Last weekend I spent Mother’s Day talking to a couple thousand of my closest friends at Heartland Community Church. The idea for the message I shared came from two places: First, the heartwarming childhood memories I have from my grandma’s garden. Second, from this question I asked God back in February,
God, what do I do with my unseen broken?
Every painful experience, hard memory, bad decision, selfish ambition, broken relationship tucked away inside my ‘heart’– We all have them, right? Those experiences and memories we’d rather keep buried in the dark because it’s not who we are anymore? However, like weeds in a flower garden our unseen broken will eventually manifest itself into our words, decisions, perspective, emotions, beliefs, and thoughts if we just ignore it. Then what do we do? If we claim to be Christians, how do we live out of the freedom, love, and joy Jesus gives us and be authentic about what’s going on in our heart and mind?
So, I asked the question and here’s what I’ve been learning…
Our Unseen Broken is like a seed. Seeds soften and break open so they can grow new life. When we break before a grace-giving, all-loving, all-knowing God He transforms our broken places into new life, rooted and growing in Jesus. Growth takes time, roots grow in dark places, and new life looks fragile in the beginning but we can have an eternal perspective of our brokenness and see it as a starting place for the lasting work God is doing in us each and every day.
Full Mother’s Day sermon HERE
I concluded the Mother’s Day sermon with a story about the ultimate Unseen Broken, sin. Here it is. It’s God’s story, but it’s our story too…
I began today with a story set in a garden and I’m going to finish with a story set in a garden, but this time it’s God’s story and it all begins in the Garden of Eden, where a piece of fruit broke open and sin entered God’s perfect world. It was a brokenness that went unseen, under the surface planting itself in every ounce of creation breaking apart the whole, perfect relationship God had with His children. To everyone and everything that could not see the big picture it looked like a total loss, brokenness beyond repair. But God spoke of a Hope that pointed His children towards something they couldn’t see with their eyes, but had to trust Him in their hearts. He had a plan to make all the brokenness whole once again…
But it would take another garden and this time we see Jesus, God’s only Son, here on Earth as one of us yet still perfectly God, in the Garden of Gethsemane. He’s face down praying, sweating blood, feeling sorrow to the point of death. He’s breaking for us. He is about to take on the Unseen Broken of all of Creation—the very seed of death, that was planted in His beloved world, back in that first garden and He was going to let it break Him. Jesus who had no brokenness in Him took on yours and mine and my kids, your family, my parents, your parents…we all carry it in us and He took it all. God uprooted it out from its hiding place and laid on Jesus on the cross and He died taking our punishment to His grave. Our broken savior was buried in a dark place, and on the third day it was from that exact place of brokenness where Jesus rose to new life defeating the power of sin, our ultimate unseen broken, once for us all.
There is nothing in you or about you too dark or too broken that God, the great REDEEMER, cannot bring to new life again. Ask Him. Invite Him in. Follow Him. Grow in Him. And see for yourself if you won’t overflow in thankfulness for a God who brings new life from broken places.
