Why Broken Is Better

Mohamad Nohassi on Unsplash

By Brian Jakowski

I was sixteen and tweaking my Pontiac GTO for street racing. While swapping out the stock exhaust for racing headers, my dad said I needed a different wrench. I didn’t listen. Two hours later an exhaust manifold was cracked and half the bolts were stripped.

The car had to be towed to a shop that could fix the damage I’d caused doing it my way.

I wouldn’t have walked to work for two weeks or spent all those extra hours washing dishes to earn the money for fixing my car, had I just listened to my father.

Our faith and our spiritual lives are much the same. If we listen to our heavenly Father, no matter what state we’re in, we can become the perfect tool to be used by Him.

Being Broken and Defective Makes You Available!

In a world that idolizes celebrities of all sorts ranging from sports, entertainment, business, fashion, and more, it’s easy to feel you don’t have what it takes to be useful in any venue.

If you struggle with this, relax, you’re in good company. The apostle Paul talks about this in 2 Corinthians 12:7–10,

7–10 Because of the extravagance of those revelations, and so I wouldn’t get a big head, I was given the gift of a handicap to keep me in constant touch with my limitations. Satan’s angel did his best to get me down; what he in fact did was push me to my knees. No danger then of walking around high and mighty! At first, I didn’t think of it as a gift and begged God to remove it. Three times I did that, and then he told me,

My grace is enough; it’s all you need.
My strength comes into its own in your weakness.

Once I heard that I was glad to let it happen. I quit focusing on the handicap and began appreciating the gift. It was a case of Christ’s strength moving in on my weakness. Now I take limitations in stride, and with good cheer, these limitations cut me down to size — abuse, accidents, opposition, and bad breaks. I just let Christ take over! And so the weaker I get, the stronger I become. (From the Message Translation)

Paul was the guy to watch, a rising star among the Pharisees, a Roman citizen who spoke Aramaic, Greek, and Hebrew. All this meant he was fabulously…