So How Do You Live A Broken But Redeemed Life?

1. Offer to God your past, especially the darkest memories you have had. We all have hit rock-bottom at least once in our lives, yet God can work wonders in that rock-bottom situation if we allow Him. Let God heal you. Learn from your mistakes and move on. Let God transform you into the man or woman He wants you to be.
2. Forgive from the heart all those who have wronged and abused you, especially those who are closest to you. We sin against others like others sinned against us. Do not hold a grudge against others. Release your offenders from your mental prisons – it is you who are imprisoned, not them. Forgive others from the heart, a hard as it may be. This is key for you to live a truly redeemed life; you are allowing yourself to be a new person in Christ, free from any bondage of bad memories, hurts, and anger.
3. 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] You are a new person in Jesus. Your past does not define or dictate who you are now – Jesus does. You can break the chains of the past. You don't have to repeat the past mistakes. With the power of the Holy Spirit, you can start a new path if you need to – don’t be limited or be imprisoned by your past. Be free!
4. Make your main goal in life to love as Jesus would. Love should be your motive in all your relationships. Do not let your past memories and experiences affect your motive and goal in life.
5. Make the most of your relationships – do not take people for granted. Outdo one another in showing honor. Enjoy the gift of friendship now, which can be a start of an eternal friendship - with God in heaven.
6. Live your daily life in the light of your eternal destiny. Don't endanger your spiritual treasure and legacy with the pursuit of something fleeting, no matter how good it feels at that time. The highest joy you can have in this life is only for a fleeting moment. What God has in store for you lasts forever - see Matthew 6:19-20.
7. Rejoice in the hope that you have in Jesus - because within your grasp in a fairytale life with God forever, where there is no mourning, crying, or pain anymore [Revelations 21: 4].
   

1. For I know the plans I have for you, declares the LORD, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope. [Jeremiah 29:11 ESV]
2. When the perishable puts on the imperishable, and the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written: "Death is swallowed up in victory." "O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?" The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. [1 Corinthians 15:54-57 ESV]
3. Others: 1 Peter 1:3-9; Romans 5:3-5; Isaiah 40:31; Psalm 31:24; and Romans 8:31-39..

What brokenness are you still suffering from your past? How can Jesus redeem that memory? What do you need to do to forget what lies behind and strain forward to what is ahead [Philippians 3:13]?

Tom Caballes is the National Senior Administrator and a National Coordinator of the Lamb of God, a community of the Sword of the Spirit with 7 branches located throughout New Zealand. Tom also leads Kairos New Zealand, an outreach program for high school, university, and post-university aged people.  Tom and his wife Mhel and their two daughters live in Wellington, New Zealand.

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