The Gimp

One of our favorite things to do over the winter is Rollerblading at the Metrodome.  A friend of ours, Rick, showed up one evening limping due to a recurring calf and heel problem.  "Hey gimpy!  How's it going?" we'd yell.  "Oh, well, it's acting up again.  Not sure if I'll be able to skate real hard tonight.  It's one of those things that'll be with me probably the rest of my life."

While Rick didn't acquire his injury wrestling with God, there is someone who God wrestled with and came away with a lifelong limp.  His name is Jacob.

In Genesis, we learn that Jacob cheated his brother, Esau, out of his birthright as the firstborn son.  Esau, needless to say, was ready for "payback." 

While on the run, Jacob wrestled with an angel for an entire night, resulting in a dislocated hip.  In short, Jacob plead for the angel to bless him.  Jacob was blessed, but he was left with a gimpy leg that bothered him for the rest of his life.

God may choose to intentionally dismantle something in our lives (pride, for instance) to remind us that there is never a single second in our lives that we can live without him.  In fact, it's most likely that we'll go through trials of brokenness in order to tie us to him.  Perhaps to get us to trust him, he has to break us (dare I say, especially when we pray to God that he makes us who he wants us to become!).

In many ways, we can be left with a limp just like Jacob - a mark of God's grace and power in our lives that says, "I, The Lord, am The One who carrys you."   

Our need for God is not theoretical.  A sure cure for pride are the experiences where we must rely completely on him through our pain and inadequacy - our desparation.

Another reason that God may break us is to use us on the "other side" of pain.  In his book, Leadership as an Identity, Crawford Loritts explains that "brokenness is a tool that prepares us for the assignments God has for us.  It's His way of "adding weight, supernatural substance" so that we won't lose sight of the awareness of our need for him.  In turn, we are able to comfort those who are broken as well, with comfort that we have also experienced by God (2Corinthians 1:3-4).

Through our own pain and brokenness, others are made whole, which walks us closer to Christ-likeness.

During times of brokenness, Loritts says, we must "hold tight to God.  Even when (we) don't sense the affirmation of His presence, cling to Him.  Absorb yourself if His Word and hold fast to His promises.  Cry out to Him.  Stay connected and lean on your brothers and sisters in Christ."

"Don't waste the spiritual equity; God is creating a greater capacity to know Him and to love Him."