Hope for Healing Excerpt: 'Is My Life Out of Control?'
This week, we're exploring pride versus brokenness. Are we in the box or out of the box? Are we serious about this journey, or are we just going through the motions? Are you humble or proud? Do you honestly care how your actions have affected others, or do you feel justified in your actions?
Brokenness is a condition of rigorous humility. It's a place where we recognize that we have nothing; however, it's not a place of despair. Because in our brokenness, we're blessed with every provision we need for a healthy recovery and personal restoration. This "brokenness" is actually a place of hope; it's a place where we let go of pride, image management, and defensiveness and courageously enter a space of freedom and life.
Accepting the Gift of Failure
The only currency you have to move from the deceived self to the true self is your pride. But what does it take to finally let go of pride? Does success lead to humility? Does defeating destructive patterns lead to humility? What drives us to the place where we want to live so badly that we don't care if we die? The answer: is failure.
Failure teaches what success cannot. And apart from that failure, would we ever learn anything? Until you fall flat on your face and accept that you can't do it, you'll never let go. When we fail, we must accept that we:
Can't control what's happening.
Can't escape the consequences.
Can't fix what we've done.
Can't work our way out of this one.
Are, simply put, "out of control."
Viewing Brokenness as a Positive Opportunity
Failure is not only about accepting what you've done, but it's also about confessing what you've done. Hope for Healing is a safe place to do this. The healing all starts here with your small group. Either you'll get it all out or you'll hang on to some semblance of your pride and image. Without dying to yourself and killing your false image, you simply can't get to a place of restoration.
Brokenness is actually a place of hope; it's a place where we let go of pride, image management and defensiveness and courageously enter a space of freedom and life.
Some call the space of "I can't" the bottom, others call it the mortification of the flesh. Still, others refer to it as humiliation. In this course, we call it brokenness. Brokenness is actually a place of hope; it's a place where we let go of pride, image management, and defensiveness and courageously enter a space of freedom and life. Until you reach this state, the transformation will never occur.
Who wants to die to self unless they first determine that self is of no use? Why would you let go until all of your other options are eliminated? We're born believing that we can be our own all-powerful, all-sufficient God: a perfect human being, self-sufficient and never having or wanting to need anyone. Failure is the only antidote capable of setting us free.
Collaboration with Rick Reynolds, CEO of Affair Recovery.