Fractured

Are you a fractured person?  Here is one definition of fracture: A fracture is the (local) separation of a body into two, or more, pieces under the action of stress.  I believe the enemy is in the fracture business.  He has been trying to divide us and break us from the very beginning.  He lied to Adam and Eve and the result was separation (fracture) from God.  It resulted in separation from the garden.  It resulted in a fracture from the tree of life.  It was the stress that broke the relationship between man and the creator.

We experience fractures in our life that sometimes never heal.  These take place in our soul.  If they aren’t cared for, splinted or somehow addressed they become permanent breaks or deformed versions of the original.  Have you ever seen a broken bone that mended and it wasn’t set properly?  Yuck!

I think about as a kid how one day (circumstances I won’t share here) I became “fractured” from my parents.  I felt I could no longer trust them.  The result was a powerful desire for independence and self-reliance.  When I was young I also had a loosing encounter with a dog and the result was some pretty awful looking scars on my face.  As a little kid that draws the kind of attention you don’t want.  So again more independence, more self-reliance.  There are other similar events…loss of a loved one, loss of a cherished pet, broken relationship with a girlfriend, rejection by a group I really wanted to join…

I am being very transparent not to solicit your empathy but to put a mirror in front of you.  Ask God where there are fractures in your life.  He will fix them.  It might take some manipulation to set the bone properly, but it will be healed and restored.  The funny thing about a broken bone is when it heals properly it is stronger where the break was then before the break.  Just saying.

The worst fracture however is the one that the enemy brings inside of us and religion feeds through law and self-effort and shame and guilt and condemnation.  Check out these verses:

Rom 7:22 For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, 23 but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members.

Gal 5:16 But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. 17 For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do.

How often have you heard the pastor or preacher or televangelist or friend or self-righteous family member or…say “you are just evil inside and you need to get control of that.”  First I must say that is a LIE.  If you don’t know Jesus you are fractured from Him.  In this state you are subject to the slavery of a sin nature.  It is from the enemy.  It is the thing that takes selfishness and makes it an accepted paradigm.  That issue need to be addressed and Jesus does that on the cross.  As a child of God you are severed from that sin nature once and for all.  As a born again believer you are a new creation, holy and sanctified.  You are pleasing to God, born into the beloved and are the righteousness of God.  It isn’t positional, or metaphorical but actual.  You are not evil in any way.  The devil and religion want you to think differently.

For me there are still things about me that I don’t like or don’t understand.  There are things that I see in the mirror of my soul that I feel don’t belong.  For you it may be a big thing like an addiction or habit or some other “bad” thing you do over and over again.  That doesn’t make you evil.  That doesn’t mean you have a war going on inside of you.  If you are still judging yourself based on “the law” then you are working outside of Grace.  God went so far as to die so you would no longer be subject to condemnation in any form including self-reflection.  You are not a fractured person.  You are a person who is learning lies from truth.  You are a person who is learning to see like Jesus sees instead of how the world (lawyers) see.  You are a little innocent child learning to walk all over again.  God has infinite Grace for that behavior issue.  Sometimes it isn’t a behavior issue at all but a deception of depravity.  Sometimes there is something you think you need that God hasn’t given you that you have decided to get on your own.  The reasons and excuses are innumerable but the answer is always the same, JESUS.  Check out this passage in The Message translation.

Romans 8:3-4
The Message
God went for the jugular when he sent his own Son. He didn’t deal with the problem as something remote and unimportant. In his Son, Jesus, he personally took on the human condition, entered the disordered mess of struggling humanity in order to set it right once and for all. The law code, weakened as it always was by fractured human nature, could never have done that. The law always ended up being used as a Band-Aid on sin instead of a deep healing of it. And now what the law code asked for but we couldn’t deliver is accomplished as we, instead of redoubling our own efforts, simply embrace what the Spirit is doing in us. 

Do you see it?  “Our fractured human nature.”  The devil has been deceiving us into believing we are fracture.  On this side of the cross, as a new-creation, as one in Christ, as a born again believer in Jesus, we are not fractured!  You may see stuff in your life that you wish was different or better or just gone but remember that the Holy Spirit is working on that very thing if you stop seeing yourself as fractured.  If you put your “behavior stuff” in a separate box and call it garbage that needs to go, He can’t work on it.  The very thing that has been distorted into bad behavior may be your greatest gift from God.  Todd White was a really good drug addict.  Now he is the most addicted person to Jesus I have ever seen.  When he surrendered to God he gave Him everything.  God took addiction to drugs and turned into passion for Christ.  If you apply law, judgement, condemnation to the blemish it will fester, it can’t be healed by Grace.

Gal 5:4 If you want to be made holy by fulfilling the obligations of the Law, you have cut off more than your flesh— you have cut yourselves off from Christ and have fallen away from the revelation of grace! 5 But the Holy Spirit convinces us that we have received by faith the glorious righteousness of Christ. 6 When you’re placed into the Anointed One and joined to Him, circumcision and religious obligations can benefit you nothing. The only thing that truly matters now is living in the faith that is activated and brought to perfection by love. (Passion Translation)

Yield to the Spirit and let Him do what He does so well.  Don’t suppress or manage or anything else based on law.  Surrender to Him instead.

Gal 5:16 As you yield freely and fully to the dynamic life and power of the Holy Spirit, you will abandon the cravings of your self -life.  17 For your self- life craves the things that offend the Holy Spirit and hinder Him from living free within you! And the Holy Spirit’s intense cravings hinder your old self-life from dominating you! The Holy Spirit is the only One who defeats the cravings of your natural life…Keep in mind that we who belong to Jesus, the Anointed One, have already experienced crucifixion. For everything connected with our self-life was put to death on the cross and crucified with Christ. (Passion Translation)

God will show you how to be free of self-thinking.  Remember before you knew God it was normal to think in terms of self-life.  He has to show us how different (and wonderful) it is to live His life.

Gal 5:17 For your self- life craves the things that offend the Holy Spirit and hinder Him from living free within you! And the Holy Spirit’s intense cravings hinder your old self-life from dominating you! The Holy Spirit is the only One who defeats the cravings of your natural life. So then, the two incompatible and conflicting forces within you are your self-life of the flesh and the new creation life of the Spirit. (Passion Translation)

If you apply the law to your own self, your list making and judgement you will group your “stuff” into bins.  This will absolutely fracture you in who you are.  You will see a good and bad person.  Paul is very clear that we are free from the law.  We are free from condemnation.  We are free from law-induced stress fractures.

Gal 5:18  But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law. (ESV)

Gal 5:18 But when you are brought into the full freedom of the Spirit of Grace, you will no longer be living under the domination of the law, but soaring above it! (Passion Translation)

Rom 8:1 There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. 2 For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death (ESV)

For me I am learning to see me as a whole person.  I am learning to see my good and bad stuff as just who I am.  I am trusting God to reveal to me where I am believing a lie and removing any lies that lead to bad behavior.  I have resolved to stop seeing myself as fractured.  I am wonderfully made.  I may not know it all the time.  I may partner with lies on occasion.  I may lash out in rebellion when I feel I’m not getting my way.  Jesus is the answer to all that.  As I grow in Him I grow in the faith that says “God is that good.”  My worries evaporate.  My desires are met.  My perceived dysfunction becomes my greatest asset.  My weaknesses are overcome in His strength.  I begin to finally see me as He sees me.  It is like stepping back into that little innocent kid I used to be, secure in Him, trusting in Him and letting Him love me as He intended.  Let us no longer live as fractured people.  Jesus died so we wouldn’t have to be.

Yay God!

Lance