Peggy Boldizsar Nunley

Just recently, I returned from a mission trip working with Syrian Refugees. It was such a unique experience. God was faithful in bringing together a team of College Students, Therapists, and Medical Professionals to go and serve the emotional, spiritual, and physical needs of the ‘Least of These.’

What I discovered on the trip, though, really struck me to the heart. One night our team had a routine Discipleship Meeting. I say routine because every trip I take with Awe Star, is formulated around Discipleship and Evangelism. We train each team in Knowledge and then give them opportunities to put that Knowledge into action through skills of Evangelism.

Each country looks different, but the premise is always the same. We teach and then we do. We learn and then we have opportunities to show. Through this we grow inwardly and outwardly in confidence and in boldness.

This one night was different. We began with intense worship. Let me tell you, in a dark nation where Christ has been robbed of worship for decades, restoring worship in this kind of darkness is always intense. It’s like God literally walks among you. You feel Him press through the cloud of darkness and engulf your spirit with His presence. There is nothing like worshipping in a ‘Closed’ nation!

After worship we broke open the Word of God. I was teaching on overcoming our own darkness so we can shine Christ in the midst of others darkness.

Then it happened! It was like a change of atmosphere engulfed the entire room. Team members began sharing from the depths of their souls. They shared their wounds, their hurts, their pain and their ‘Brokenness’. What I discovered that night changed me.

I realized every team member had come on this mission not because they thought they had answers for Refugees, but that they identified with their ‘Brokenness’.

God had actually called each person that came to offer their ‘Brokenness’ to the ‘Broken’; Their ‘Loss’ to those that had great loss; Their ‘Pain’ to those that had experienced the worst of all pains.

What was so beautiful in this moment is that I realized by ‘Offering our Brokenness, God wanted to bring Wholeness’. It seems so opposite of what I have learned in the church. I had always been taught that I needed to be whole before I could help others; I needed to be completely healed before I stepped into someone else’s wounds. The truth I discovered that night was God doesn’t look for our ‘Wholeness’, He desires to use our ‘Brokenness’ as a platform for our and others ‘Wholeness’.

Psalms 51 is a great picture of this. David is King. He had failed with Bathsheba and now he was crying out to God to “Create in Him a clean heart and renew a right spirit within him.”

David was broken. David was undone. David had deep wounds and deep sorrow. Yet God did not take away King David’s Ministry.

Instead, God enlarged it.

As David offered his ‘Brokenness’ God restored his ‘Wholeness’. I imagine the wounds of David’s failure never left him. King David knew he was weak. He knew that God could restore and do something in him that he could not do in himself.

I always thought of this passage as a repentance passage. It is, but it’s also more. David doesn’t graduate from Psalms 51, instead, Psalms 51 defines Him. David is nothing without God. He is not able to make himself whole. He is ‘Broken’ and, therefore, he will always need to seek his ‘Wholeness’ in God.

Friend, we are the same.

Our ‘Wholeness’ always rests in Jesus. He cleanses, He forgives, and He creates newness in us. But that ‘Wholeness’ isn’t what gives us a seat at the table of the ‘Broken’. Rather, it is the journey of healing through our ‘Brokenness’ that enables us to offer hope to the ‘Broken’.

How does God want to use your ‘Brokenness to sit with the Broken’ and bring hope?

If we are going to be defined by God’s ‘Wholeness’ and be used by Him, we must always meet Him and others in our ‘Brokenness’.

But He 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.” (2 Corinthians 12:9)