I was the speaker at a middle school camp all last week. It’s a pretty sweet gig because my family gets to tag along.  During one of the days we had some time and took the kids to a beach near Tacoma.  While the kids hunted for crabs, Miriam and I spent the afternoon searching for sea glass. As we were collecting it, I felt I needed to use it during my message that evening.  The message was about the sinful woman (Luke 7: 36-50) who washes Jesus’ feet with her tears, dries them with her hair and breaks open a bottle of perfume to anoint his feet. It was a message calling for these students to lay their own brokenness, wounds,  and pain at the Lord’s feet.

As I was talking that night, I brought out the glass and began to form it into the shape of the cross on the ground. Then, what happened next was all of the Lords doing. I offered an opportunity for the students to come up and to simply kneel at the broken cross, offering their own brokenness to the Lord.  It was quiet for a moment, then something in the room broke open.  Not something out loud, it was something breaking within the hearts many of these students. Tears began to come.

I’ve been through emotional services before, but this was something completely different. It was a real, raw, painful hurt that just came gushing out. I’ve never been around something so filled with agony and yet so healing at the same time. The The Lord made his presence known and touched many of those students that night. When you open yourself up to the Lord and experience Him you always walk away changed.

I read an email from a friend this morning and my heart was broken. He didn’t say much, but he didn’t have to. He shared with me latest chapter of his struggle at a church he’s been pastoring. He was called to pastor an older church and all he’s met over the past few years was grief, abuse and struggle. I sat in my office praying for him and crying for the pain he was experiencing. I’ve watched this happen to him over the past few years at a few different churches. My heart breaks for him and his family. He’s honored me by sharing his journey with me and I’m continually amazed at his heart and his steadfast faith over these years.

I wish this was the only story I’ve heard from people I’ve befriended. What has the church become? I have seen little grace, love and compassion within it’s walls. It has simply become an institutionalized building. A grave reminder of what it was once meant to be.

I’ve also been burned by churches (and one quite significantly). But like my friend, I never saw this abuse as coming from God’s hand. I’ve only seen the Lord shower me in love and grace through the hard these times. This awareness has been key for me. Has the church left a bad taste in my mouth? Absolutely. Has the Lord? Never. And I’ve begun to hate church because of what it has become.
I hate church because of what we’ve made it. BUT, I love the church because of what God created it to be. My passion is to see the church restored to a vibrant, organic body that it once was. I have hope in that. The church is meant to be a glorious thing that changes the world, but we’ve made it something else. It’s become a corporation with four walls to keep some in and the other out. It has become confining, safe and tame.

If you pay attention to Jesus in the gospels, he never treated it as a job, or a career. It was always a passion; a calling. There was no point where his ministry ended and Jesus began. It was his whole being. It was his purpose for existence. It wasn’t pretty. It wasn’t clean, but it was good and completely Godly fueled.

The early church was the same. It wasn’t a club to join. It was a way of life. It transformed lives. It reached out to the poor and needy. It brought God’s love to a broken and hurting world. It was a remedy.

Now, we are people pleasing and program driven business. We are safe and tame. We are no longer faith driven, God fueled, and Christ centered.

I sit alone in my office and weep as I pray for my friend and the church. We have walked so far away from where we were supposed to be. I am grieved. But I am also hopeful that there is a way back.

I’m sitting in my office eating my lunch with the feelings that things just aren’t right. I can’t put my finger on it, but it just feels that way. It’s one of those days where you feel like coffee should help, but it doesn’t. I feel down. I could easily blame it on the lack of sleep that I’ve been getting since Tristen arrived. I just think it goes deeper than that. Have you ever had those times when you know God is stirring something deep within you? And you can easily pass if off as indigestion, stress or fatigue. But you know it’s something more. Something deeper. Something that deserves your attention. It’s God calling out and he wants to be heard. But like Elijah, it’s not something booming or loud. It’s something quite, still and soft.

I used to miss these opportunities all the time. I think the enemy prefers us to brush them off as if they are nothing or something I’ll simply get over. So it’s become a new journey of mine to bask in these moments. To ask the Lord, “what is it? What are you trying to tell me?”

It’s become something that’s really begun to center me. It ends up making me feel like this cantaloupe; cut up and hollowed out. But I’m reminded that without cutting it open; the melon doesn’t really taste good. It’s only when you break it open and cut it up that you taste the sweetness. So maybe it’s okay to feel broken.

[continued from part 1]

To best sum up their state of being, their hurts and pains and need for something more… I refer to the lyrics from Sanctus Real’s song “I’m Not Alright”.

If weakness is a wound
That no one wants to speak of
Then “cool” is just how far we have to fall
I am not immune
I only want to be loved
But I feel safe behind the firewall
Can I lose my need to impress?
If you want the truth, I need to confessI’m not alright
I’m broken inside, broken inside
And all I go through
It leads me to you, it leads me to you

Burn away the pride
Bring me to my weakness
Until everything I hide behind is gone
And when I’m open wide
With nothing left to cling to
Only you are there to lead me on
Cause honestly, I’m not that strong

I’m not alright
I’m broken inside, broken inside
And all I go through
It leads me to you, it leads me to you

And I move, and I move, and I move…closer to you
And I move, and I move, and I move…closer to you
And I move, and I move, and I move…closer to you
And I move, and I move, and I move…

I’m not alright
I’m broken inside, broken inside
broken inside, broken inside
And all I go through
Leads me to you, leads me to you

I’m not alright, I’m not alright, I’m not alright…that’s why I need you

[continued in part 3]

This is the leg of Barbaro the champion racehorse after a break at the start of the Preakness. I know the horse’s leg will heal, and there shouldn’t be much visible scaring on the outside. But he will always carry the scars on the inside.

I feel like this is my life sometimes, good looking on the outside, but barely held together on the inside. Do you ever feel like this? I feel broken.

I return to the thought that without brokenness, there is no need for healing. The brokenness reminds us of our desperate need for God daily.

The Lord said, “my grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Cor 12:9). There is beauty in our brokenness. There is hope in it as well. Through the pain I remember that I am not alone.