I May Be Cracked (At Least I Let the Light In)

“‘Cause you’re gonna see all my flaws 

All the fears I’m fighting

I know I may be cracked 

But I let the light in

If you want the best of me

Get to know the hurt I’m hiding

‘Cause I may be cracked

At least I let the light in.” 

--Echosmith, “Cracked”

     “I’m just not good enough for God.” 

     How many times a day does this thought run around your head? How many people have turned their faces away from God due to the shame of not being perfect? Even Genesis tells us that Adam and Eve, upon eating from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, felt such shame that they hid from God when He came to talk to them.

     There’s this common thought that we have to be “good enough” for God. That we can’t be used, that we aren’t even fit to worship Him, until we’re “good enough.” That we have to be perfect and be worthy, because God can’t use broken people. 

     The counter-argument is that God uses broken people plenty of times in the Bible: and that’s true. Gideon was a little nervous wreck who had to test God before He believed that God had called him (oh, how I relate!). Thomas doubted. Peter suffered from pride. David had an affair and was probably not the best dad in the world (just look at how his kids turned out!). Elijah asked God to just let him die, told God that he (Elijah) was a terrible human being who had no worth.

     And even though every example is true, it’s hard to believe sometimes because these people were in the Bible. They were warriors of God, disciples, prophets! And we’re just…

     ...us. 

     On our worst days, it’s hard to find something good about ourselves. All we can see is our cracked pieces, our shards of glass that distort the reflection we see. And that’s the case in Echosmith’s song, “Cracked,” from their latest album Lonely Generation. The singer is warning people who get close to her that she’s not perfect. She’s a mess, really, with all these broken pieces of her life around her. She has flaws, hurts, pain, trauma that she’s dealing with. But every time she says this, she asserts that “she lets the light in.”

     And that got me to thinking: if God is the light, isn’t this a beautiful metaphor for how God can work through our broken pieces?

     That’s the premise of 2 Corinthians 12 as well. Paul has lamented about this mysterious “thorn in his side” that the Lord won’t take away from him. 

     Like maybe he was depressed. Maybe he was suicidal. Maybe he was anxious. Maybe he had panic attacks. Maybe he had a physical problem: paralysis, blindness, deafness, or maybe he was missing a limb. And we know that Paul had a bad past: he was a murderer. 

     We don’t know what Paul’s thorn was, but we know what our own thorns are. We know what plagues us, what keeps us awake at night, what sends us crawling in shame. We know the parts that we never want anyone to see, because it might shatter the illusion, this pretty reflection of ourselves that we’ve cobbled together using these jagged shards of glass. 

     But in verses 9-10 of this chapter, Paul turns his weakness on its head with these words: “But [God] said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’ Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.”

     Do you see what Paul says here? God literally told Paul he didn’t have to be perfect! God said (slight paraphrase): “Yeah, it’s all chill. I got this.” (What? I told you it was a slight paraphrase.) God said that through Paul’s—through our weakness—He could be glorified.

     Because, guess what? He can use the depression. He can use the suicidal thoughts, the anxiousness, the panic attacks, the paralysis, blindness, deafness, the amputees, the murderers to show His grace. Because if His grace is sufficient enough for Paul, then it’s sufficient enough for us.

     God shines through those cracked pieces of the mirror and illuminates the true person lurking behind there. He illuminates our true selves, the ones hiding in darkness, in shame, and He beckons us out. He doesn’t want us to hide ourselves under this guise of faux perfectness. He wants us to let Him take the broken pieces and give us a testimony. Give us a heart for others who are suffering through the same thing. Soften our hearts to those in trouble, make us more compassionate. 

     Make us better witnesses. 

     Because we can’t do this on our own. On our own, we are a bundle of flaws and human errors. We are a mirror with shards missing because people have abused us, because of battles we’ve fought with ourselves. But if we were whole, no light could shine through. We would block the greatness of God with the greatness of ourselves. 

     Let me finish with a thought from a sermon my grandpa preached a few weeks ago. He said: “God is not disillusioned with us; He never had any illusions to begin with.” God knew about Paul’s thorn (even if we don’t). God knew about David’s affair even if the kingdom didn’t (sans Nathan the prophet, who heard about it from God). God knew about Thomas’s doubt, Peter’s pride, and so on. This didn’t “ruin” His opinion of them. He knew from the beginning they were fallible. 

     He already knows that you are fallible. That I am fallible. He sees the person cowering behind the broken glass. 

     And He loves us anyway. He wants to rip away this false illusion that we’re hiding behind and shine through us, because in our weakness, He is made ever brighter.

     Because you know what? 

     We may be cracked.

     But at least we let the Light in.

A Heart of Appreciation (Thank You)

     I want to take a poll.

     I want you to think of the last dozen prayers you’ve said. It doesn’t matter how long they were—maybe just a quick thought sent up to God or a long bedtime prayer. Just analyze them. 

     Do you notice any themes?

     I certainly do.

     I started out this year on a path to “growth.” That was my word for the year, but I didn’t know what it might entail. One of the first weeks of January, though, I ended up writing these words: “I want [insert prayer request here], but I want to appreciate what I’ve got.” 

     Today, God really hammered me over the head with my own words. 

     Although I do say thank you to God, lately, it seems a recurring theme is asking Him for a few select things that I want: the desires of my heart, my deepest dreams that are for my soul only. I have asked for these things multiple times a day. I’ve had long chats with God. I’ve had just a “hey, remember this?” type of short prayers with God. And there’s a lot to ask for. The health of ailing family members. The state of the world. Healing. For revival. For God’s glory to be shown through these times. I’ve prayed for all of these things recently, and there’s nothing wrong with them. We’re supposed to approach God with our requests. Ephesians 6:18 says this: “And pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests. With this in mind, be alert and always keep on praying for all the Lord’s people.” We’re explicitly told to bring our requests forward to God. There’s nothing wrong in this.

     But I think God nudged me today as I begged Him, yet again, for one of my common prayer requests. I remembered my own words penned at the beginning of the year, how I would appreciate what I had. 

     And then I felt kind of guilty, because every negative emotion that I’d been feeling lately definitely stemmed from a lack of appreciation. 

     I want this. I want that. I have dreams of what I want to do with my life that need to be fulfilled. I have relatives that need to be healed. 

     I had begged God for His will, for Him to show me what to do next, but this discontentment that had settled inside me was the opposite of appreciation. 

     I was not appreciating what I had; I was desiring something else, consumed with all the steps that it would take to get me there. 

     Let’s turn to the Bible now. Open it up to Luke 17:11-19. Here’s how it reads:

“Now on his way to Jerusalem, Jesus traveled along the border between Samaria and Galilee. As he was going into a village, ten men who had leprosy met him. They stood at a distance and called out in a loud voice, ‘Jesus, Master, have pity on us!’ When he saw them, he said, ‘Go, show yourselves to the priests.’ And as they went, they were cleansed.

One of them, when he saw he was healed, came back, praising God in a loud voice. He threw himself at Jesus’ feet and thanked him—and he was a Samaritan.

Jesus asked, ‘Were not all ten cleansed? Where are the other nine? Has no one returned to give praise to God except this foreigner?’ Then he said to him, ‘Rise and go; your faith has made you well.’”

     “Has no one returned to give praise to God?” This is such a powerful statement to me that resounds throughout my soul. Jesus didn’t make the leprosy come back to the people who didn’t thank Him for His gift. God did not punish them for not coming back, but think of all the blessings these other people missed. They missed the opportunity to worship at Jesus’s feet. To hear His last blessings. To have an act of faith recorded in the Bible. 

     I don’t know what they thought as they went to the priest. Maybe they were so consumed with thoughts of what they could do now that they were healed. Maybe they thought of the families they could have, the homes they could return to, all the things they would get to experience. Maybe they were too focused on all the things that God would eventually do for them, instead of what He was doing at that very moment.

     I am honored that I have the privilege of approaching God with all my prayer requests. It humbles me that I am allowed to talk directly to the God of the universe. But I should never become so overwhelmed with what needs to be fixed in the world—or what I want—that I forget to appreciate Him. That I forget to come back and praise Him, like the solitary leper did.

     Thank You, God, for the day. May I use it to serve and worship You, because every breath is a gift from You.  

     Thank You, God, for the people in my life and the blessings they are. For all the individual ways they have made my life more special, for all the wise words they have imparted on me, for the memories I’ve made with them. 

     Thank You, God, for my home. May I be able to open it to those that aren’t as fortunate, to welcome them in, to show hospitality and Your love to people who are struggling. 

     Thank You, God, for Your love. May I always remember that You have loved me since before time began, that You only wish to draw me closer and closer into Your heart.

      Thank You, God, for being You. 

The Most Dangerous Game: Conformity

The Most Dangerous Game: Conformity

    There is a famous story by Richard Connell, published back in 1924. It's about a hunter who fills an island with prey to hunt...only his quarry isn't animals. It's humans. Killing other people, Connell's story says, is the most dangerous game.

    But is it really? Sure, Connell’s most dangerous game can destroy our physical bodies, but there are even more dangerous games that can destroy our souls and our relationship with Jesus.

     The five I’ll focus on in this devotional series are: comparison, conceit, complacency, compromise, and conformity.

Day 5: Conformity

     Our final message is about the dangers of conformity. I touched a bit on it yesterday, about how we can try and conform the Word to the world instead of vice versa. But conformity is deadly enough that it warrants its own day to really delve into the various ways we can conform to society. 

     When we play this dangerous game, we say that secular things are more important than Spiritual things.

     Why would we seek to conform the message of the Word to the world, and why would we seek to conform our personal lives as well? There is, at the heart of the issue, only one answer: because we are more concerned about “saving face” than about “saving lives.”

     When we say, “okay, we can take that part out of the Bible,” we are compromising because we are afraid of looking foolish to the world. We are scared of being too “out there,” of having people mock us, of being ridiculed. We are prioritizing our own “coolness” or “status” over our faith. We don’t want to be seen as weird, and we don’t want the Gospel to be seen as odd. We want Christianity to be “cool,” we want it to be “modern” and “attractive.”

     But the attractiveness of the Bible is that it is so counter-cultural! When we conform it, we are sucking the heart and life out of it. We are making the salt lose its saltiness until it is useless, hiding the light of the world underneath a basket at the risk of offending someone or being ridiculed. But Matthew 5:13-16 calls us to be so, so different. 

     And, do you want to know a secret? This “good life” we’re called to live, this “good fight” is already attractive, just the way it is. Titus 2 describes the kind of lives that we can live to make the Gospel attractive—because the Salvation, the joy, the hope, is already there: we just have to stand out and show people how attractive it is to be a Christian. How our lives are so much better with Jesus, filled with hope, love, joy, and all the Fruits of the Spirit. But, if we are too afraid to be the change, be the difference, the salt and light of the world, there are tragic consequences. 

     When we play this dangerous game, we dampen our ability to be a witness.

     Think about this: if we are blending in with the world, trying to be “cool” in their eyes and not stick out...then how will people know that we’re any different? If we fail to show love as Jesus showed love, if we fail to live a life that rises about the world, then why would anyone want to know Jesus? “Well, if they’re a Christian and they’re just like me, then I must be doing okay. It’s fine to not be a Christian, because Christians aren’t any different than anyone else.”

     Long story short, if we do not have something to stand for, if we do not stand out and be different, then we will not attract anyone. Jesus warns us in John 17:13-19 that the world will hate us. The world will mock us, and the world will scorn us if we are Christians. But, guess what: it’s not any different than what He went through! He was killed for standing out. For having radical courage, for not compromising on His message for God, for not settling for the complacency that had settled over Israel.

     I’m a huge nerd, and one of my favorite TV shows is the original Avatar: The Last Airbender. During one of the final episodes, a character gets called a “circus freak,” which is meant to deride them for being different and weird. But instead, this character turns the insult on its head and says at least there is something different about them: they’ll gladly be a “circus freak.”

     That’s the same attitude we should have about being Christians! Yes, the world may deride us, it may insult us and try and make us feel weird. But we should take pride in this! We should wear our “weirdness” as a badge of honor, take pride in being a “Christian freak.” As the great philosophers, DC Talk, once opined, “I don’t really care if they label me a Jesus freak/There ain’t no disguising the truth” (you had to know that one was coming!).

     It’s only by being courageous enough to embrace our “freakiness,” to embrace what makes us weird, that we can ever be the light of the Earth. So take courage—because Jesus has overcome the world, and that is the Message it needs to hear in its entirety! 

     How to win this dangerous game: replace conformity with courage.

Bible verses:

(Romans 12:2)

(Matthew 5:13-16)

(1 Timothy 6:12)

(Titus 2)

(John 17:13-19)

(John 16:33)

The Most Dangerous Game: Compromise

The Most Dangerous Game: Compromise

     There is a famous story by Richard Connell, published back in 1924. It's about a hunter who fills an island with prey to hunt...only his quarry isn't animals. It's humans. Killing other people, Connell's story says, is the most dangerous game.

    But is it really? Sure, Connell’s most dangerous game can destroy our physical bodies, but there are even more dangerous games that can destroy our souls and our relationship with Jesus.

     The five I’ll focus on in this devotional series are: comparison, conceit, complacency, compromise, and conformity.

Day 4: Compromise

    Let me start by saying this: I’m not decrying compromise as a whole. It’s a good skill to have in life: when you want A and someone else wants B, meeting in the middle is not only selfless but a good negotiating skill. 

     But there are some parts of life where compromise does not belong, and where God’s Word is concerned, we should never compromise. 

     When we play this dangerous game, we undermine Scripture.

    You can see it everywhere: people chipping away at the sanctity of Scripture. Believers try to “compromise” science with Scripture, allowing Evolution and other false doctrines to weaken God’s Word in an effort to “modernize” it. But God’s Word doesn’t need to be modernized! In fact, it is said that a famous scientist once declared, “A little science estranges a man from God; a lot of science brings him back.” (This is often attributed to either Francis Bacon, who invented the scientific method, or Louis Pasteur, who discovered pasteurization, and, in either case, both men were scientists who were Christians, so it is equally plausible.)

     People have also tried to “update” the Bible and take out passages they find antiquated. And, yes, while there are some passages that may be specifically meaning the tribe of Israel or understood in a cultural background—what God declares to be immoral should always be immoral. We do not see God changing His mind when He declares something to be sinful. In the New Testament, we see the New Covenant laid out for us: and God is very clear about what is a sin. 

     If we say that “this part of the Bible isn’t true,” or if we say, “God didn’t really mean this,” then what parts of the Bible are we left to believe? If we can “prove” that this part is false, how long is it until we can prove that everything is false? Why should I trust a God that is repeatedly wrong about what He says? If we cannot trust the Bible, then we cannot trust our faith, because in the Bible, it records that Jesus was killed on the Cross and resurrected on the third day. 

     This isn’t scientifically possible—our culture scorns the idea—so why is it any more or less “believable” than Creation or the sinful acts that Paul lists in 1 Corinthians? 

     It isn’t. So we cannot compromise on the inerrancy of the Scripture, or we compromise our faith as a whole. 

     When we play this dangerous game, we undermine the nature of God and make Him out to be a liar.

     This is an expansion of the previous thought. If we teach that the Bible has errors in it, if we try to modernize its thoughts, then how can we trust God at all? One of the core foundations of Christianity is believing that God is holy; how can someone holy be a liar? But that is what we do when we try and compromise the Gospel. We say: “God didn’t mean that” or “God doesn’t mean that anymore.” But the Bible says that all Scripture is God-breathed (2 Timothy 3:16-17). Which means that, if we are Christians, we believe that God had a hand in every single letter ever penned in the Bible. 

     Unless the Scripture isn’t actually God-breathed, and we disregard that. But if we disregard that…

     ...Where do we stop?

     Hebrews 13:8 tells us that Jesus (and therefore God) does not change. So if we say that what He declares to be a sin has changed, if we say that what He revealed in Genesis has changed, then we are saying that God has changed.

     And this is why complacency and compromise go hand in hand and are a dangerous duo. Because when we compromise, we are seeking to retain the status quo. We don’t wish to change or face the uncomfortable truths of the Gospel, so we edit out the hard parts. But 1 Corinthians 1:18-31 tells us that the Bible’s message will be construed as foolishness to the unsaved—but that doesn’t lessen its worth or mean that we need to make it “hip” or “wise.” Instead, once we delve into it, we realize how infinite God’s wisdom is and how we are the fools. Instead of trying to conform the Word to the world, we should instead build the character needed to conform the world to the Word. 

     We must stand on the solid rock that is God, and have the character to withstand the waves of the world that try and make us compromise our values (Matthew 7:24-29).

     How to win this dangerous game: replace compromise with character.

Bible verses:

(Genesis 1)

(1 Corinthians 6:9-20)

(Romans 3)

(2 Timothy 3:16-17)

(Hebrews 13:8)

(1 Corinthians 1:18-31)

(Matthew 7:24-29)

The Most Dangerous Game: Complacency

The Most Dangerous Game: Complacency

     There is a famous story by Richard Connell, published back in 1924. It's about a hunter who fills an island with prey to hunt...only his quarry isn't animals. It's humans. Killing other people, Connell's story says, is the most dangerous game.

    But is it really? Sure, Connell’s most dangerous game can destroy our physical bodies, but there are even more dangerous games that can destroy our souls and our relationship with Jesus.

     The five I’ll focus on in this devotional series are: comparison, conceit, complacency, compromise, and conformity.

Day 3: Complacency

     We talked about how pride is the enemy of growth yesterday, but there’s another sneaky enemy of growth: stagnation and complacency. Stagnation may make a person unaware that he or she has plateaued, but complacency is when he or she is fine with no growth. 

     When you play this dangerous game, you are okay with not growing more towards Jesus. 

     Being a Christian is continually about growth. It is about fixing our eyes on Heaven and Jesus (Hebrews 12:2) and striving to be more Christlike with every breath we breathe. But growth is painful. Growth is not easy. One of my favorite hymns comes from a verse in Psalms, chapter 139:23-24. It says this: “Search me, God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.” Psalm 51:2 goes a step farther: “cleanse me from my sin.” 

     Cleanse me. Search me. Test me. These are not easy things. They will shake up your status quo. They will lead you into unsafe waters, just as Jesus called Peter out to walk on the water. But it wasn’t easy for Peter to walk on water, just as it is not easy for us to look at ourselves and realize that there might still be some sin in us. There might be some comparison, some conceit, some complacency, some compromise, and conformity. Romans 3:23 reminds us that we have ALL sinned. Which means that, at any given time, there is ALL something that we could be doing better. Maybe we could be spending our time more wisely. Maybe we could be showing love to more people. Maybe we need to cleanse our impure thoughts, our tongues, our actions, our lifestyles. The Bible says lots of things that are not safe, and, without Jesus, they are impossible for us. It is impossible for us to deny ourselves, pick up our crosses, and grow without a Heavenly Hand reaching down to strengthen us. 

     But we must never settle for where we are if we wish to get where we are supposed to go.

     When you play this dangerous game, you are okay with backsliding, so long as your status quo is not shaken up.

     Another downside of complacency is that we can love our little, safe bubble way too much. We can make ourselves right at home and not bother to pick the weeds that are growing up around us. Our whole lives, our whole houses can be on fire, but as long as we don’t have to deal with anything painful, anything to push us out of our “okay comfort zone,” then we won’t budge from our chairs.

     In essence, we become the living representation of this meme: 

     We become friends with our sin. We accept it. We welcome it in, shake its hand, and say, “hey, where ya been?” Because it’s so much easier to let it drag us down than to close our door. Because that will make Satan angry, and when Satan is angry, things get bad. Of course, while Satan’s wrath can last a while, it can never compare to the wrath of God, holy and just. And God is reaching out for us. He’s the one with this water in the meme! He’s holding the door open for you, calling for you! Satan wants you to slam the door and die in the flames, but God offers a way out. 

     But we’ll have to walk through the flames we already lit first. 

     We may have to cut some people that are bad influences out of our lives. We may have to go through a drug withdrawal. We may have to go to rehab, that Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, we may have to break up a relationship that goes against God’s Word. 

     And, quite frankly, it will hurt. But it is better than eternal compromise to keep that complacency—something that we’ll go into tomorrow. 

     We must be willing to make painful sacrifices in order to get rid of the silent monster called complacency.

     How to win this dangerous game: replace complacency with change.

Bible verses: 

(Hebrews 12:2)

(Psalms 139:23-24)

(Psalms 51:2)

(Romans 3:23)

(1 Corinthians 6:9-20)

(Colossians 3:5-6)

(Romans 12)