tears.
“I’m a failure.”
She repeated that phrase several times. “That’s what my teacher tells me,” she cried.
Tears ran down her face and hit the red marks etched onto her notebook pages. She wanted to just give up.
Ever feel like that?
After tutoring, we boarded a bus to make it back home. A girl I didn’t know sat next to me and we started chatting. She asked me why I was here and I told her about Jesus. She said “you know, I have Jesus in my life but I’m struggling.” Tears welled up in her eyes as she began to pour out her story of rumors going around her school from girls she thought were her friends. She said “I feel like I need to have it all perfect but I don’t and I just wonder, where is God in all of this?”
Ever feel like that?
Brokenness is a real thing. It’s apart of being a human but Jesus doesn’t want us to set up camp in our brokenness.
He says in this world we are going to face trials, afflictions, sufferings. Jesus was beaten, mocked and scorned, He was pierced for our transgressions.
Y’ALL Jesus is perfect, King of Kings, and Lord of Lords. He could have avoided all of these struggles…YET He endured the ultimate suffering, death on the cross for you and me, and resurrected from it.
What other King leaves His throne?
Jesus’ identity was not in his pain or suffering. His identity was not taken captive by the lies of the world, His identity came from His Father.
A lot of times we pray problems away. We don’t want trials or tests in our lives. It’d be better to avoid or get rid of them, right? But in reality our identification with Christ is partnering with Him IN the suffering.
Without test or trials we would remain the same. There is no spiritual maturity and growth outside of the cross of Jesus Christ.
Jesus says “take up your cross daily and follow me.” (Luke 9:23)
If you follow Jesus, you are crucified with Christ. It’s no longer you who lives but Christ who lives in you. (Galatians 2:20)
I reminded those two girls that our identity is not a failure or trying to have it all together or anything that we do, it’s who we are in Christ.
The important thing is that whether you are in the mountains or valleys of your life GOD REMAINS THE SAME. God’s character never changes and His love for you never fails.
What’s your cross?
Will you take up your cross in the midst of your brokenness, identify with Christ and follow Him?
