Tag Archives: fear

You’re Broken, Not Defective

You might be broken, but you’re not defective. They’re not the same thing, not at all.

You could think of it like this. You make a clay pot and put it in the kiln. When you take it out, the handle falls off, and the bottom crumbles. That’s defective. It wasn’t made well. It’s junk. You make another clay pot and it turns out beautiful. Then someone drops it on the floor. Now it’s broken. It was made perfectly, but later it got damaged.

That is me, and maybe you, too. Most importantly, it’s Jesus. Brokenness is something he, you, and I all have in common. He was perfect, but he got thrown on the floor and broken. He was abused, taken advantage of, and violated in the worst possible way. (See also
https://freespiritseedcompany.com/2022/01/22/2/)

He was broken — all the way broken — maybe just like you.

Your heavenly Father defines who you are, not your brokenness.

He was forsaken by his friends, beaten repeatedly, tortured.

But that is very different from being defective.

Your heavenly Father defines who you are, not your brokenness. Not other people. And not even you. He made you wonderful, the Bible says (Psalm 139:14). He is The Highest Artisan, and he personally handcrafted you, right there in your mother’s womb (Psalm 139:13).

Maybe someone lied and said you’re a mistake, an accident, should never have been born. I’m gonna be honest and say your Creator drew the detailed blueprints for you way before you were ever conceived. Before time began, to tell the truth. So no, you’re no accident. You have purpose. You should ask him to reveal that to you. It might be as simple as, “He put me here to praise him.”

A defective pot is worthless and useless. But a handsome, beautiful pot that has been shattered only needs to be put back together. He can do that with you, just like happened with Jesus. It’s his specialty.

“I will restore to you the years that the swarming locust has eaten, the hopper, the destroyer, and the cutter, my great army, which I sent among you.” ‭‭Joel‬ ‭2‬:‭25‬ ‭ESV‬‬

That is an agricultural image. Picture endless miles of crops. Millions of insects descend on it, devour, and leave it in shreds. Maybe that is like many of the years in your life. It is mine. Somehow, he is slowly restoring to me ‘the years the locust has eaten,’ piece by piece. He’s putting my broken pieces back in place. It’s mysterious, but he can repay to you everything you lost, as he promised. Just keep following him, and don’t give up.

“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.”
‭‭2 Corinthians‬ ‭5‬:‭17‬ ‭ESV‬‬
If he can make us from the dust, can’t he remake us, too?

“But now, O Lord, you are our Father; we are the clay, and you are our potter; we are all the work of your hand.”
‭‭Isaiah‬ ‭64‬:‭8‬ ‭ESV‬‬

It’s Ok If You’re Afraid

“Fear not, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.” Luke 12:32

Somebody is afraid. Maybe with good reason. God is not angry at you for feeling scared. Are you going to bring it to him? Or carry it yourself. He is not mad, but just understand you don’t have to be afraid.

Isn’t that what Psalm 23 is about? “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me.” That means you’re surrounded by evil. It’s dark, shadowy. The normal response is to fear. Father says you can be inside the evil and not fear it because He is with you in it.

The Grass on Your Shoe

Next time you walk into your house with a piece of grass on your shoe, think about this scripture. Then maybe upgrade the way you think about your enemies (physical, political, etc.).

“Fret not yourself because of evildoers; be not envious of wrongdoers! For they will soon fade like the grass [tan wisps on your shoe that degrade into dust] and wither like the green herb.”
‭‭Psalm‬ ‭37‬:‭1‬-‭2‬ ‭ESV

Maybe fear, anger, or bitterness are not the best response. If we saw them how God does, we would ‘fret not’ because they are already fading like dead, brown grass.

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More Important than Loving God?

First off, you probably already know how Jesus summarized the most important commands for humans. “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.”
Matthew 22:37-40

So love God and love each other. What could possibly be more fundamental? Maybe: whatever empowers and motivates us to obey those commands. That, I think, is God’s love toward us.

“We love because he first loved us.”
1 John 4:19

You can be nice to anyone out of sheer will power, at least for a few minutes. But that is not why we treat our good friends well. We’re kind to our closest friends because it just flows out of us naturally. We don’t have to ‘try.’ In fact, we may even be nicer to other people when we’re around that friend because that’s just the effect they have on us.

Similarly, the more time you spend meditating or thinking about the love of God for you personally, the more you will find love spontaneously coming out of you toward God and others. Knowing he loves us makes love flow out of us naturally.

The only thing more important than receiving God’s love for us is Who He Is in himself. He, of course, is Love. “God is love,” I John 4:8.

This is good news for those of us who feel undeserving, because it recalibrates everything. Do you see it? Where is the focus when we think, “How could God love me? I don’t deserve it. I’ve done all these bad things?” Yeah, that’s what we say we are looking at ourselves. Which is why this verse is so great. When we look away from self to Father, we go, “Oh, now I get it. He doesn’t love me because of me. He loves me because of him.” Like when people say, “Well, that’s just the way I am.” And God is saying, “I am loving because that’s just the way I am.”

The very most important thing is Who God Is.

So, the more time and effort we invest into finding out what his personality is like, what makes him tick, the better we’ll understand why he has so much affection for us.

And the more we realize how deeply we are loved, the more it naturally transforms us into loving people. It takes less and less effort (although it still takes effort) and becomes more second nature. And that makes it a zillion times easier to love God and others.

Something about Tenderness in the Sun

If your image of God is that he is cruel, psycho, or hateful, I want to share something a little bit science-y with you.

I painted this on my basement wall. It shows the size of the Sun and Earth, to scale. The Earth is the dot the arrow is pointing at. It is the size of a quarter (I traced around one). The Sun, as you can see, is taller than my door, stretches higher than the ceiling and lower than the floor.

Earth would actually be three football fields away. Try to imagine standing in your doorway (like the one above) with a friend holding out a quarter from that far away. How small would it seem?

Yet the gravity of the Sun is so vast it can hold onto that quarter-sized planet from such a distance.

In fact, it’s so big you could fit one million Earths inside the Sun and still have extra room for them to jiggle around.

In the Bible, Jesus is compared with the Sun (Malachi 4:2, Revelation 1:16).

The size of the Sun compared to Earth is something like the size of Jesus compared to you and me. That would also be the size of his tenderness.

Notice the words tender and comfort in these verses.

“Comfort, comfort my people, says your God. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and cry to her that her warfare is ended, that her iniquity is pardoned.” Isaiah 40:1-2a

“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction.” 2 Corinthians 1:3-4a

And finally, Luke 1:78 speaks of “the tender mercy of our God.” Not just mercy, but tender mercy.

If we imagine God as a tyrant, like an alcoholic father, we have missed something important. Sure, he has some rules like any good leader. But if, for the past ten or twenty years God has mainly seemed angry, maybe take the next couple decades pondering his tenderness. Then things may seem more in balance.

Conquering Fear

When we figure out why Jesus had no fear, we will start becoming like him in this respect.

So, why was he fearless?

It may be tempting to retort, “Because he was God,” which really means (at least when I say it), “That’s not a realistic goal for me.”

If we consider, however, less intimidating aspirations for the Christian, it would seem fearlessness falls among them.

Take the fruit of the Spirit, for example (Galatians 5:22-23), which includes love, joy, peace, patience, gentleness, goodness, faith. Fear and peace cannot coexist. Nor fear with joy, nor faith.

So fear needs to go. It has to go.

What made Jesus fearless?

If you feel fearful about the future, me, too. I struggle with it every single day. Often it’s on my mind when I wake up before I’m even out of bed, frequently during the day, and when I lie down. Covid. Civil unrest, nationally and worldwide, politics, etc.


My stomach stays in knots. I get withdrawn and irritable when I’m afraid, which is a lot.
Sing-songy Sunday School verses and cartoon Bible stories profit me nothing when I am afraid like this.


“Everything that could be shaken was shaken, And all that remains is all I ever really had,” articulated Rich Mullins.


When I look around me, everything is shakable. My health, my family, my freedom, all of it.


Sometimes the world looks hopeless, which is a ghastly word if you think about what it really means.

The Sovereignty of God is my only Rock, the only fixed point in the swirling tempest. He has not made the suffering around me go away, but he is my anchor in the middle of it.


I have hope because *he* holds onto *me.* If you can get what I’m saying, God doesn’t help those who help themselves. He helps those who can’t. He helps me when my strength is zero. I am not a strong, rugged individual, an army of one. I am helpless.


‘For I, the Lord your God, hold your right hand; it is I who say to you, “Fear not, I am the one who helps you.” ‘Isaiah 41:13

I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand. John 10:28


Fear not, for I am with you; be not dismayed, for I am your God; I will strengthen you, I will help you, I will uphold you with my righteous right hand. Isaiah 41:10