I also watched a few of my favorite holiday movies.
On Thursday I watched “It’s A Wonderful Life.” This movie has some bad theology (such as angels being men who have to merit their wings) but it’s theme takes a look at the providence of God in seeing that while things may not turn out the way we had hoped or planned, if we look back with gratefulness we can see He has used the circumstances in our life to build in us character and to benefit others whether we realize it or not.
On Friday I watched the “Rudolph the Rednosed Reindeer” (the clay animation movie) and found myself singing along with Rudolph:
"Why am I such a misfit? I'm not such a nitwit, why don't I fit in?"
Rudolph meets an elf (who wants to be a dentist) and a crazy prospector and then they make their way to an entire island of misfit and broken toys.
These toys just need to be loved and given a home.
Each and every toy has something wrong with them, they don’t function or fit in as they should and consequently they have been discarded and then collected by the king, a flying lion, who brings them to the Island of Misfit Toys.
When Rudolph, the dentist and the prospector arrive they go before the king asking for a home but the king tells them that the island is only for toys.
The king then tells Rudolph that when he sees Santa, to remind him of these toys who just need a home and to be loved.
When I went to church on Sunday I couldn’t help but think of the island as the world, the toys as broken people and that the church as the home for misfit toys.
Perhaps some Christians are better at acting like they’re whole, but most of us have some sort of brokenness, misfitness, and that is why we need Christ.
Now, if we can just get everybody to stop playing reindeer games and just ADMIT their brokenness we might discover a lot of healing going on.
I am currently working on a chapter in my book in which I answer the question, “Was I born Gay?”
In it I discuss the consequences of the fall and the effect that original sin has had on mankind - mentally, physically, socially, psychologically, and emotionally.
The Bible teaches us about the effect of the fall from a number of different angles such that sin is not just “bad things we do” (violating God’s law in iniquities, trespasses, and transgressions) but it is also a condition that we are in that is spoken of as uncleanness (pictured in the purity laws), disease, slavery, oppression, bondage and brokenness.
The result of our personal brokenness is a bent towards sin often manifested in sexual brokenness. Serial divorces, prostitution, addiction to pornography and same sex attractions are but a few types of sexual brokenness in which a person attempts to fill an emotional desire, a thirst, in a sinful manner.
Sexual brokenness is an emotional drive within us to fix something which is broken through a sexual act.
The fall from grace in the Garden of Eden has infected sin into the heart of mankind and the consequences is that we no longer function intellectually and emotionally as originally designed because we are broken in the totality of our humanity.
With the mind, will, and emotions of human infected with the disease of sin, the self-destructive fallen nature of mankind compels us to choose to sin resulting in broken and hurting people who long for wholeness. This then has an effect on our families, our society, our culture and the entire world.
The result of our personal brokenness is a bent towards sin often manifested in sexual brokenness. Serial divorces, prostitution, addiction to pornography and same sex attractions are but a few types of sexual brokenness in which a person attempts to fill an emotional desire, a thirst, in a sinful manner.
For example, the woman at the well went from husband to husband and the man she was with when she met Jesus was not her husband. (John 4:17-18) But Jesus doesn’t quote the seventh commandment to her, “Thou shalt not commit adultery.” (Exodus 20:14) Rather He addresses the underlying issue, the need for living water and to worship in spirit and in truth that can only come through knowing the Messiah. Jesus was concerned with more than (but not less than) the external behavior of this woman’s serial divorce. He went to the root of the sin, her brokenness that could only be healed by His living water.
Yet, as sinners even Christians often continue to attempt to heal our brokenness in a sinful manner with that which cannot quench our spiritual thirst and the satisfy the longings of our heart.
It might be tempting at this point to simply declare to people “If you have a broken heart, come to Jesus and you’ll be healed” but more often times than not Jesus heals people through a process.
Just as the man born blind in Mark chapter 8:23-25 was healed in stages, first seeing in a blurry fashion and then clearly, so too just as we often need time to heal from a physical injury, so too it is with our receiving the liberty and freedom from sin and all of its affects.
Healing sexual brokenness is often a process.
And the first step is recognizing our brokenness, rightly diagnosing it and then seeking, by the grace of God, to go through the healing process.




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