Tag: healing

  • Sea Glass

    Beauty from Brokenness

    During a recent trip to Vancouver Island, I collected a few pieces of sea glass (also called beach glass).  Most of the pieces I collected were small clear or brown bits, but I did pick up a few blue and green fragments.

    Sea glass starts its life as broken bits of bottles and other discarded glass. It’s glass that, for whatever reason, is no longer useful and thrown away. Over time, water and erosion polish it into something refined and beautiful.

    People collect sea glass to make crafts and jewelry, or simply because of its color. It can come in any color of the rainbow, depending on what color glass it started as.

    It fascinated me because something broken and discarded can end up so beautiful. It reminds me of Christians.

    Before we become believers, we are anything but beautiful. We were created in God’s image but have been marred by sin and the knocks of life. We often feel discarded and purposeless.

    God takes the broken bits of our lives and, out of love, gives us the gift of faith to become believers. We are born again and adopted into God’s family. We still have polishing and repair work to do in this life, but He works on us, conforming us to the image of Christ.

    He doesn’t do that because we deserve it. We could never get our acts together to warrant salvation. He does it out of love, purchasing us with His own shed blood. When a sinner is saved, it truly is a miracle.

    Throughout the Scriptures we see declarations that God saves the discarded and broken

    The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me to bring good news to the poor; he has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to those who are bound; to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor, and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all who mourn; Isaiah 61:1-2 ESV

    The Lord is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit. Psalm 34:13 ESV

    Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Matthew 11:28 ESV

    The circumstances of your life may have left you feeling broken and discarded. Others might have rejected you, but God loves you beyond measure. He will make something beautiful from you and the mess of life.

    Trust in Him and rejoice.

    Be blessed,

    Kevin

    SUMMARY

    I found beauty in broken sea glass on a beach on Vancouver Island. It reminded me that God takes the broken and discarded and makes them new through faith.

    TAKEAWAY

    Sea glass starts out as broken, discarded trash before years of water and erosion make it beautiful.

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  • Is self-help the answer? What does the bible say?

    "Self-Help ?" superimposed

    The self-help industry is estimated to generate over $50 billion a year worldwide, with about 40% of that in North America. That tells me people know they are a mess. I have no doubt that some of that money brings at least temporary results for some people. I’m all in favor of better people.

    The problem is that very little, if any, self-help material addresses our key problem. Our problem is sin, and the effects of that sin.

    The Bible is not a self-help book, and the gospel is not a self-help program. The Bible tells of our need for God and His plan of rescue. The gospel is that plan.

    The gospel tells us that when we become believers, we are no longer the same person.

    Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come. 2 Corinthians 5:17

    That person no longer exists. The new creation still has problems, but we are reconciled to God and transferred into the Kingdom.

    … giving thanks to the Father, who has qualified us to share in the inheritance of the saints in light. Who rescued us from the authority of darkness, and transferred us to the kingdom of the Son of His love, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins. Colossians 1:12-24

    That doesn’t immediately clear up all of our other problems. For that, the Holy Spirit works in us. As we draw closer to God, our behavior and character change. Our ideas about what is and isn’t truly important transform over time.

    Other than Jesus, no one has been born without sin. Adam and Eve were sinless for some short period of time, but they fell in a most spectacular way. You and I were born with a sin nature and a propensity to sin. We cannot defeat it on our own, no matter how many good works we do or how many self-help books we read.

    The Lord is our helper. The Lord is our healer. He created us in His image, and His desire is for us to be more like Him.

    We are works in progress, but we are His workmanship.

    For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them. Ephesians 2:10

    He will not fail to finish what He started in us.

    For I am confident of this very thing, that He who began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Christ Jesus. Philippians 1:6

    Get help where you need it, but never forget that your true help and healing is supernatural. The God of the Bible is the ultimate helper.

    Trust Him.

    Hallelu Yah (Praise God) 

    Be blessed 

    Kevin 

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    Summary:

    The self-help industry may offer temporary improvement, but the Bible teaches that humanity’s deepest problem is sin, and true transformation and healing come only through God through Jesus Christ.

    • The gospel is not a self-improvement program but God’s rescue plan that makes believers a new creation reconciled to Him.
    • Human effort alone cannot overcome sin; lasting change comes through the work of the Holy Spirit shaping believers over time.
    • Christians are God’s workmanship, and He faithfully continues the work He began in them until it is complete.

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    Self – the source of our problems

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    Two old farmers ask where is God in a broken world?