I’m going through some things right now that are really getting me down, and breaking my heart. I’ve been thinking about everything a lot, and how I can handle things, and mainly why everything seems to happen at once. Well, of course, a song came on that sorta clarified things for me. It’s by Reliant K, and it is called “Let It All Out”.
“And you said I know that this will hurt, but if I don’t break your heart then things will just get worse. If the burden seems to much to bear, remember the end will justify the pain it took to get us there.”
That got me to thinking, how many times does God have to break us for our own good? Sometimes we put up these huge defensive walls to protect us from the things we don’t want to deal with. And the problem with those walls is that sometimes they block out what God wants us to do as well. How typical of humanity that we build walls around us, to keep us from pain, but in the end they are keeping us from God’s will. And then we find ourselves out in the middle of nowhere, looking for the path that God wanted us to walk. But see, we don’t just do it with God, either. We build walls around ourselves to keep everybody out. And the justification seems fair, if we do this, we won’t get hurt. But sometimes we have to be hurt, to be broken, to do what must be done. A blade must go through extreme heat, and intense pressure to be formed. A vase must be burned, cooked, and blasted until it is almost at the point of destruction before it can be set and made into something beautiful. Sometimes we have to be battered and broken because the fight we go through makes us who God wants us to be. Sometimes the pain is needed for the reward to be that much sweeter.
The big question then is how do we know that the bad things in our lives, the things that destory our walls, that expose us will be worth it in the end? Romans 8:28, a verse that always lifts me up when I am broken, tells us that all things work for good to those who love God. See. God can take the worst things in our lives, and he can make them useful, purposeful, and in the end, worthwhile. In the meantime though, the pain does hurt. The process does batter us. But as Paul found out when he prayed for the thorn in his flesh to be removed, for the bad things in his life to be taken away so that things may be better, God’s grace is sufficient for us. He doesn’t break us if he knows we can’t survive the pain. So in the end, God gives us a vote of confidence when he tears our walls down, when he drags us through the fire. He knows we can take the pain, because the end will justify what we had to do to get there.
