In the midst of whatever darkness and stillness there is in your life, be encouraged. In the times of nothingness, God shined His grace-light and created a world full of beautiful things, beautiful things like you and me.
Nothingness
“God created the Heavens and Earth—all you see, all you don’t see. Earth was a soup of nothingness, a bottomless emptiness, an inky blackness. God’s Spirit brooded like a bird above the watery abyss.”1
All it took was His spoken word and everything was created, everything where there was nothing. And God called it good.
In the midst of our nothingness, God can just speak a word and everything will change. Everything, nothingness, despair, brokenness can all of a sudden bloom.
Hand It To God
God does His best work when we hand Him our nothingness and our brokenness. Many times we feel we are nothing and because of that, we are broken. Always there is someone more talented, smarter, prettier, more handsome, more charismatic than we are. Which makes us feel like a zero.
That’s OK. You are exactly where you need to be. Now, hand your nothingness to God and watch Him design the life you always imagined, but never dreamed could be yours. Humility is knowing exactly who you are in relation to an almighty God.
Remember God? He loves to work with clay. He is the potter. We are but putty in His hands. Don’t worry, though. He is the Master Craftsman.
Look Up
The posture of strength is facedown in His presence. It’s only in that place that He can lift us up. When we’ve hit rock bottom, the only way to go is up. The only place to look is up. The only place to cry out for mercy, forgiveness and grace is toward heaven.
We hand God our brokenness expecting Him to throw it away, cast it in the ocean. In essence, He takes our nasty experiences and they fall into the sea of forgetfulness.
Grace
From our lives, though, He takes the broken pieces and with His grace, refashions them into something beautiful. We have learned some lessons. We have been down some paths we never want to go down again. We have done some things we never want to do again.
He gently touches our wounded and weary souls, mends our tired and hurting hearts and soothes our battered and aching spirits. He grants us forgiveness for our failures based on His overflowing grace, which He pours over us with wisdom and understanding.2
Made New
In this process of being made new,3 we begin to look at the world with new vision. Everything has been made new4 by the Creator Himself. It’s as if we have been seeing through a foggy mirror and now we see clearly.
Eyes of grace
It’s His grace that brings everything into focus. For just a second, we are able to see through the eyes of grace. We see ourselves as He sees us and we understand, God looks at me through the lenses of destiny.
All that I’ve been through He can weave into my life message. The messes I once created, now cleaned up and made new, become the platform on which I stand—a victor, strong, delivered, an overcomer in Him.
Destiny
My imperfections, my brokenness become the beauty and uniqueness that is me. I have become His poetry, a recreated person who will fulfill the destiny He has given me, for I am joined to Jesus, the Anointed One. Even before I was born, He planned in advance my destiny and the good works I would do to fulfill it.5
He calls things that don’t exist into existence.6 He is Creator God. It’s what He does. It’s His job description. We have no idea who we are until we allow Him to remake us into His image. Until we put on our new nature, and be renewed as we learn to know our Creator and become like Him.7
If we allow Him to, He will take our broken lives and make them into beautiful things. He starts with our nothing and makes something astronomically glorious.
He makes beautiful things out of broken lives. It’s what He does.
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1 Genesis 1:1-2 MSG
2 Ephesians 1:7-8 CEB
3 2 Cor. 5:17 NIV
4 Revelation 21:5 NIV
5 Ephesians 2:10 TPT
6 Romans 4:17 CEB
7 Colossians 3:10 NLT
Teresa Shields Parker is a Christian weight loss author, coach, podcaster, and speaker, who has lost 250 pounds and kept it off since 2013. Her books include: “Reconnecting Jayne: Her Sister’s Support,” “Rebuilding Jayne: Her Father’s Protection,” “Sweet Grace: How I Lost 250 Pounds and Stopped Trying to Earn God’s Favor,” “Sweet Grace Study Guide,” “Sweet Victory: Winning the Battle,” “Sweet Surrender: Breaking Strongholds,” “Sweet Journey to Transformation: Practical Steps to Lose Weight and Live Healthy”, “Sweet Freedom: Losing Weight and Keeping It Off With God’s Help,” “Sweet Freedom Study Guide,” “Sweet Change: True Stories of Transformation,” “Sweet Hunger: Developing an Appetite for God,” and “Sweet Excuses: Stop Lying to Yourself & Start Losing Weight.” She also offers Overcomers Christian Weight Loss Academy and VIP intensive coaching. Don’t miss her weekly podcast, Sweet Grace for Your Journey, where she shares tips from her personal journey of losing weight and discovering healthy living. Contact her at [email protected].
Thank you for this post. It is beautiful. All through my life I have spoken of what I call God’s grace hugs. This is certainly one of them. I just want to thank you for all of your emails, blogs, etc. What precious teachings to help us to learn and be reminded of who we are in our Lord and His great love for us. Thank you and may God richly bless you and your ministry.
Grace hugs, I like that. Might have to do a blog post about that some day!