We live in a world that is “so dark and getting darker and darker.” Yet, we are chosen by God to be a “little light here and there” that gives the world hope. While life itself is often challenging and not always what we want it to be, the greatest assurance we have is that Jesus Christ loves us.
Today, we focus on the core mission of the Gospel, recalling that even in our darkest moments of feeling ruined or useless, we are broken, but not beyond repair.
The True Focus of the Gospel
The purpose of the Gospel has often been “thwarted” or turned on its head, moving away from what Jesus highlighted. For instance, a prevailing spirit in the church world, particularly the Pentecostal sphere, is materialism. This focus on materialism, where some suggest that being spiritual requires one to “own a fleet of Cadillacs” or that converting to Christianity guarantees your business will flourish, is a direct fulfilment of prophecy for the Laodicean church age.
While God certainly blesses us (and a flourishing business is good), what we truly need is a testimony of the power of the resurrection of Jesus Christ as a living witness.
The spirit of the Lord was upon Christ to accomplish a sixfold purpose, as prophesied in Isaiah 61. The scripture states, “The spirit of the Lord is upon me because the Lord hath anointed me to preach good tidings unto the meek. He had sent me to bind up the broken-hearted…”
The poverty Christ speaks of is often not material poverty, but the poverty of the “gold that is tried in fire,” the spiritual lack that plagued even the materially wealthy church of Laodicea. The second crucial purpose is to heal the brokenhearted.
The Tender Care of the Master Repairer
The Gospel is defined by Christ’s unique ability to deal with what man considers hopeless. Isaiah 42:3 highlights this beautifully: “A bruised reed shall he not break, and the smoking flax shall he not quench.”
Consider what these images mean:
- The Bruised Reed: A bruised reed is like a plant that is wilting down and almost gone, so tender that if anyone touches it, it will completely break. It looks impossible for man to fix. Yet, the anointing that Jesus Christ carries is to fix that broken reed and make it stand up again.
- The Smoking Flax/Smouldering Wick: When the light in a wick is about to die out, it has only a “very little light” left, and the next stage is to smoke up and die. If you touch it, that wick is going to die out and cease producing light. No man has the ability to reignite it. Jesus Christ, however, has the unique ability to ignite it and make it produce light again.
Every man who attempts to fix a broken reed would likely shatter it completely, but Christ is the repairer of shattered lives.
Life is experienced in cycles and seasons. You may experience a “summer”—a time of plenty where everything seems to work, and you might feel like God’s favorite child. But just as Pharaoh’s dream foretold seven years of plenty followed by seven years of drought, life inevitably moves into a different season.
If you are in your summer, you must plan for winter. Winter is not just about material lack; the “winter of your life” can be a time when you acted foolishly, lacked understanding, or believed that godliness was a “bondage.”
The Boundaries of Freedom
In the exuberance of youth or the search for liberty, many seek “freedom with no restrictions.” While there is true freedom in Christ, that freedom has boundaries—and those boundaries are the Word of God.
Like a vehicle that can “gas and go,” it needs a brake system; otherwise, it will self-destruct. A life that cannot exercise self-discipline, such as a married person who cannot be content with their spouse, will self-destruct. To avoid looking back and feeling foolish, we must stay in the confines of the Word of God. As Psalms 11:19 asks, “How can a young man keep his ways by guarding his life according to your word?”
Dealing with Doubt: Learning from John the Baptist
Sometimes, the winter season brings heavy doubt. John the Baptist, who spent his entire life proclaiming Christ, reached a point in prison where he sent his disciples to ask Jesus, “Are you the one that was to come, or should we look for another?” John was struggling, possibly wondering why Christ had not miraculously delivered him from Herod, feeling that his trial was weighing too heavy.
This experience teaches us a vital lesson: Doubt is not sin. The actual sin is unbelief. God does not judge doubt; He dissolves it. Thomas doubted, and Christ showed up to dissolve his doubt.
When you are going through a difficult season or wrestling with doubt, John showed us the path: He took his doubt to the Word (Jesus Christ). He did not seek answers from the religious leaders like Caiaphas or the Pharisees, nor did he go to social media or TikTok, where his faith would be further destroyed.
When John’s disciples came to Christ, Jesus directed them back to Isaiah 61, telling them to report what they heard and saw: “The blind receive your sight. The lame walk, the lepers are cleansed… and the poor have the gospel preached to them.” He finished by saying, “Blessed is he whosoever shall not be offended in me.”
John was on the brink of being offended in Christ due to his current, unattended condition. But when the Word dissolves the doubt, and if we then choose unbelief, God judges that choice.
The Church is a Clinic, Not a Synagogue
If you are sitting here feeling messed up, thinking, “I could never be useful again,” or “I won’t be accepted in the church anyways,” listen: You may be unacceptable to religion, but I want to introduce you to the repairer of broken lives.
Religion has never fixed anyone; it throws you away. This is what happened to the adulterous woman and the woman at the well. The church is not a synagogue where “everybody is acting up” (hypocrisy). The church is a clinic. It is meant to be an environment where a “broken reed can be made straight again by the word of God”.
The purpose of the Gospel is restoration. We are ministers of reconciliation. Our job is not to chase away the “bad sheep” and keep the good ones. Christ leaves the ninety-nine to go after the one lost sheep, knowing he gets no star for a lost sheep.
Trophies of Transformation
Think of those whose lives were wrecked:
- Paul: He was a horrible, injurious fellow, rejected by the religious spirit of the apostles. He made many homes destitute. Yet, in that rough was a diamond. When Ananias questioned using him, the Repairer said, “I will fix it and I will use it. You don’t worry about that. That is my job”.
- The Woman at the Well / Mary Magdalene: The woman at the well came to the water to feed her addiction. Mary Magdalene was a shattered life out of whom seven demons were cast. These are the trophies we need in the church—people whose lives have been shattered by sin, whom we can point to and say, “The repairer of life gave this one his life back”.
If Christ could bring a Paul out of Saul, “a clean out of an unclean,” then He can fix you too.
Don’t be ashamed or scared of your condition. Be free to bring it forward and say, “This is what I’m struggling with”. If a believer is overcome in a fault, the godly should not chase them away but restore such a one.
You may be broken, but you are never beyond repair. He wants to cleanse you and use you.