I went to bed last night thinking this:
Brokenness isn’t a bad thing.
In our culture of competition & success, the temptation when brokenness surfaces is to:
Resist it
Hide it
Run from it
or even deny it all together.
Yesterday, Markel & I met with one of our team members for our weekly meeting. We nixed the weekly agenda to eat some humble pie by asking how we are doing as managers. How are we helping, how are we hurting & how can we support better. Listening long to honest feedback about yourself isn't fun & yet sometimes, facing the facts of what we might not know is what helps us grow.
A broken & contrite heart is a beautiful thing. It’s like fertile ground excitedly waiting for seeds to be planted so that healthy fruit may abound.
When Jesus went to dinner at Matthew’s house, the Pharisees scoffed & said, “Why does he eat with such scum?”😬
I love His reply: Healthy people don’t need a doctor-sick people do.” Then He rebukes them when He quotes the prophet Hosea:
“… for I have come to call not those who THINK they are righteous but those who KNOW they are sinners.”
Here the Son of the Most High God sits at a table breaking bread with apparently scum-like sinners.
The definition for “scum” means to lose by falling short of what God approves.
Here’s the bottomline. Jesus sat at more tables than He flipped because He knew that we are ALL sinners in need of a Savior!
The problem is that we rely on what we think rather than leaning into what we know.
We think we’re doing good, trying not to lie, cheat or steal, but the thing is, there’s no good that’s good enough to enter heaven without a Savior to cover all of our sins! Just one will keep us from standing before our holy & perfect Father.
Y’all, there is an inordinate freedom that falls when we KNOW that we fall short of the mark God intended. We have missed it & most likely will miss it again on some level.
Father, when we freely confess that we KNOW what we don’t know, then there’s no place to go, but grow! Help us grow in humility, walking in the freedom that comes when we confess we are a sinner in need of saving grace. We don’t need to know it all, because we follow a Savior Who does!
Genesis 26:17-27:46
Matthew 9:1-17
Psalm 10:16-18
Proverbs 3:9-10