Today I welcome Christi Armstrong to my blog and love her insight and heart!

When I was a little girl, I LOVED candy corn. It was one of my favorite treats, and is now one of my daughter’s “go to’s” as well. My grandfather always had some around the house and I remember, I would eat and eat and eat, untill I got sick from so much sugar. Good memories for me.

As I was sitting down at the table today, looking at my daughter’s bowl of candy corn that she is diligently and patiently working through, as fast as mommy will let her, I started thinking about the process I used, to decide which ones to eat. I wasn’t a “take a handful and pile it in” kind of kid. I hand picked all my pieces and ate them slowely, section by section (I still firmly believe the different sections have different flavors), savoring each one.

While digging my finger around in the pile of yellow orange and white yummyness today, I thought about how, as a little girl, I always chose the the ‘different’ ones. You know, the ones without the white on top, the ones with no yellow or a forgotten middle section, the factory “oops’s”. Somehow, in my child’s brain, those were the special ones, the unique ones, and I would pride myself in finding all of those that I could and snatching them away for my own pile of treats. They were more exciting to me than the rest of the bag combined.

Isn’t this so much like how our Father views us? We see our broken, battered, differences as imperfections, making us flawed and unworthy of significance. But God sees them as unique life marks, created or allowed by Him to frame and shape who we are and who we are to become. He knows that to be different is an exciting thing, because it’s by being set apart and different that we can have the capacity to change the world around us. If we don’t walk through any pain, we can’t very effectively help others who are going through it too.

Our pain can cripple us, or it can single us out to be able to help others who are breaking now, who are realizing how different they are right now, who are getting pieces torn out of them at this moment. How else can we really help them, than by having walked through that fire ourselves?

God doesn’t look at our scars and see us as the good, the bad and the ugly…He sees us, all of us, as His children who have been wounded in the battle and if we let him, He can use those wounds to help heal others. There is beauty that comes from pain, if you stop protecting it long enough to let God close enough to heal you and use it for His Glory.

Give thanks for your broken pieces, because through them, God is giving you an opportunity to serve Him. Though our bodies or our emotions may be broken or wounded for a time, our spirits are made whole through the touch of His hand and this will give us the strength to continue on. While you are continuing on, don’t just carry that brokenness around with you, letting it weigh you down as you walk through life. Use it to glorify Him, by guiding others to Him through it. Allow God to create and fulfill the purpose and meaning of your pain.

Christi Armstrong
http://www.facebook.com/ChristiArmstrong.page

If you would like to subscribe to this blog and receive my reflections as an email for free: click here.

God bless,

Mark Brown

If you would like to subscribe to this blog and receive my reflections as an email for free: click here.

God bless,

Mark Brown

If you would like to subscribe to this blog and receive my reflections as an email for free: click here.

God bless,

Mark Brown

If you would like to subscribe to this blog and receive my reflections as an email for free: click here.

God bless,

Mark Brown

If you would like to subscribe to this blog and receive my reflections as an email for free: click here.

God bless,

Mark Brown

If you would like to subscribe to this blog and receive my reflections as an email for free: click here.

God bless,

Mark Brown

If you would like to subscribe to this blog and receive my reflections as an email for free: click here.

Recently I posted on Facebook a photo of my new tat which got nearly 700 comments, many saying a tat was wrong and even a sin. So in the vid below I explain what the Bible says and why I got my tat.

Click on the play button and if you can’t see the video on email click here: VIDEO

God bless,

Mark Brown

If you would like to subscribe to this blog and receive my reflections as an email for free: click here.

I welcome Christi Armstrong to my blog today…

Jeremiah 18:3-5

So I did as He told me and found the potter, working at his wheel. But the jar he was making did not turn out how he had hoped, so he crushed it into a lump of clay again and started over…As the clay is in the potter’s hand, so you are in my hand.

How often do I not turn out as my potter intends? How many times will he need to remake me? Re-mold me? Re-form me? I think my whole life up to this point, and my whole life until I die has been and will be a consistent process of breaking down my imperfections, to rebuild me stronger and stronger. Those broken times hurt, and they hurt a lot, but those are also the times when God proves to me that I can and will trust my clay pieces in the hands of the one who is the master of molding the stubborn and hard parts of me. Left to my own devices, I would collapse in on myself and be unable to move. But in His hands, even when it hurts, I can become something I never imagined, yet He always envisioned me to be.

Father, thank you for your hands that break. Thank you for your hands that build and carefully mold my life to your will for what it should be. Hold my pieces in those times of pain and remind me, when I am broken, that it is then that I am ready to be made more like you. Amen.

God bless,

Christi Armstrong

http://www.facebook.com/ChristiArmstrong.page

If you would like to subscribe to this blog and receive these reflections as an email for free: click here.

Photo credit:  http://www.flickr.com/ photos/ronmerk/

I continue my exploration through 1 Peter, looking at the amazing 1 Peter 2:21-24 .  I am deeply challenged by the need to seek forgiveness, to be right with God.  That by His wounds I am healed.  To watch my reflection click on the play button below..

God bless,

Mark Brown

If you would like to subscribe to this blog and receive my reflections as an email for free: click here.

photo credit:  http://www.flickr.com/photos/ihar/