Quotes & Sayings About Brokenness And God

Because we suddenly see that making everything all right would NOT make everything all right. We would not be human beings. We would then be no more than puppets obeying the strings of the master puppeteer. We agree sadly that it is a good thing that we are not God; we do not have to understand God's ways, or the suffering and brokenness and pain that sooner or later come to us all. — Madeleine L'Engle

His cry on the cross was our cry of desperate alienation from God taken up into his and transformed through the resurrection. As we allow ourselves to experience our own pain, we can know that what we feel is Christ suffering in us and redeeming us. Rather than condemning ourselves for our weakness and making self-conscious efforts to try harder, we can allow the Crucified to love us in our brokenness. There is no way of healing from the wounds each of us carries except through the love of Jesus that forgives seventy times seven and keeps no score of our wrongdoing. — Brennan Manning

Missional leaders not only feel the burden of God's mission but they also act on the burden and act upon it sacrificially. Leading a missional church is not for the faint of heart. It takes courage to push yourself beyond your comfort zone and to lead the church beyond it personal limits. Brokenness, inner turmoil and sacrifice will always be part of the missional leader's life. — Gary Rohrmayer

God has seen our unloveliness - the deep brokenness and rebellion in our hearts - and instead of withdrawing, he pursues us to the beautiful end. He made an eternal commitment to sinners because of his great love for us. And because grace is true, you can face the world with all of its dangers and troubles, knowing you have been established forever as blameless by the holy groom, Jesus Christ. — Matt Chandler

We cannot know healing without knowing sickness. We cannot know peace without knowing anxiety. We cannot know light without experiencing darkness. And we cannot believe in the redeeming work of God without seeing the brokenness he is at work in. — Katie Blackburn

This is where Jean's stubbornness and, perhaps, God's stubborn grace came into play. "My definition of grace would be multifaceted, but part of it would certainly be God's passion for brokenness. He does, he really does love brokenness," Jean told me. "Grace doesn't obsess with ourselves. It obsesses with people and with brokenness. This is a hard place to live, but God is bigger than hard places to live. — Cathleen Falsani

When life presses you down remember that you weren't created for adversity. You were created for love. You were created for an eternally peaceful relationship with Jesus Christ. Remember this and walk in love toward your Savior. When life is hard don't question God, and don't blame Him. Press into Jesus and He'll comfort you. Satan would have you sit alone in brokenness but God would have you climb into His arms and be held. God Holds You Through It All No — Adam Houge

Our attitudes, our perspectives, our ways of relating to others, our methods of responding to the circumstances of the world around us, our self-image, even our understanding of God have all been shaped by the destructive values and dehumanizing structures of the world's brokenness. — M. Robert Mulholland Jr.

(speaking of insecurity)
"It's broken greater spirits than ours, and robbed the world of God knows how much beauty. I've seen it happen more times than I like to think about."
"$10,000 A Year, Easy — Kurt Vonnegut

The fact is, we will all be broken - sooner or later. We can choose to be broken or we can wait for God to crush our pride. If we resist the means God provides to lead us to brokenness, we do not avoid brokenness - we simply make it necessary for God to intensify and prolong the process. — Nancy Leigh DeMoss

True brokenness is a lifestyle - a moment-by-moment lifestyle of agreeing with God about the true condition of my heart and life - not as everyone else thinks it is but as He knows it to be. — Nancy Leigh DeMoss

But they did not blame God for this or ask Him for more. They knew their circumstances were due to the brokenness of this world and they simply praised Jesus for keeping them alive through it all. They believed in His goodness. — Katie J. Davis

Words matter, he tells them and us, and we have a choice to use them for good or for ill. We can choose to be boastful, mouth off a snide comment, fire a well-placed jab. Or we can let our words be a reflection of God's grace, so the words that echo are of peace and healing, not brokenness and pain. — Richelle Thompson

Whether it is overbearing parents, rebellious children, or an unfaithful spouse, God has the ability to transform our brokenness and use it to further his purposes. He also has a habit of using our dysfunction to deepen our devotion to him. — Michael Whitworth

When life knocks us down, God CAN put us back together again. He can meet us in our brokenness and restore us to something even more glorious than we were before we were shattered. — Heather Hart

God's grace is not defined as God being forgiving to us even though we sin. Grace is when God is a source of wholeness, which makes up for my failings. My failings hurt me and others and even the planet, and God's grace to me is that my brokenness is not the final word ... it's that God makes beautiful things out of even my own shit. Grace isn't about God creating humans and flawed beings and then acting all hurt when we inevitably fail and then stepping in like the hero to grant us grace - like saying, "Oh, it's OK, I'll be the good guy and forgive you." It's God saying, "I love the world too much to let your sin define you and be the final word. I am a God who makes all things new. — Nadia Bolz-Weber

Yes, I am sinful and flawed, but I am also loved and welcomed. It doesn't really matter what other people say or do. God loves me, even in my brokenness, and that's all that matters. — Elyse M. Fitzpatrick

Brokenness is the shattering of my self-will - the absolute surrender of my will to the will of God. It is saying "Yes, Lord!" - no resistance, no chafing, no stubbornness - simply submitting myself to His direction and will in my life. — Nancy Leigh DeMoss

David was caught in a very uncomfortable position; however, he seemed to grasp a deep understanding of the unfolding drama in which he had been caught. He seemed to understand something that few of even the wisest men of his day understood. Something that in our day, when men are wiser still, even fewer understand.
And what was that?
God did not have - but wanted very much to have - men and women who would live in pain.
God wanted a broken vessel. — Gene Edwards

The Ragamuffin rabble are the unsung assembly of saved sinners who are little in their own sight, conscious of their brokenness and powerlessness before God, and who cast themselves on His mercy. Startled by the extravagant love of God, they do not require success, fame, wealth, or power to validate their worth. Their spirit transcends all distinctions between the powerful and powerless, educated and illiterate, billionaires and bag ladies, high-tech geeks and low-tech nerds, males and females, the circus and the sanctuary. — Brennan Manning

Brokenness involves removing inappropriate pride and self-reliance and building healthy God-reliance. — John C. Maxwell

That's the place to begin, then. You have to decide what you believe about the nature of God before you can decide how to proceed. If God is good, then He can - and will - use your brokenness, whatever form that takes because we're all broken in some way - for your good and His glory. It may not be the way you want or expect. You may not even think, at first, that it is for your good, but over time He'll reveal Himself if you let Him. — Elizabeth Maddrey

The Risen Christ proclaimed not that we 'have to forgive,' but rather, that at last we CAN forgive-and thereby free ourselves from consuming bitterness and the offender from our binding condemnation. This process requires genuine human anger and grief, plus-and here is the awful cost of such freedom-a humble willingness to see the offender as God sees that person, in all his or her terrible brokenness and need for God's saving power. I would never tell another, 'You have to forgive.' — Gordon Dalbey

The miracle is in the breaking. It is in the breaking that God multiplies not enough into more than enough. Are there broken places in your life so painful that you fear the breaking will destroy you? Do you come from a broken home? Did you have a broken marriage? Did you have a broken past? Have you experienced brokenness in your body? Have your finances been broken? You may think your brokenness has disqualified you from being able to run in the divine relay, but as with my own life and Kalli's, when we give God our brokenness, it qualifies us to be used by God to carry a baton of hope, restoration, and grace to others on the sidelines who are broken. What should have disqualified Kalli from the race was the very thing that qualified her for it. Put your broken pieces into God's hands and watch him use them to work his wonders. — Christine Caine

Dear Child of God, I write these words because we all experience sadness, we all come at times to despair, and we all lose hope that the suffering in our lives and in the world will ever end. I want to share with you my faith and my understanding that this suffering can be transformed and redeemed. There is no such thing as a totally hopeless case. Our God is an expert at dealing with chaos, with brokenness, with all the worst that we can imagine. God created order out of disorder, cosmos out of chaos, and God can do so always, can do so now
in our personal lives and in our lives as nations, globally ... Indeed, God is transforming the world now
through us
because God loves us. — Desmond Tutu

I'm unfinished. I'm unfixed. And the reality is that's where God meets me is in the mess of my life, in the unfixedness, in the brokenness. I thought he did the opposite, he got rid of all that stuff. But if you read the Bible, if you look at it at all, constantly he was showing up in people's lives at the worst possible time of their life. — Mike Yaconelli

We are designed to dance. To use our bodies as weapons of grace, beauty and intrigue. We are designed to stretch until we master growth. To replace old dead cells and be physically renewed each moment. So challenges don't destroy us, they just should make us dance more swiftly and passionately. For when we dance we please God. Especially when we dance in brokenness. — Phindiwe Nkosi

Our life is full of brokenness - broken relationships, broken promises, broken expectations. How can we live with that brokenness without becoming bitter and resentful except by returning again and again to God's faithful presence in our lives. — Henri Nouwen

I think God pays attention to our hearts and enjoys when people want to get close to Him. He knows our sadness and the brokenness we want to hide from Him, and He sends people to look for us. — Bob Goff

If your relationship is draining your energy, making you lose yourself and taking your attention away from God, then you are not in a relationship but a cult. You are busy creating an idol (mini-God) for yourself. — Kemi Sogunle

In the midst of grief, there is no such thing as strong women of God. There is only brokenness, desperate need, and little girls in Daddy's lap. We are not called to be strong women. Oh, how that sentence makes me bristle. I want to be strong, independent, and capable. This broken, desperate need for Christ offends my mask. — Emily P. Freeman

(1) Recognize the darkness: Recognize the darkness of our littleness and brokenness. (2) Keep trying: Keep trying to grow in holiness and do little things with great love. (3) Keep trusting: Keep trusting and believing that God will satisfy our desires for holiness, even if we don't yet fully understand how. — Michael Gaitley

Was I the rebel kid? The lost college student who just wanted to be accepted? The legalistic man who battled self-righteousness? Was I a husband or a father or a hip-hop artist? Like a tree trunk, all those people were a part of me. They are a part of me. But more than anything, Lecrae is a child who is unconditionally loved by God. I'm a sinner who has been rescued by God from my brokenness and called to glorify the One who has never left my side. That's who Lecrae is, and that's who I'll always be. — Lecrae Moore

I am still not good enough. I am still not whole enough. I am still not pure enough. I am still weakness and sharp edges and broken, but He is good and pure and whole, all that I strive for but am not.
I wake up every morning and I sit in silence and I choose to believe. I may speak. I may not. I let Him wrap up all my broken in to His grace. He takes me imperfect. This is the great mystery I never knew. — Anna White

In fact, Carol and I have told each other more than once that if the spirit of brokenness and calling on God ever slacks off in the Brooklyn Tabernacle, we'll know we're in trouble, even if we have 10,000 in attendance. — Jim Cymbala

We resist our brokenness because we want to BE STRONG, but little do we know that strength is obtained only through our brokenness, because where we are weak and broken we find God's strength to get us through. — Heather Bixler

every time she remembered something painful, she could lift it up with her hands in worship or prayer and God would take her brokenness like an offering. — Nancy Alcorn

Our suffering is often the deep soul groaning for the purposes of God in and through us. Mission cannot be fulfilled without love, and we cannot love without groaning and suffering over the brokenness in others' lives. As a result, we cannot accomplish our mission without suffering. — Gregory Beale

Our greatest hope does not rest in the death of suffering. Neither does our help lie in us having a full and perfect life, with no pain, no brokenness, and no Lyme disease. Instead our hope lies in God and we hope in the fact that this is our temporary home and our forever home with Him in Heaven is perfect. This hope- this beautiful and living hope (I Peter 1:3-4) is for the future but also gives us hope for our present days. — Rebecca VanDeMark

When bridges seem to give way, we fall into Christ's safe arms, true bridge, and not into hopelessness. It is safe to trust! We can be too weak to go on because His strength is made perfect in utter brokenness and nail-pierced hands help up. It is safe to trust! We can give thanks in everything because there's a good God leading, working all things into good. It is safe to trust! The million bridges behind us may seem flattened to the earthly eye, but all bridges ultimately hold, fastened by nails. It is safe to trust. — Ann Voskamp

If you spend time judging and criticizing people, you will not have time to heal from your pain or brokenness. You cannot love yourself when you judge or criticize others who are created in God's image and after His Likeness...in which you are also created. Love cannot operate from a space of pain. Love and hurt cannot reside in the same space. — Kemi Sogunle

Brokenness is the STRIPPING OF SELF-RELIANCE AND INDEPENDENCE FROM GOD ... but he is cast in total dependence upon the grace of God working in and through him. — Nancy Leigh DeMoss

Most unmarried people have no idea what it takes to make a marriage work; they grossly underestimate the price people have to pay to build long-term, mutually satisfying relationships. And they fail to understand that the only people with the strength to pay that price are those who have plumbed the depths of their relationship with God, and have dealt with their own brokenness. — Bill Hybels

We are all wounded. But wounds are necessary for his healing light to enter into our beings. Without wounds and failure and frustrations and defeats, there will be no opening for his brilliance to tickle in and invade our lives. Failures in life are courses with very high tuition fees, so I don't cut classes and miss my lessons: on humility, on patience, on hope, on asking others for help, on listening to God, on trying again and again and again. — Bo Sanchez

When we cry out to God as a result of our pain and spiritual brokenness He hears us and is compelled to move on our behalf because of His love for us. However, when we complain it is an indictment against His authority as a God who knows His plans for us, and it is an outright contradiction to the faith that we say we have in Him. — Minister Donald Graham Jr.

In some mysterious way, in all his brokenness, he reveals to us our own brokenness, our difficulties in loving, our barriers and hardness of heart. If he is so broken and so hurt and yet is still such a source of life, then I, too, am allowed to look at my own brokenness and to trust that I, too, can give life to others. I do not have to pretend that I am better than others and that I have to win in all the competitions. It's okay to be myself, just as I am, in my uniqueness. That, of course, is a very healing and liberating experience. I am allowed to be myself, with all my psychological and physical wounds, with all my limitations but with all my gifts too. And I can trust that I am loved just as I am, and that I, too, can love and grow. — Rick Santorum

Our lives,our brokenness,our flaws and failures are precisely what God designed to reflect a perfect love. — Peter Adejimi

Holiness isn't a list of things to do or not do, though - it's a state of being. Holiness is what happens when the broken pieces of our hearts, the brokenness of our lives and the things we do to try to salve that brokenness, are continually turned over to God and left on the altar. The big Christianese word is sanctification. Sanctification is the hope of humanity. It's the golden ice-cream for the meal of grace. — Aaron Mark Reimer

Stepping back and connecting reconciliation to God's story also helps us move away from dramatic visions of fixing the world, as if our job were to provide solutions to problems outside us. If Christians believe anything, it is that no one - including ourselves and the church - is separate from the brokenness as an untainted solution to the problems of our world. The new creation contends with the old. The dividing line between good and evil runs straight through each one of us. So the journey of reconciliation begins with a transformation of the human person. — Chris Rice

You and I will never meet God in revival until we first meet Him in brokenness. — Nancy Leigh DeMoss

There is complete hope for terminal illness in the power of the Almighty God. The hands of Jesus are healing hands...the hands of Jesus are saving hands. Jesus brought peace and restoration, reconciliation, power, purpose, love, understading, purity and compatibility with him and the world we live in. we are healed through him. He mends brokenness and gives us back our lives which are stollen by the trials and suffering of this dark world. He is the light and life giving God. We ought to pray in our daily lives to receive from God, his help, upholding power and healing in the Name of Jesus Christ his one and only Son. When we ask from him...then we receive healing, relief from suffering, we stop living in fear of death. Read these books and experience the real presence of the supernatural, almighty sovereign and loving God. — Stellah Mupanduki

I have broken where I should have bent; and have mused and brooded, when my spirit should have mixed with all God's great creation. The men who learn endurance, are they who call the whole world, brother. I have turned from the world, and I pay the penalty. — Charles Dickens

To trust in you, Jesus - to boast in the gift of your righteousness, to rest in the constancy of your love, to wake up each day to your endless mercies, to hear you sing to us in the gospel - is to feel the stranglehold of shame lose its grip over our hearts. Jesus, I praise you for taking the guilt of our sin and the shame of our brokenness on the cross. You became sin for us that in you we might become the righteousness of God. Because of you, judgment day holds no terror. The cross was our judgment day. We no longer fear the gaze of God because of the grace of God we have in you. — Scotty Smith

Brokenness to redemption, where mercy and grace kiss both sides of our face.
Brokenness where we are split open.
Redemption where God knits us back together.
Mercy when we don't get the punishment we do deserve.
Grace when we get the lavish love gifts we don't deserve.
So here we are. — Lysa TerKeurst

It's my practice to welcome new people to the church by making sure they know that House for All Sinners and Saints will, at some point, let them down. That I will say or do something stupid and disappoint them. And then I encourage them to decide before that happens if they will stick around after it happens. If they leave, I tell them, they will miss the way that God's grace comes in and fills in the cracks left behind by our brokenness. And that's too beautiful to miss. — Nadia Bolz-Weber

Made for spirituality, we wallow in introspection. Made for joy, we settle for pleasure. Made for justice, we clamor for vengeance. Made for relationship, we insist on our own way. Made for beauty, we are satisfied with sentiment. But new creation has already begun. The sun has begun to rise. Christians are called to leave behind, in the tomb of Jesus Christ, all that belongs to the brokenness and incompleteness of the present world ... That, quite simply, is what it means to be Christian: to follow Jesus Christ into the new world, God's new world, which he has thrown open before us. — N. T. Wright

Suffering, sin, and evil are no longer located in God's will, but are understood as arising within a finite, open, developmental, and future-oriented creation. They are dealt with by the power of God's love revealed in the cross and resurrection of Jesus Christ. God's answer to the problem of woundedness and wickedness is not to show us now or in the eschaton how they fit into God's design or mosaic, but to show us how God overcomes the brokenness and maliciousness of the creation now and in the eschaton through the redemptive power of the cross and resurrection. Divine power is rethought as the suffering and transforming power of Jesus' cross and resurrection, not as the omnipotent power of the timeless will of God. Incarnation, instead of immutability, defines God's will and way. God is the suffering and transforming God. — Tyron Inbody

There is point in your life when you come face to face with the reality that you cannot take another step on your own. For me, I had never experienced that point, but depression brought me there. I have slowly, painfully and continually been confronted by my brokenness. Coming to terms with the fact that I am broken has been at the center of my accepting my being loved.
For me, now, there exists a sense of desperate need for what God brings to my spiritual and mental self. Without His voice I cannot cope with the darkness, but with His whisper of "you are My beloved", I can take a step each day away from the chasm. I am broken but not beyond mending, not beyond love.
It has been this desperation that has opened a crevice in which I am seeing Him for the first time. He is why my soul can find some peace even when my mind is dark and numb. It is this love that continually has brought me back from the edge of the impostor to the honesty of my broken, inner self — David Hulon Hood

God reminded me how beautiful we all are to Him, after all, we were created in His own image, and He looks at me, at you, in all our sweat and dirt and brokenness, and says, I choose you. You are beautiful. — Katie J. Davis

My season of weakness has taught me the joy of receiving, the strength of brokenness, and the importance of looking for God in each moment. Before cancer, I would have said — Kara Tippetts

Humility and brokenness before God is the key for Him to dwell in us. — Sunday Adelaja

I have to ask myself how I can possibly expect to know Jesus as he would want to be known if my life remains unscathed by trouble and grief. How can I hope to grasp anything of God's heart for this broken planet if I never weep because its brokenness touches me and breaks my heart? How can I reflect his image if I never share in his sufferings? And how will any of us ever learn to treasure his hesed and grace if we never experience phases where these blessings seem absent? — Carolyn Custis James

Leave the broken, irreversible past in God's hands, and step out into the invincible future with Him. — Oswald Chambers

God has not forgotten you . . . he has not abandoned you in your time of desperation. He often works best in your brokenness . . . a humble heart is more moldable in His hands. Stop worrying about the details . . . quit trying to figure it all out - God knows what He's doing. He's in control . . . even when life isn't. Trust that when your world seems to be falling apart . . . it's really just falling into place in the hands of your Almighty loving God. Trust. Wait. Rest. God's help is on the way. Wait in faith . . . and don't let "doubt" get the best of you. — Cherie Hill

I want neither a terrorist spirituality that keeps me in a perpetual state of fright about being in right relationship with my heavenly Father nor a sappy spirituality that portrays God as such a benign teddy bear that there is no aberrant behavior or desire of mine that he will not condone. I want a relationship with the Abba of Jesus, who is infinitely compassionate with my brokenness and at the same time an awesome, incomprehensible, and unwieldy Mystery. — Brennan Manning