Recently, I did an interview regarding accepting God’s no which feels like brokenness and confusion while we are experiencing it. Sometimes it is hard to get back to life as we’ve known it before the brokenness because we’ve learned to function from a different position. A position of lowliness, and often the wrong perspective because of our circumstance. I think about Job and all of the various emotions, questioning, and conversations he had during his ordeal.
If we maintain the wrong perspective, we could begin to function from a place lower than who we are, and certainly lower than what God intended. So, what do we do to restore that wholeness, that pep in our step, that ease of living in a way?
Below are some things that can help us bounce back from brokenness.
Intimacy with Jesus Check:
First things first. We want to make sure our intentionality in seeking the Lord is on ten. There can be a resistance in drawing near to the Lord after a hard time of brokenness because we sometimes feel that God could have prevented us from going through it, but he did not. We may question if he is really good. Despite, the questioning, we still need to pursue him, and as we do, he will change our perspective to showing us the reason he has allowed us to go through to make us stronger and strengthen our faith. This intimacy with God will condition us to be able to withstand all else that life has to offer.
For example, the woman who washed Jesus’ feet with her tears and dried them with her hair performed a very intimate act of worship in front of naysayers in a man named Simon’s house. She had become a spectacle to her community. Everyone knew her faults and what she had been through, but she was able to endure the negative energy from others almost blocking it out completely because of her intimacy with God.
Intimacy with God produces endurance. God uses the trials of life to temper us to be able to handle the many challenges that will come with living for his glory. Remember if God’s glory is to be revealed in us we have to be able to endure suffering for Christ. Intimacy with God has a way of healing us right in the midst of the suffering, and causing us to be able to endure until the end.
Make Sure You Have Forgiven others:
This forgiveness enables you to get on living your life. There was a woman in the Bible named Tamar, who had a terrible thing happen to her that was not her fault at all, but because of what happened to her she made the choice to live in her brother’s house for the rest of her life as a desolate woman. Meaning she isolated herself from the possibility of having something more, something different all because of what happened to her.
She had been raped by her half brother Amnon. Her brother Absalom protected her afterward allowing her to live with him. He avenged her rape with the murder of his half brother Amon. However, I don’t want to focus on Absalom, but Tamar. She had a choice to get on living her life. It was her who made the choice to live in isolation from the possibilities of experiencing anything better than what had already befallen her.
Negative experiences in our lives can sometimes cause us to see life through a negative lense where we avoid the possibilities of something better, something positive, and something new. It may even blind us to the good things around us that are happening. In a sense, Absalom, protecting his sister and allowing her to live with him was a positive thing that should have affirmed her worth, and ability to be loved, but she did not see it that way. She saw her life as a sentence of isolation.
Yes, there was a stigma for girls back then who were no longer virgins, but she was not a woman of the night. She was a daughter of the king. It is almost as if she had forgotten who she was and decided to live as though she did not know her worth.
As a daughter of the king, do you know how many men would have been happy to marry into her royal family? How many men good men, who could have loved Tamar were avoided through her choice to isolate herself?
The Bible says that she was beautiful. She was so beautiful, that unfortunately, her brother chose not to control himself. He looked at her so highly when he was in his lust, and despised her so adamantly after satisfying his lust.
Tamar, the beautiful virgin who at one point wore the veil of many colors signifying her virginity, and availability to be wifed as a virgin gave up that dream after her self-worth was taken from her through rape. However, her value did not change.
She was still the king’s daughter, and the king could have covered her in the event that a man would have taken her as his bride (See Deuteronomy 22:17). The point is Tamar, even after experiencing her hardship, had a choice to live, and she chose not to due to unforgiveness and the wrong perspectives that not dealing with the hurt, and pain caused produced in her life.
We have a choice. A choice to forgive, to deal with the pain ensued, get God’s perspective, and move on with our lives choosing to live in spite of what we’ve loss. When God decides to bring retribution, he always pays us back more than what we’ve lost. We have to trust God with our wounds and forgive.
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