Brokenness is the key to finding your Everything

If we are honest, we know that sorrow and suffering are inevitable parts of life. Loved ones die. Dreams crumble. We lose things we love. Eventually, everything we hold dear will slip through our fingers. Not a very comforting thought, but a necessary one. Why? Because loss gets us thinking, it leads us to brokenness, and brokenness determines what happens to our hearts.

The inner loneliness we experience there, the kind that sandblast us to the core, is the best place---sometimes the only place for us to decide who or what will be our everything? We can’t sit on the fence with this one, because every loss and every trial we face will lead us back to the same question.

Many of us have been standing in the river of doubt far too long, causing us to build sacred idols to things that will never satisfy. We say Jesus is everything, but we’ve put people, relationships, talents, looks, abilities, careers, and self-sufficiency on the altar of our hearts, leaving second place for lover of our souls.

If we’re going to move beyond brokenness, keep our faith intact, and allow Christ to be our everything, we have to obtain a decided heart about God, otherwise, when bad things happen we’ll forfeit our faith for a cheap substitute.

In her new book, Everything, releasing October 16tth, Mary DeMuth asks us to consider three powerful questions: to help us decide:

• What do we think about God?
• How do we allow Him to reign in our hearts?
• How do we obey him?

What we believe about God, what we think and feel about him over time will inevitably impact how we order everything in our lives. Remember, the enemy of our soul has but one goal in mind: to bring epic disaster into our lives and make it look as if God is responsible for it.

If he can do that, by dealing a mortal blow to our hearts, we will live in the shadow of his lies, walling our off our hearts to God and struggling to accept that God is good and trustworthy. And if we believe we can’t trust God we’ll look elsewhere for our everything.

How do we decide about God? Through knowing. Real knowing—the kind that changes us from the inside out—happens as we change our perspective about who God should be and discover who he is.

If you and I want to decide about Jesus, we must search the Scriptures. Put aside the false concepts that others helped create. Lay down the conclusions we’ve have jumped to based on past experiences, and read the Bible stories intently with our hearts.

Then we must ask ourselves: Who is this God we claim to know? Healer? Forgiver? Merciful? Compassionate? Each story will give you a window into his soul, and I bet you won’t find one to refute the message of unconditional love he came to bring. It’s the essence of who he is.

Then, as you sojourn through those dark nights of the soul, you’ll understand who he really is. You’ll understand your heart means everything to him. And you’ll understand that nothing in this life can be your everything except Him.