Not Crazy, Just Broken

Recently at church, we listened as a lady involved in a sexual abuse healing ministry got up to speak in front of the body.  She wanted to introduce someone who had been abused as a child and now, through the amazing healing power of God, wanted to share her story in the hopes it would encourage other victims to seek healing as well.  As she described the painful journey of this young woman, the audience listened intently, the only sound in the sanctuary the unfolding story of an abused child seeking healing as a adult.  The speakers voice gave way to emotion as she spoke of how proud she was of this young woman who had moved from a place of hiding to healing.  When she finished her introduction and the young lady stood from the audience to move to the microphone, there was a near audible gasp in the air.  The beautiful young woman who stood before us  was the wife of a ministry leader, a  college graduate with a successful career in the medical industry.  The mother of three beautiful children who owned a beautiful home.  Far from a wreck, she was, outwardly, in many ways what most people hope to be. With every eye upon her, she revealed her inner struggles through the years and the still small voice which led her to eventually join the group where she would come to find healing.  As she spoke, she revealed the moment of clarity when she discovered that she was  "not crazy, just broken, and I learned that I could find peace with other broken people". As she finished her story and left the stage to applause, her words resonated within me. What an amazing statement!...Not crazy, just broken. 


We were reminded on that Sunday that we are all broken.  Beneath our polished exteriors and pretty houses live hurting people in need of healing.  And what does that make us?  Exactly those who our savior came to save.  Matthew 9:12 tells us this beyond any doubt, He said, “It is not those who are healthy who need a physician, but those who are sick." The heart of our Lord aches for the wounded.  It breaks for the lost.  It identifies with the victim.  The Good Shepherd leaves the 99 to seek out the one.  The Father stands at the gate and longs for his sons return.  Our Savior saves. 

When my flesh accuses me as I fail again, when the enemy of our souls tells me I am the only one to ever feel this way.  When I believe the lies for so long they become as powerful in my life as the truth.  When I become so intent upon hiding my pain that I refuse to fully love for fear they will leave if they discover who I truly am.  When fear of the pain of rejection drives my isolation, I want to remember the words of truth as spoken by a courageous young woman.  

I wrote down those words on the back of a visitor card which I pulled from the chair in font of me as she spoke.  I put it in my pocket and it now sits on my desk.  I am thinking of having those words put on a plaque on my office wall at church.  " We are not crazy, just broken, and we have learned that we can find peace with other broken people".  AMEN.

The Half-Way to Hell Club

Construction on the Golden Gate Bridge began during the height of the Great Depression in 1933.  Workers were paid between 4$ to11$ per day, quite a sum at a time when 1 in 4 men were unemployed.  Because the jobs were so desirable, men from every walk of life were suddenly claiming to be professional iron workers.  These overnight iron workers could not clock in to work until they had reached their job site, even if it were on the top of one of the 740 foot towers.  The conditions were highly dangerous, as the fog drifting in continuously from the bay coated the cables and catwalks in a sheet of ice.  Additionally, tremendous gusts of wind were a constant threat to blow an unsuspecting man to his death in the frigid waters below.  These cab drivers and farmers turned professional iron workers needed nerves of steel simply to reach their perch, much less perform their jobs. Because of the real and ever present threat of death, work proceeded haltingly.

In 1936, following many delays, Joseph Strauss invested over 130,000 dollars on a unique safety device, a net suspended beneath the bridge measuring 10 feet wider than the bridge.  .

It gave workers an abiding sense of security as they moved more freely -- and quickly -- across the slippery, half-constructed steel. "There's no doubt the work went faster because of the net," said Lefty Underkoffler, a Golden Gate bridgeman.  Following the installation of the safety net, the construction of the bridge progressed rapidly.  19 men lost their footing or were blown off the bridge by the wind and landed safely in the net, thereby cheating certain death...These men called themselves The Halfway To Hell Club.

Growing up in the church, I struggled mightily with fear and guilt.   I loved the sound of my Pastors voice.  I loved the robes on the choir and the hymns we sang.  I loved my knowledge of our old church, its hidden nooks and crannies. I loved the sleepovers and potlucks. I loved sitting on wooden pews next to my mother as sunshine filtered through the stained glass window of our small sanctuary.  I was the first to raise my hand during Sunday School.  The older people would joke to my mom that I was going to be a preacher one day.  But as I  listened to the stories of a God who loved me and desired that I love Him,  I found myself afraid that He might not find me so lovable. Therefore, I  set my mind on becoming more lovable.  I would try harder to be good.  I would do my best.  But I could never meet the standard I had set. I could never  feel secure that I had been good enough  to say that NOW He loved me.  And when I would fall short, when I had failed yet again, I was stricken with guilt. And that's how I spent my young life, striving to be better, failing, and then letting guilt drive me.  Eventually, as I got into high school, I stopped thinking so much about it.  I still went to church, but the experience was not as rich.  For the most part, I practiced good behaviors, but that was simply a product of my upbringing, not in response to Gods love for me.  I entered college, and freed from my parents Sunday morning wakeups, I disappeared from church.

Years later, when I was 24 years old, I was having a conversation with a friend who was involved in ministry. I was sharing some of my religious experiences with him when he stopped me and said, " You know, Romans 8:1 says that there is no condemnation for those of  us who claim the name of Christ.."...I laughed and told him that I knew that, of course I did.  But after the conversation was over, I could not shake the feeling that something important had just occurred.  The words stayed with me, "no condemnation"...Could that be true?!

Years later, I can now say emphatically that it is indeed true.  " There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus." Romans 8:1.  This has become the verse that has provided me with an abiding sense of security, allowing me to move more freely as a believer.  All the work, everything I needed to become more lovable was accomplished upon the cross.  I became lovable because I was loved, loved enough that Christ took my sins upon Himself and declared " It Is Finished!".  With the knowledge that if I fall he catches me, I am motivated not to abuse my freedom, but rather to shed my fears and insecurities and run without constraints the race before me.

Thought: The most beautiful dancing in a competition does not occur during the judged portion, it occurs during the freestyle portion, when all judging has been removed.
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How Good do I Need to be to Get to Heaven?

 I recently ran across this story and wanted to share it.

   A  man was standing at the gates of heaven waiting to be admitted. To the man’s utter shock, Peter said, “You have to have earned a thousands points to be admitted to heaven. What have you done to earn your points?”
“I’ve never heard that before, but I think I’ll do alright. I was raised in a Christian home and have always been a part of the church. I have Sunday school attendance pins that go down the floor. I went to a Christian college and graduate school and have probably led hundreds of people to Christ. I’m now an elder in my church and am quite supportive of what the people of God do. I have three children, two boys and a girl. My oldest boy is a pastor and the younger is a staff person with a ministry to the poor. My daughter and her husband are missionaries. I have always tithed and am now giving well over 30% of my income to God’s work. I’m a bank executive and work with the poor in our city trying to get low income mortgages.”
“How am I doing so far”, he asked Peter.
“That’s one point,” Peter said. “What else have you done?”
“Good Lord…have mercy!” the man said in frustration.
“That’s it!” Peter said. “Welcome home.”

What an amazing and pointed reminder of our desperate need for grace. The world teaches us in every corner and from every angle that everything is conditional; acceptance, affection, even love is based to some degree on merit.  Before we get, we must be.  Be more, be less, but always be better.  Then, if we have said the right things, acted in the right ways, managed peoples perceptions of us correctly, we will be accepted.  In this world, accomplishment always precedes acceptance.  So is it any wonder that even the most mature believer brings that sentiment into their relationship with Christ?...  But grace is radical.

Grace grabs us, shakes us and leaves us bewildered at the experience.  Grace is scandalous.  Luke 7:36-50 tells the story of a sinful woman crashing a party of religious folk to wash the feet of Christ with her tears.  Tullian Tchividjian reminds us that two rescues took place that day.  The immoral sinner realized her desperate need for grace and cried out for it.  The moral sinners who witnessed her desperation were shocked by Christ 's response.  It shook them, it challenged their religious beliefs, it shocked them when Christ told them that they could learn from her.  Grace was offered to all in the room that day.  To rescue some from their unrighteousness and others from their self-rightousness.  But it seems as if the religious did not get it.  And that is a common theme found in the New Testament. The broken, the wounded, they understood the message of Christ more readily than the religious, the "moral". What the religious did not understand was that the Gospel is not about making bad men good, but rather making dead men alive. What the broken understood was their desperate need for just such a Gospel.

Grace, as Paul Zahn points out, is one-way love, “Grace is love that seeks you out when you have nothing to give in return. Grace is love coming at you that has nothing to do with you. Grace is being loved when you are unlovable.”.  You see, we will never be clean enough, good enough , to earn Gods favor.  It is, in fact, that knowledge that brings us to Christ, who loved us while we were unlovable.

  We will always be suspicious of Grace until we understand our desperate need for it.