"If I fall along the way pick me up and dust me off"

Title: Bent
Artist: Matchbox Twenty
Album: Mad Season

Tonight at Hope Chapel, Jon spoke on The Parable of the Mustard Seed and The Parable of the Yeast from the book of Matthew.  Boy was he fired up.  We had a potluck... so there were a good many people there including Pastor Henry (from Mt. Pleasant) and Pastor Geordany from Haiti.  The long and short of this is that the Holy Spirit moved there tonight.  During AND after the service.  A friend of Jon's came who went to White Hill with him.  I don't know all of the details, but from what I could gather she is in a state of rebellion.  She "did everything [she] was supposed to" but everything still fell apart.  Jon, Heather and I stood around after and talked with her.  Something in me just keeps saying that this girl/ woman needs Christ (back) in her life.  I think that Hope Chapel is just the place for her.  I am excited that we might be able to reach someone for Jesus. 
On the drive home the song reference hit me as a song that in a praise and worship setting is a great witness.  If you sing the song to God there is a completely new aspect to it.  There are many references to brokenness in the Bible.  So the lyric, "Can you help me I'm bent, I'm so scared that I'll never get put back together.  Keep breaking me in and this is how we will end, with you and me bent", really speaks to me.

Christ was completely broken in his last days.  He suffered more than any one of us ever could.  He went to his death.  Could he have stopped it?  Of course He could!  He is God!  But here is the fact of it all.  He didn't.  He went willingly to the cross.  And why?  For us.  Ungrateful, unrepentant sinners.

We have the letters of Paul which chronicle his journey from a religious jerk to a repentant and downtrodden Christ follower.  He was stoned, beaten, jailed, shipwrecked... if he wasn't being bent, then I don't know what is.  If someone thinks that being a Christian is all lollipops and butterflies or harps and robes, they are sadly mistaken.  Even Peter spoke on suffering in one of my passages of scripture. 

I Peter 1:3-9 "³ Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, ⁴ and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade. This inheritance is kept in heaven for you, ⁵ who through faith are shielded by God’s power until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time. ⁶ In all this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. ⁷ These have come so that the proven genuineness of your faith—of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire—may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed. ⁸ Though you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy, ⁹ for you are receiving the end result of your faith, the salvation of your souls"

We have a hope in Christ, we WILL suffer trials, but God is using that to work in our lives.  I know that in my own life He has worked so much out, and He is still doing that every day!  I have the testimony that I gave to Mt. Pleasant in December typed up and will eventually (possibly very soon), post that as a blog.  But if I had one thing that I could say to anyone reading this is that God is working on your life, even when you are not.  You might not see it, you might not feel any movement.  At the same time, He may be making big changes, putting things in place for you to grab onto.  He will not give us more that HE can handle.  Sometimes He bends us so far that we have no choice but to call out to him.  "Can you help me..?"  He will, He can and He does!  All the time. 
I have a few friends that I have seen go from atheists to being completely sold out to Jesus.  I have seen drug addicts turn from a life of substance abuse to a life of following and witnessing for Christ.  To see such amazing transformations you would think that it would be easy to trust Jesus with everything.  It's not, I am horrible at witnessing.  Great at debating, but horrible at talking to anyone who is not on the same page as me spiritually.  That's not to say that I won't try to talk to someone who is in a different book completely.  But that is a different blog all together.
My point tonight is that Jesus transforms lives, whether you have it all together or have a mess of a life.  Nothing is outside of his reach and nothing is so big that He can't fix it.  We all go through trials... lean on Jesus, turn to Him and He will answer your prayers.

I'm gonna get off my rant now and say goodnight, but please listen to the words to this song and think about using this as an attitude towards Jesus and asking Him for the help that we need to make it through.