THE BROKEN ROAD

Not too long ago I fell in love with a song by Rascal Flats called “God Bless the Broken Road”. This beautiful song tells the tale of a man who upon finding love reflects on all of the broken relationships of his past. Those heartbreaks of his past became the “broken road” leading to his true love. Here are some of the lyrics:

I set out on a narrow way many years ago,
Hoping I could find true love along the broken road.
But I got lost a time or two,
Wiped my brow and kept pushing through.
I couldn’t see how every sign pointed straight to you.

Every long lost dream led me to where you are.
Others who broke my heart, they were like northern stars,
Pointing me on my way into your loving arms.
This much I know is true – that God blessed the broken road that led me straight to you.

A few months ago, I imagined myself singing this song to the man I would marry. But as I reflect on it today, I realize I should be singing this song to Christ. All the pain of my past – the heartbreaks, the failures, the mistakes – all that brokenness of my life has created a path that led directly to Jesus. God called to me during my lowest period – He loved me and used my pain to restore my hope in Him.

In Philippians 3:13b-14, Paul writes, “Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on towards the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.” That sounds great, right? But we all know how difficult that can be.

If you’re a visual person like me, I imagine the path that leads to Christ is much like a mosaic portrait (see picture below). A mosaic is a picture made up of small pieces of broken stone, glass, or tile. Individually, those pieces aren’t worth much and may even bring harm to someone holding them. But when pieced together, they create a beautiful and often expensive piece of art. Think of your life as a mosaic – all those broken pieces of your life, all those hurt places, those places you’d like to forget – instead of trying to hide them, think instead of how God can piece those together and make a beautiful, very worthwhile life.

*Image courtesy of Yahoo Images

RECALCULATE YOUR ROUTE

A few weeks ago I ventured to a new part of town for lunch. I am horrible with directions so I plugged the address of my destination into the GPS and took off. As I traveled, the GPS showed me step by step directions as well as the amount of time if would take me to get there. As I drove, the GPS told me about 30 seconds before I had to make a turn so I knew it was coming up and I could get ready for it. Fortunately, I made it safely to the restaurant and enjoyed my meal. When it was time to go back to work, I followed the same procedure: I plugged my job’s address into the GPS before driving off. But on the way back, I ran into some construction. The GPS told me to make a right turn but the road was blocked so I had to keep going straight. I was a little nervous because as I said before, I’m horrible with directions and I didn’t want to get lost and make it back to work late. But, thank goodness for the GPS – as I continued straight on the road, a message came up that said “Recalculating”. It was working out a new route for me to take. See, the Global Positioning System (GPS) is programmed so that if the driver deviates from the original route, it will recalculate the route to make sure the driver still gets to their destination. So whether I miss a turn, can’t make a turn because of construction, or am forced to make a detour, the GPS recalculates itself so I make it to where I’m going. As long as my GPS is functioning, it’s virtually impossible for me to get lost.

Just like the GPS, God has to recalculate our routes from time to time due to detours, wrong turns, or missed turns.

A detour is a temporary deviated route when the main way is closed – this is something you don’t have any control over. For example, Betty planned to go to school to earn her master’s degree in education. The program typically takes 2 years to complete. However, her mother fell ill and she had to drop down to part time status, thereby prolonging the program.

A wrong or a missed turn, on the other hand, is a situation where something or someone distracts you so that you focus on the distraction and make a crucial misstep or miss a crucial step towards your destination. For example, Mark devised a plan to buy a home within the next year. He wrote out a budget and figured out how much he needed to save each month to reach his goal. Three months into his plan, a new casino opened up down the street and he ventured out one night to give it a try. By the end of the year, he’d gambled away all of his savings – thereby missing the opportunity to purchase a home.

The good news is that God can recalculate Betty’s & Mark’s routes provided they consult their GPS – God’s Positioning System (the WORD) – to get back onto track. “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge Him, and He shall direct your paths.” (Proverbs 3:5-6)

It is impossible to get lost as long as we are consulting God’s Word and following His directions for life.

THE PERFECT STORM

I recently took a road trip to Orlando. The weather was perfect as we left home. The sun was in the sky and the traffic was light. As we continued on our trip, however, the sky started to darken, the wind started to blow, and rain threatened to fall. About an hour into the trip, we drove right into the storm. The rain was falling so hard that traffic came to a near stop. It was hard to see out of the windshield. The roads were slippery. After about ten minutes, the rain lightened up and traffic returned to a normal pace. The clouds were still out but the fog was clearing, making it easier to see the road. Relieved that I’d made it out of the storm, I traveled along for another ten minutes before the storm suddenly reappeared. Visibility diminished, the road filled with water and traffic slowed. Like before, the sun was barely peeking out from among the clouds but it was there nonetheless. After another few minutes of driving through these conditions, the storm lightened. The sun came out a little more this time and the rain stopped completely.

For a full hour, the storm came and went in this same fashion. Frustrated, I questioned God why He allowed the storm to last so long. Why hadn’t the storm passed me by already? God responded that life works the same way. Storms come and go intermittently throughout our lives. Heavy rains, low visibility and slick traveling conditions can make life almost unbearable. But just as we’re about to give up, the rain lets up and the Son becomes visible again. I thought it was interesting that no matter how hard it rained or how heavy the clouds looked, I knew the sun was still there waiting for me to pass through the storm to the other side. And I knew that the rain couldn’t last always – it never does. The storm always lets up, the rain always stops, and the sun always shines again.

It is hard to have hope in the midst of the storm. When rain is pouring down on you, thunder crashes above, and lightning relentlessly threatens you, your first reaction may be to cower in fear. But Jesus told us He came to give us peace. "These things I have spoken to you, so that in Me you may have peace. In the world you have tribulation, but take courage; I have overcome the world." (John 16:33)

Jesus did not promise that we would be exempt from tribulation as children of God. Instead, He told us that He has already overcome the world – we already have victory through Christ. That means that whatever storm you’re facing, Jesus has already overcome it. Just like the sun was ever present during my rainy road trip, the Son is ever present during our storms – it’s our responsibility to put our trust in Him, knowing that he has already conquered those things which threaten to push us off the road.

FREEDOM IN CHRIST

Consider the following hypothetical situations with me for a moment:

You’ve been kidnapped and are being held in a locked room. You are given the basic essentials – food, water, a toilet. You notice that the key to the room is sitting on the floor next to you. Do you remain in bondage or release yourself?

You’ve been falsely accused of a crime and thrown into jail. After a short time, the district attorney comes by and tells you that you’ve been cleared of all charges. He advises you that you can leave at any time. Do you stay in jail or do you leave?

Obviously, you would release yourself in both of these situations, right? So why do we insist on remaining in spiritual bondage when Jesus has already secured our freedom?

Paul writes to the church of Galatia, “It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery.*”

It’s like being set free from a kidnapper and then running back to him to be enslaved once more. That would be absurd – just like it’s absurd to stay in spiritual bondage when Christ has made us free.

I am one of the few people who tuned in to the summer miniseries on NBC titled, “Persons Unknown”. The 13-week series told the story of 8 kidnapped people placed into a deserted town surrounded by an electric border. For weeks, they fought to escape to no avail. Finally, during the series finale, they found their way to freedom. For a short while, they enjoyed their freedom – some went back to their normal lives while the others lived under cover of new identities. Unfortunately, by the end of the finale, they were enslaved again. The finale was disappointing to me because I’d invested so much into these characters’ freedom and it felt hopeless to see them back in bondage in the end.

I’m so happy that doesn’t have to be the way our story ends. John 8:32 & 36 tells us, “And you shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free…So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.” We don’t need to persevere in sin when we’ve been given the Word of God (the truth).

Enslaved by low self esteem? Read Psalms 139:13-16 and discover that you were wonderfully and fearfully made by God Himself.

Enslaved by anxiety? Read Philippians 4:6 and learn how to address anxiety (by prayer and petition).

Enslaved by loneliness? Read John 14:16 about how Christ sent us the Comforter (the Holy Spirit) who is with us always.

God’s Word addresses all of our needs – He is able to free you from any form of bondage – no matter how great or small. Your freedom is important to Him – you must read His Word to understand just how much.

* Galatians 5:1

The 5S Method

I took a continuous development class at work called “5S” and it dealt with ways to organize your space. I’ve always maintained an organized workspace but oddly enough I can’t say the same for my personal space, so I was excited to learn a new technique. Here are the 5 S’s from the class:


1. Sort – distinguish any unneeded items and remove them
2. Set in Order – keep needed items in their correct place
3. Shine – make things clean and remove all that hinders visibility
4. Standardize – create a consistent way of implementing tasks
5. Sustain – maintain & consistently apply established procedures

This is great stuff! I’ve already started putting some of this into practice. As I review each step, I can’t help but relate this to my spiritual walk also:

1. Sort – evaluate your heart, mind, and life to determine unnecessary emotions, practices, mindsets, habits, and even people, and remove them. Galatians 5:24 – And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.

2. Set in Order – prioritize your priorities – the Christian walk isn’t about self promotion, it’s about lifting Christ on high so others may follow Him. Luke 9:23: “If any man will come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow Me.”

3. Shine – make an effort to cleanse and purify yourself, removing anything that hinders visibility. What is it that stands between you and God? God calls us to be holy as He is holy and He calls us to be the light of the world. Matthew 5:14-16 – You are the light of the world. A city on a hill cannot be hidden. Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead, they put it on its stand and it gives light to everyone in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before men, that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven.

4. Standardize – create a consistent way of living the Christian life. Studying God’s word, praying daily, assembling yourself with other saints, serving others, paying tithes…these are practices that every believer should adopt – a standard – as they continue their relationship with Christ.

5. Sustain – Isn’t it great to know that God will sustain you? That you’re not in this alone? God has promised throughout his Word to sustain us. Webster’s Dictionary lists four basic definitions for sustain:

a. To support weight/To bear a burden: Matthew 11: 28-30 – Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light!

b. To endure suffering without yielding/To keep going: Only two words needed here: THE CROSS!

c. To supply necessities/To provide: Philippians 4:19 – And my God will meet all your needs according to his glorious riches in Christ Jesus.

d. To uphold as valid/To confirm: Romans 5:1-2 – Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God.

As a born again believer, we have a responsibility to crucify our flesh daily, deny ourselves & follow Christ, strive for holiness, and consistently keep up the practices of our faith but Jesus promises to support us and provide for us as well us uphold us before the Father!

Oh, What a Promise!

People leave. Friends move away, spouses separate, coworkers get relocated, loved ones die. There are people I no longer speak to who, 10 years ago, I thought were going to be in my life forever. I’ve had my heart broken in situations that I thought were permanent but turned out to be temporary. I’ve witnessed deaths of people I thought were invincible. People leave. But God promised “I will never leave you nor forsake you”.* It’s funny how often we take the promises of God for granted. Who else can promise you that they will never leave you?


If you’re like me, you’ve seen The Color Purple at least 25 times. One of my favorite lines from that movie occurs when the young sisters, Celie & Nettie, are being dragged apart. As young Nettie is taken away, she reaches out to her sister proclaiming, “Nothing but death shall keep me from her.” In other words, “No matter what you do to keep us apart, I will find my way back to her!” God’s promise is that “Nothing, not even death, shall keep Me from you.” Paul writes “For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, not height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”** Oh, what a promise! God promises that His love is everlasting.


Generally, we tend to think of His love comforting us in times of pain, supplying for us in times of need, and blessing us in times of faithfulness. But God’s love also remains in times of disobedience and times of anger as well. Who else can promise to stick around when you curse them out in anger? To love you unceasingly when you ignore them? To remain faithful when you cheat on them? I think of the many times I’ve cheated on God – with other people or with possessions. The times I put those people in front of Him. And He waited patiently for me, loving me in spite of. I think of the times I’ve yelled at God, demanding an explanation for the situation I was going through. And God understood my anger, continued to love me, and waited for me to calm down. I think of the times I’ve been disobedient and crawled back on my knees to God begging for forgiveness and God, with arms open wide, continued to love me. Oh what a promise God gives us when He states He’ll never leave or forsake us. I think of all the people who’ve left my life but God has remained a constant – even when I wasn’t consistent with Him. And I know when I cheat on God again, or curse at Him, or ignore Him that He’ll STILL love me and will STILL be with me – oh, what a promise!



*Hebrews 13:5b
**Romans 8:38-39

PERSISTENT FAITH

PERSISTENT FAITH



Persistent –Continuing steadfastly in spite of opposition.


Obituary: Woman, age unknown, name unknown, died today after suffering over 12 years from an unidentified disease which caused her to bleed uncontrollably. After spending all she had on doctors who were unable to find a cure, she resigned herself to the local leper community to spend her last days. Those who knew her describe her as a nice person who just “couldn’t catch a break”. She died just after sunrise this morning – there will be no memorial service.


This is a pretty depressing summary of a person’s life. While this obituary is fictional, this could have been the end to the story of the woman with the issue of blood had she not reached out to touch Jesus*. Put yourself in her shoes for a moment – during those times, a woman was considered unclean while she was menstruating. Her husband could not touch her, she had to separate herself from her community, and she wasn’t permitted to enter the temple to make sacrifices for her sins**. In addition, the text tells us that she spent all she’d had on doctors, to no avail. Can you imagine being alone, sick, broke and isolated from God? Have you ever been there? Traveling through life unsure of what tomorrow holds and wondering what’s the point of today? If you have, then you know how easy it can be to give up hope. Yet, this woman persisted. In my mind, I imagine her moving slowly down the road, people staring at her as she passes. Yet, she persisted. Blood running down her legs onto her sandals. Yet, she persisted. Weak with the constant loss of blood, I can see her hunched over as she makes her way to Jesus. Yet, she persisted. Just as she’s about to pass out from exhaustion, she reaches out to touch Jesus’s garment and is instantly made whole.


What’s the issue that’s been plaguing your life for days, weeks, months, years, decades? Have you spent all your time, energy, and resources on that issue, to no avail? Has that issue left you alone? Sick? Broke? Isolated from God? What’s blocking you from reaching out & touching Jesus? Other people? Doubt or fear? Pride? As we read this story, we can learn from this nameless woman of faith. Sick for 12 years, she did not give up – she persisted. She did not let her lack of health, her lack of community, or her lack of money stop her. She knew that Jesus was her only hope for healing. And instead of the ominous obituary above, she reserved a place in the Bible as a woman of faith:


And a woman who was there [in the crowd] who had been subject to bleeding for 12 years…when she heard about Jesus she came up behind Him in the crowd and touched his cloak because she thought, “If I just touch his clothes I will be healed.” Immediately her bleeding stopped and she felt in her body that she was freed from suffering…He [Jesus] said to her, “Daughter, your faith has healed you. Go in peace and be freed from your suffering.” (Mark 5:25-29, 34)


How would your obituary read if you left this life today? Would it be a sad retelling of issues that plagued you to no end or would it be a testimony of persistent faith?



*Matthew 9:20-22, Mark 5:25-34, Luke 8:43-48)
** Leviticus 15:19-30

The RESET button

Reset – To put into proper position again


I joined Weight Watchers about a month ago and I’m now realizing why I’ve not been able to drop these pounds over the years – I get too easily distracted. Losing weight is all about consistency – consistently eating well and consistently exercising. My first two weeks on the program, I lost 9 pounds! On the third week, however, I vacationed in Florida and it’s gone downhill since then. I’ve since gained back 5 of the 9 pounds I’ve lost. The problem was that once I got off track, I wasn’t motivated to get back into my routine of healthy living.

My faith walk tends to mirror my struggle with weight loss. I take a few steps forward & then I take a few steps back. I realize that Christianity is not a competitive race where we’re all challenging each other to see who reaches perfection first, but it is about forward movement. In Philippians 3:13-14, Paul states that he is “forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before, I press toward the mark of the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus”. Forward movement. There are times in my faith, like my commitment to weight loss, when I become stagnant and stale. I stop going to church. I don’t pray like I should. I engage in sinful activities & it doesn’t bother me. In Weight Watchers, they call it “hitting the plateau”.

So what do you do when this happens? How do you motivate yourself to get back on track? Well, my Weight Watchers meeting leader suggested that I hit the RESET button. Here’s an example to put it into perspective: Let’s say you’ve just washed your hair and are in the process of drying it with a blow dryer. All is going well and then it suddenly shuts off. What’s happened is that the dryer’s internal cutoff switch has turned it off to prevent overheating, which could be harmful to the user. While that’s happening, you shake the dryer and hit it a few times with the palm of your hand, to no avail. Dismayed, you are just about to give up when you notice a little red button sticking out from the plug – the RESET button. You push it and the power immediately returns. Hallelujah!

Isn’t this how God works when we hit spiritual plateaus? When we’re not living as holy as we should be & we don’t seem bothered by it? Or when we get comfortable in our walk and aren’t concerned with making forward progress? God allows an auto shut off to occur in our lives. We lose our job. That perfect relationship ends. A loved one gets violently ill. We can’t seem to make ends meet no matter how hard we try. At the time that it happens, we can’t see that God was aiming to get our attention. That He wanted us to hit the RESET button and get back on track. That He realized the path we were headed down was meant for our destruction. Was that boyfriend or girlfriend a distraction from your relationship with Christ? Was that job taking you away from your true purpose in life? Would an abundance of money take your eye away from the cross? Did you find that you were on your knees more than ever as a result of your ill loved one? It’s wise to ponder just what God is up to when He initiates the auto shut off in your life. And once you realize it, it’s even wiser to hit that RESET button on your faith walk: open your Bible & start studying his Word again, get down on your knees and open the dialogue with God again, go back to church and seek out the support of the saints, start paying your tithes.

It’s almost embarrassing the number of times God has had to shut something off in my life to get my attention and I’ve had to hit the RESET button. And just like my struggle with weight, God is showing me that it’s about being consistent. I’m not going to achieve perfection as a Christian, but I can make forward progression the more consistent I am. I pray for strength to ignore distractions and I am thankful for the ones He’s already removed from my life.