Live Free with Josh Howerton - Joy in Being Broken | Ep. 141 | Monday, August 21, 2023

Episode Date: August 21, 2023

“Blessed are those who mourn.” Today, Pastor Mike unpacks the paradox of grief and its strange companion, happiness. As we reflect on the importance of brokenness, humility, and the desire to change, remember: blessed are those who acknowledge and mourn their spiritual poverty, for they will find comfort. For more information, visit lakepointe.church/dailydrive

Thanks for tuning in to today's Daily Drive with Lake Point Church, a daily dose of God's word for your morning drive. When the word, not the world, becomes the majority of your week, your life will start to change. For that reason, our prayer is that God will speak to you through today's devotional. For more digital content to feed your faith, visit lakepoint.combe. And now let's dive in to today's devotional. Hey, welcome to the Daily Drive podcast where we spend a few minutes Monday through Friday just trying to get to know God a little better. I'm Mike Bro, and one of the ways I started to get to know God better was studying the life of Jesus. You see, Jesus not only came to lay down his life so we could be forgiven and free,

but he also came to show us what God is really like. And so for the next several days, we're continuing to look at some of the things that Jesus said on the hillside, 2,000 years ago, to a bunch of people like us. I'm talking ordinary folks who are searching for happiness and fulfillment in their lives. And so Jesus launches into the most radical, countercultural teaching about how to find true happiness. Now, we've already learned that happiness is not based on what is happening around us, but what is happening in us, that according to Jesus, true happiness, is an inside-out kind of thing. We started walking through this section, commonly known as the Beatitudes,

this list of internal steps to deep and lasting happiness. Now, like I previously said, I'm not sure if this is exactly the way Jesus originally taught it out, but it sure seems like to me to sort of, I know, resemble the rungs of a ladder where each step builds upon the one before it. Last episode, we learned that the very first step to happiness is the acknowledgement that you need God.

That without him, we're spiritually bankrupt. Jesus says, blessed are the poor in spirit, those who are humble enough to say, you know what, I'm done playing God, I'm destitute without him, I'm busted, I need him. And today Jesus continues with wrong number two when he says, Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted. Now, I believe in general when we mourn, God is always there to comfort us, when our hearts break, his heart breaks with us. But happy are those who mourn, huh? Now, if these are laid out like wrongs on a ladder, that what he says, builds upon the step before it,

then it would be happy, fortunate, blessed are those who mourn over what? Yeah, the realization of their spiritual poverty. Blessed are those who mourn over the fact they know they need God. It moves beyond an admission of need to a deeper level of brokenness

of spirit. I think he's saying blessed or the broken. Blessed or the broken. I've learned that there's a big difference between being broken and being miserable. I've been miserable in my sense. in and dysfunction a lot. And being miserable is just being uncomfortable. It's hating the circumstances it's put you in. It's being self-absorbed. It's playing the victim in it. And it's getting caught.

Brokenness, now that comes from a different place. And it's the first step to finding the pathway to freedom because brokenness gets you to the place where you're finally willing to admit that there's something not quite right in you, something that you cannot fix. It's this deep realization when you figure out that your way is not the right way. That's when you're finding. finally ready to cooperate and get well. I think of a couple different stories about this. One is when one of Jesus' friends a gun named Peter brags about being loyal, dependable, tells Jesus that he would be the one friend he could always count on,

that he would even die for him if need be. On the night that Jesus is arrested, Peter has a chance to do all of that. But when the heat is on, he totally chokes. He vehemently denies even knowing Jesus. And then when he realizes what he's done, the scripture says that he went out, and he wept bitterly. He mourned over his sin. He was much more than just miserable. He was authentically broken. There's another story in John chapter 5 where Jesus' heart is filled with compassion for this guy that he ends up miraculously healing. The guy was physically broken.

He'd been an invalid for 38 years. And this amazing story of hope and new beginnings, but this story contains what I've come to know as well of the most important questions for life and recovery. Before Jesus even touches the guy, he asked him, do you want to get well? And when I first read that story years ago, I thought, come on, obvious question, Jesus, but after years of working my own stubborn refusal to change and working with all kinds of people who are living in denial, I've discovered that's not a stupid question. It's actually one of the most important questions we can ask ourselves. Sure, we're miserable, sick, we know we've got a problem. We know things are kind of getting out of control. But do we really, do we really want to get

well? My buddy Keith, he writes about his addiction journey when he says, I can't remember the exact moment that I finally decided that I did want to get well. I think it was somewhere between my chapped-lipped white powder on my shirt, cocaine bender trip to Vegas, and that three-block drive to tell my sponsor everything I'd done. And somewhere in there, by the grace of God, I was able to draw the fear and finally humble myself to the loving touch of Jesus, and he started healing me. Also got into a community of fellow strugglers where I encountered honest, loving people, and a loving God who met me right where I was. Still, I never would have made it to that place without finally admitting that on my own,

I'm a broken, shattered mess. So I know that no matter what you struggle with, if you will humbly embrace brokenness and allow God to go to work, on the inside of you? If you will cooperate with them by maybe working some steps, if you will link arms with honest fellow-strugglers, you will begin to get a handle on and actually overcome and break the chains of whatever binds you up and you can start walking free and experience deep happiness. So let me leave you with that question. Want to get well? Because blessed are the broken. Blessed are those who mourn over the realization of their spiritual poverty, for they will be

comforted. Thanks for tuning in today. For more biblical teaching and worship, join us for our church online live weekend services on Saturdays at 6 p.m. and Sundays at 9.30 and 11 a.m. Central Standard Time. Also, if this podcast was helpful to you, would you be sure to rate, review, and share this podcast to help get the word out? For more information about all digital ministries of Lake Point, visit lakepoint.compt.com.com. Daily Drive.