Men With No Repute

Do you ever have those days where you think to yourself, "I really have no idea what I'm doing!" and there comes a severe revelation in your soul that most of what other people see is a complete farce?

I'm having one of those days. It's like unwrapping gifts, only underneath the tightly creased edges of the box and past the perfect placement of the ribbon-tied bow lies a broken gift, shattered by its own weight. Broken, ugly, and sharp enough to cut whoever tries to handle it. That's how I feel today.

I know that some of my brothers and sisters, if they read this, would try to encourage me and "put me back together," some may even try to rewrap this brokenness with pretty paper and ribbon. But I know that this is where I need to be. I am not in despair over my brokenness, and I know that a rewrap is just a thin facade of useless shimmer, not the Real. I want the Real. So, forget the wrapping paper, the shine, the perfect-looking folds. I want you to see the broken man, the shattered man, the weak man.

I am a self-centered and arrogant piece of work. My sense of justice usually revolves around my enjoyment, not the Word of God. I am prone to turn my eyes from suffering, rather than run to help or to cry out in anger when I see injustice. Why is this? Why, when I know in my head the grace of God in Jesus toward me, do I not love like Him? Why do I not weep over the cruelty of inaction within my heart? How long, O Lord? Come again to sweep away my self-reliance with the powerful wind of your Spirit! Let me not stay on this course, but blow me another way, to the leading of change...again.

I will not run from brokenness, from weakness, from the reality of my ineptitude or even my inaptitude. Jesus is my strength of change. Jesus is my source of love. Jesus is my soul's cry for redemption and hope and peace and joy! Jesus! Your beloved needs you now. Perfect my weakness and be my all in all.

My prayer for you is the same my friend. Be broken, take off the wrapped facade of repute, and see Jesus as your only strength and hope for REAL redemption and change and joy. Let us be men with no repute of our own, so that Jesus would be revealed as the Sovereign King of Grace. Then, and only then, will we mount up with wings as eagles, walk and not grow weary. In complete reliance we find our wings and ride the updraft of the powerful Holy Spirit of God. Faith producing the powerfully effective fruit from the very heart of God.

Join me in my prayers, to the glory of God alone.