From Mess to Masterpiece: Facing Brokenness and Finding Healing – Healing 2025

Summary

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God often allows suffering in our lives to form us. In order to allow Him to work in us, we must surrender to Him in trust, discern what His will is, and allow Him into our wounded places.

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Reflective Study Guide Questions

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“[W]e even boast of our afflictions, knowing that affliction produces endurance

Rom. 5:3

1. Mary discusses how when we suffer, it is often God shaking what is shakable in our lives so that only what is unshakable remains. When have you felt as if your life was being shaken up in suffering?

2. When God allows our lives to be shaken up in suffering, He is working in our lives. To allow Him to work, we must first surrender to Him as our Potter. This means we must trust in Him even when things don’t look like we planned, as Our Lady did. How can you work on surrendering to God in trust like Our Blessed Mother did?

3. To allow God to work in us, we must also surrender to His process. That means we must have a childlike heart of surrender, but also be able to discern His will with our minds. How can you work on renewing your mind so that you’re better able to discern God’s will?

4. The third thing we must do to allow God to work in us is to surrender to the pain. Contrary to the way our culture tells us to flee from and numb our pain, we must allow Christ into our wounds. How can you work on letting Christ into your wounded places?

Text: From Mess to Masterpiece: Facing Brokenness and Finding Healing

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Hi, my name is Mary Bielski, and welcome back to the Pray More Healing Retreat. Last week we did an opening talk about our identity. Today we’re going to go a little deeper in, the process from Mess to Masterpiece, and how do we deal with some of our brokenness. As we begin, let’s start with prayer.

Opening Prayer

In the Name of the Father, Son, Holy Spirit, amen. Heavenly Father, I praise you and I thank you for the honor of being here. I ask, Lord, that you would just anoint my mouth, that every word that I speak would touch the hearts of those watching, I ask that your words would come and penetrate into the depth of our own messes in our lives, the places that we need to yield to you in the masterpiece that you’re doing.

I ask that your heart would be unfolded and that everything in this whole session, we glorify your name. We ask this all through Jesus Christ, the King of all kings. Amen. Father, son, Holy Spirit. Amen. It was so great to have you back. As I said, earlier today, if you were here last week, we talked a little bit more about our identity and the power of the story.

What Does Your Masterpiece Look Like Today

Today we’re going to go a little bit deeper into transition and actually  in Ephesians, Paul moves from the story of redemption into the transformational process. And the one scripture that I’m going to be highlighting as we talk about, the restoration process in, Christ is, Ephesians 2: 10, which says this. It says that, “We are all of us, or we are his handy work or his workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared and advanced for us to do.” And I love this because the Greek word, in this particular translation, if you look at the word. “Workmanship” or “handiwork” is poiēm (ποίημα) , which is the same root word as poem in the Greek.

And I, this whole beautiful analogy that’s been given is that we are, we are his masterpiece, we’re his expression in the world uniquely designed if one watching, whether you look like, a specific art piece with one color, or the Sistine Chapel, if you’re a sculpture or whatever personality type you have that we’re here to glorify God and look like him. But I guess the question as we start off today is, what is our masterpiece personally, your masterpiece really look like today?

I was traveling a number of years ago. I was when I was in New York, and I am fortunate that I get to travel quite a bit for ministry and there was an exhibit at the New York Museum and I’m very, one thing you should know about me is I love theater, I love music, I love all thing arts, all things art.

So I’m in, I take an Uber, I go to this exhibit, Michelangelo’s like unseen, like, writings, his sketches are going to be kind of exposed, exhibited, and I am in for the show. So I show up early. I get in line, I even pay the extra $10 for the ear sets, so I can hear all about like from the, you know, how you can buy those earphones to hear all about the history of the artwork.

I am in it to when it, I get a coffee in hand, I am talking and chatting. I even get in trouble because I like bringing the coffee into the wrong area, but I didn’t care. I was like in it to see this exhibit, and it was a long day of kind of going through the whole museum, but eventually I get to the place where Michelangelo’s key artistic work is being unfolded.

And as this happens, I can see in the distance that there’s this, this clear glass over his. Work pad, like his notebook. And I’m getting excited. I’m like, oh yeah, this is his notepad. This is going to be amazing. Sistine Chapel and it’s glory, you know? And I get up close. I had waited all day. I had been laboring to get to this one place excited.

Because My Hands Are Upon You

And I’ll never forget, I come up to the glass with the light shining and I leaned forward and I look and it’s, it’s like a doodle, like what I mean by that is, is like I waited all this time and it was like a little sketch that he had done maybe two, three inches large lightly with a pencil of kind of some, a knee. It must have looked because apparently Michelangelo, studied cadavers and body parts. He was very into the muscles. You could see that with the Sistine Chapel and various things. And so he would do various sketches and his artwork and I’m sitting there and I’m like. It is a doodle. I waited three hours.

I got coffee, I got the, I mean, I was like, Lord, like it’s not even like, no offense, Michelangelo, but I kind of expected more and I, I came to the Lord. I was, I honestly was like, kind of like, what’s the deal? The Lord began to speak to my heart, and I feel like it’s a word for us today. He said, Mary, the power of that artwork isn’t in the actual art itself.

It’s not as great the sketches or even how perfect the lines are. He, he was just telling me like, the reason why people are lining up from all over the country to see it is because Michelangelo’s pencil is on that notepad. Like the man that sculpted the Sistine Chapel, like the man that did David, that, that he, this is his work and, and I felt like the Lord was saying, how many times do we do the same thing like that?

He’s the actual crafter of me and you. But the, he began to speak to me about my worth that, you know, Michelangelo created the Sistine Chapel and that’s beautiful, but whatever he created, if his hand is on it, it has worth and value. And he said, and you like, as he was talking to me, it’s like in the beginning of foundation, I formed you and created you.

And the worth that you have isn’t what you look like. It isn’t the lines or how perfect your life is. It’s the fact the God of the universe, the one that crafted the stars in the sky, niche you in your mother’s womb and you have value and worth regardless of what your life looks like. Because my hand was upon you.

We Are Saved

You know, it says so many times in my life, I feel like I look at my life, this idea, this masterpiece, and all I see is like the doodles, the places of my imperfections, the places where things aren’t really great, the places where my life should be, this masterpiece, it should look like Instagram. It should look like this wonderful thing. And then all I see when I look at the artwork of my life is just of, is just sketches of imperfection and mediocrity. You know what I’m saying? Like these moments in our lives and I felt like God was inviting me on a journey that summer. To really seek his heart on the transformational process, understanding the value of who I am as daughter, but also the process of becoming.

You know, within the scripture, Paul talks about, salvation in many different ways. And as Catholics, we know in Ephesians two, he says very clearly, it’s by grace. You have been saved. And many of our Protestant brothers, talk about grace. Like, are you saved? You’ve seen those preachers on the side of the road, they’re like, Hey, are you saved? And you’re Catholic, and you’re like, yeah, I mean, I’m baptized, I’ve had initial salvation by faith but our language is a little bit different. Because as we look at Paul and this understanding of salvation, initial salvation is all through grace. It is by grace that we are saved through faith in baptism, that we come into this relationship and we’re new creations in Christ transformed into his image, sons and daughters of the King. But Paul also throughout his word in the New Testament, talks about salvation in different forms. So he also says, throughout the word that we pray that we are being saved. And so there’s also throughout different times within the word when he’s talking about the salvation process.

And then there’s times also, within the word where he says, we pray that you will be saved, like that we are being saved. We will be saved, and we have been saved. So when we look at it as Catholics, it’s really this threefold imagery that we have been saved, we are being saved, and we will be saved.

Paul even talks about the need to persevere in our faith. He says, “Pray for me that I would persevere so that I would not be disqualified.” Meaning part of even the whole understanding of grace is that it’s all grace, it’s prevenient Grace, which the church talks about, even the grace to say yes, we need God’s initial, initial act for even us to respond, but we need grace throughout the whole process.

Shaking the Shakable

There’s all of it is God’s work, his hand work in us. In fact, in Philippians it says this beautiful line and it says “He who began a good, I pray that he who began a good work in me will bring it to completion in Christ.” This is Philippians 1:6 where it says like he will finish it, right? We see this in Philippians 2:13 where it talks about, to work out, or 12, one of those two. “Work out your salvation with fear and trembling”, right, so there’s a process that we go to, it’s his work, but there’s an cooperation in that grace for that transformational process. And what, as we break open the mess to masterpiece, you know, I really want to spend some time, in this brief time with you of going deeper into what that looks like.

You know, especially in the season that we’re in the church where there’s a lot of shaking and uncertainty, and there’s been a lot of, unraveling, I think in the world and often in my heart. This last couple years for me, have been one of the hardest years of my life. I had about two or three years of complete spiritual warfare, broken relationships, things not going the way I thought.

Just hardship and health in every area. I just felt like I was being stripped in a way that I’ve never experienced. I, uh, it really shook me and we talk about the last five years in the world, we’ve seen a lot of the shaking. One of my favorite scriptures that I spoke to last time, just briefly is, is in Haggai where it talks about, something that’s quoted in Hebrews that says, “I will shake what is shakable so that only what is unshakeable will remain.”

And it’s speaking about in Haggai, in the Old Testament, a season where the temple was in ruins and they were upset and discouraged, and he speaks of a time where God is going to shake the nations so that his greater glory will come like he’s going to take everything down and its incompleteness so that there’s space.

Right, so something greater will come. Another way of thinking about it is when I was praying about this a number of years ago during COVID and the whole world was imploding. Do you guys remember this? And there was fear and there was anxiety, and this is five years ago, but I feel like it just began this process of the world just shaking.

And if we don’t have eyes to see what God is doing, we can think we can get scared. We can think it’s just the enemy. We don’t understand that God might. Be up to something in the midst of the hard that he’s shaking the unshakeable so that only what is unshakeable or shaking the shakable so that only what the unshakeable remain.

An image that I often think about is a tree that’s has some dead branches, and during a shaking that dead branches are falling off. It says that’s in Hebrews 12, that it says, “Let go of every weight of sin and idolatry”. Like cast it away that you might run the race. Right, so that God sometimes shakes us so that the things that are actually not first principles will go.

He also, sometimes in the shaking, we get a lot of storms in Louisiana, sometimes in the storms, especially with the waterfront and various things, like everything looks great, but when a storm comes, all that debris and glass and ugly, like mushy, ugly, crazy t-shirts, ripped clothing, piece of the paper at the bottom of the ocean, it gets stirred up by the storm and it comes to the surface it exposes.

Sometimes we can kind of be great, but when hardship comes, when the shaking comes, when things are uncertain, it brings up those deeper levels of fear and adequacy, hopelessness. When things don’t look the way that we think it should look like, or there’s disappointment, sometimes we don’t know what to do, and there’s things that come up in that process.

We see that even in the walk to Emmaus. The men go on this walk. I mean, they had spent their whole lives seeking after Jesus. And it, the story didn’t end up the way they thought, like this was going to be the Messiah, and he’s broken bleeding on a tree, he dies and there’s the story of the walk to  Emmaus where they leave. They’re supposed to be, in Jerusalem. He says, wait, Jesus gave a command to wait in Jerusalem. That’s like the, like key level, and they’re leaving the place. And when Jesus meets them on  the walk to Emmaus, in his resurrection, they, it says within the Greek, that they’re downtrodden, they’re discouraged.

You ever have that or life doesn’t end up the way you think it’s going to look, where like things are shooken up. And like the story that you had written, the masterpiece that was supposed to be unfolding didn’t come to be as you thought. And you’re left with the discouragement and the hurt.

Marriages that, you know, you all remember this, the moments that you get married and like you’re like, you’re my boo, it’s going to be forever. And there’s moments maybe your marriage didn’t work out or moments with your kids where you had images of this great dream, this great fulfillment of this story that was going to unfold, and your kids are struggling with addiction or even health issues that you never thought you would have, and all of a sudden you’re older and things that you can’t do, and there’s, there’s grief and there’s hardship in that. And then how do we wrestle in that process?

I want to just fold out for you today because this is what I’m seeing in the church, and I really want to give a prophetic word. What I mean by that is if we don’t have eyes to see what God’s doing, sometimes in the shaking and in the hard, we can become, not only discouraged, we could walk away, we could become accusers of Jesus, we could fall in unbelief. And it’s important that God’s actually doing something. But this is a threefold process that I want to walk through.

The Need For Surrender

And the first process is the need in our journey for surrender. In the midst of the uncertainty, when things are happening in your life, when things don’t look like what you thought it was going to look like when the doodles of imperfection are there and you’re like, why me? Why this? And the anger and the, and the self-accusation comes up that we can turn to the Lord and surrender.

What I mean by that is throughout scripture we look at these different characters that respond to Jesus. And Mary, um, is so beautiful because in her uncertainty when the angel appears to Mary and, you know, proposes the birth of Christ she asks this one question and it’s interesting because in Luke’s gospel, he’s going to put this back to back with Mary, the mother of God and Zacharia, right, who had the same question but have different responses.

Because of the posture of their heart, the angel appears to both of them and to Mary. He proposes that she’s going to, wed, you know, be the, the mother of God and to Zacharia that he’s going to be the father to John the Baptist, both showing this story. And Mary, uh, well, Zach, well, sorry. Zacharia. Zacharia says, how can this be for my wife’s old?

But because he’s questioning, he doesn’t have trust in him. That he’s actually brought to being mute. And Mary turns and asks the same question, how can this be in trust? And it’s so central as we come into the season of looking at the centrality of surrender in our lives, looking at the need. I didn’t know I was a control freak.

I work in life coaching. I don’t think I’m a control freak. I never thought that I was a control freak. You ever have those seasons that you’re like, I’m kind of a control freak. Those places that we think we’re yielding to God. We say, oh yes, I’ll give you everything. And then when fear comes in, we take control.

We try to manage, we try to do all the things. I remember there was a season that I was I was really going through inner healing ’cause I was so tired of the doodles. I was so tired of the areas of my imperfections or my fear, or just my inadequacies. And I was going after inner healing and I was like a drill sergeant, you know.

And, um, I remember I went to this silent retreat. Uh, I flew across the country to meet this priest for a silent retreat. And long story short, I came there with a mission, right? I wasn’t there surrendered. I was there like, I want to fix this problem, make my masterpiece better, and then bounce. And I don’t think I knew that, but at this moment I came up to the priest and he’s like, what do you want to do?

And I’m like I’m like, we’re going to do some inter he only, I mean, I was on it and he’s like, whoa, tiger. I said, okay, well what are we going to, I said, what are we going to do? And he said, you have choices. I said, choices. What do you mean? And he said, the first choice is like we could go after all the wounds and the pain and the stuff that happened in your trauma and things that happened in your childhood.

And there was a part of me that’s like, okay. He’s like, I might be painful. And I’m like, okay. Like, and he said, or I was like, or he said, you can let the Lord love you. And he starts talking about the relational component of his love. I started talking about God touching my wounds and walking with me and my fear and going on coffee dates with him and the, the romance of God just loving me and my woundedness and the doodle.

You know, every story within scripture with the imperfections of God, the mess that becomes the masterpiece, it begins with God choosing us in our messiness it says, but God, despite the fact that we were sinful in nature by his like graciousness and kindness and mercy. While we were still sinners chose us, but God, like the story of a God who enters into loveliness out of love.

He’s not there just to fix us. He doesn’t want to make, make us a masterpiece because, oh look, I can make, because it’s his love that is transforming. And in that moment where he shares this story of the masterpiece, I started crying because fear entered my heart of like, I’m so afraid that he’s not going to show up.

I’m so afraid I’ve traveled across the country to do this retreat and like it just, I’m going to be this. You ever feel like that, like trying to kind of go through the fixing? I’m not, it’s not going to get better. All the fears come up and the, and the shaking and I forget sometimes. And that, that God is just wants to sometimes meet me in the love and actually let the love heal me, that he’s more concerned about my relationship with him.

And the process that I would turn back to my first love that he is with me, looking perfect or having, he wants my heart. And anytime that there’s any shaking that he allows, whether it’s passive or not his passive will or his active will, that God als always is in the, in the job of our holiness. And that at the center of the Holiness is a relationship calling and me into love.

And how many times I, I forget. In the midst of just trying to get my life in order and make the masterpiece and fix this, and align this, instead of letting him touch my wounds and love me in the process and being like, Mary, that trust that he has plans greater than my own. And I could say yes regardless.

Mary had no idea what was coming. She had a whole life of mystery and suffering and a son on a cross bleeding. She had no idea. The whole world ran and she stood in faith. It’s the call of us. So surrendering to be like Our Lady, even when we don’t understand, even when it’s hard, even when we see our son dying or things that we cared about or things not looking the way, like will we be those people?

It is been a shaking for me, like my own faith, like do I believe in the sunny seasons? It’s great to believe, but when things are hard, for half the church is falling away and like he’s looking for a bride who can be shook and stand. And faith, even though we don’t see the resurrection right away. So surrender number one.

Surrendering to the Process

Number two. So what, who are we surrendering to the potter? Surrendering to his, his hands. He gets to touch it. The potter, it says all throughout scripture, the potter takes the clay and he starts mold again. And sometimes it’s not going to look the way we thought it’s going to look. He’s going to start cutting off pieces and molding and pushing.

And there’s this great scene with CS Lewis where he talks about the construction site of the house. When we yield our surrender to God, that at first it’s, it looks great because he clears out gutters and he cleans up rooms. But then as God continues. It doesn’t look so good, we get confused because he starts knocking down walls we didn’t expect and changing the whole entire house, different than what we ever thought, and it could cause us fear.

And he starts going through this. There’s this great line at the end, CS Lewis says, “But see, the whole time I just thought he was going to make me into a little cottage. Little did I know that he was going to make me, he’s not here to make me into a cottage, but he’s here to make me into a palace worthy that he would abide and live in.”

Meaning that the process that we have for that reconstruction, is a process that we would actually become wholly. And every wall that doesn’t look like him. Every structure that we’ve man made by my, our own man hands, not in conforming to his will or to even look like his bride. He’s going to ask, he’s going to shake, he’s going to conform us until we look like him, ’cause he’s looking for a spotless bride. And that process is something that we don’t always talk about. We like the easy Jesus, but sometimes when life gets hard, and here’s what’s so important as I go into this.

I want to just pause. Because the second component besides surrender, is you give your, give the clay to the potter, allowing him to do his work, trusting in his goodness, even though we don’t understand, and then he starts doing stuff, or life happens and we need discernment.

Number two, the process is that before we even go into it it’s number two is going to be, surrendering to the process. So number one is surrendering to the potter. Number two is surrendering to the process, meaning then he’s going to start working out your salvation. He’s going to start pruning and cutting and bending and things won’t always look the way you think.

Be Transformed By The Renewal Of Your Mind

And this is really important before I go into this section because I think it’s really important that we learn to be shrewd. A word of like cunning. In our mind it says to be innocent like a dove in scripture, but to be shrewd like a serpent. Meaning like we need to have a heart, like a childlike heart of surrender and trust like Our Lady, but we need to have the wisdom of God.

And what I mean by that is it says in Romans 12:2, “Be transformed by the renewal of your mind that you might discern what is the will of God, what is good, acceptable, and perfect.” What is he saying? He’s saying that we have to actually renew our minds, right? He’s talking about actually being able to discern between good and evil.

Between, so what I’m saying, like what I, why am I saying that? Is because we’re living in a world right now where some shaking is from God. Some things God’s allowing things to be shook because he’s shaking us so that we can get brought all the shaking away of the old into the new, into purity and refinement, beautiful.

Some shaking comes from enemy. There are times and seasons where the enemy’s attacking and we need to know when to rebuke. But this is not from God. This is the enemy sometimes suffering. Right? The shaking, the hardship in our life and scripture is actually a consequence of sin. It’s a consequence of hearted hearts, it’s a consequence of our judgments. It’s a consequence of our inability to fall into meekness. And sometimes the Lord and his mercy brings us discipline. I mean, I’ve had seasons of discipline where the Lord’s like. Yeah, you know what, like you, you think you can do whatever you want, but I want total obedience in every area of your life.

And I’m like, you could have 90, but there’s always that like 1- 10% that I’m like, I really, this is mine. Whether it’s my money, whether it’s something else. Like, and then there’s places of our life where we don’t understand things that happen in our lives. Y’all on suffering. Like I, I don’t understand.

A Test From God

Like my sister died 10 years ago. Destroyed my life. It really wrecked my heart. I don’t understand mothers who lose their kids. I don’t understand that suffering. Like I know it’s a result of the fault, but there’s some suffering that’s outside of my mindset. I don’t understand. Addiction, like the, yes, we could all blame the enemy, but in the end there’s all these wrestling places where we have to walk through things and our families and our lives and it’s real, and we have to believe in a God who’s actually real.

Who’s not just the cookie cutter, Jesus that stands on the pulpit, but doesn’t enter into the suffering. There’s something about our faith that is so much richer because we have a God that actually enters into this Paschal mystery with us, and it might not look like what we thought it was going to look like.

I don’t understand this last season that I had, I had so many health issues, so many things falling apart. I had a season where I almost lost ministry ’cause I couldn’t, I had health issues. I couldn’t function. I was losing finances. I had relationships, intention. I was like, Lord, why are you doing this? I felt like I was Job.

It’s like so much pain. I don’t understand and I don’t, here’s the deal, as I talk about this, I don’t understand everything. I know that some things come from the enemy, and I know somehow and cause mercy. He allows things because all things work for good. And in that season where I had to die, I felt like I was dying.

It’s everything that I loved. It’s like, it wasn’t like God taking away bad things. It was like God taking away good things. Like what are you doing to me? You trying to kill me? And I felt like he was like kind of, but it was like that testing of like, will you stay? Will you still love me? I’m not saying he was doing it as cruelty.

I felt like there was mercy in the process, but in this whole season there was like a season. I said, God, I just need you to hold me in this. Like I don’t have the faith. Oh God. I was like crying out to him at night saying, God, you have to help me. I know you know what that’s like with your kids or your family, things that you’ve loved that you can’t control this moment when Martha and and Lazarus, right.

Lazarus dies. I don’t understand why Jesus goes off longer. He doesn’t come back. And in John 10 he stays out longer, meaning he lets Lazarus his best friend die. I don’t understand. And he later we find out for his greater glory. But I was, I’m like, really? Because there’s a lot of suffering in that. We don’t understand.

There’s this moment where we see two women coming up to Jesus when he comes to meet them. Martha and Mary say the same question. Jesus, if you would’ve been here, my brother wouldn’t have died. Martha says it with a little bit of a tone and he asks her question, they dialogue. Mary comes, falls to his feet weeping, and it moves into tears.

Why? Because Mary loved him. And Mary trusted in him. Mary, this is Mary of Bethany. Oh Jesus. I love you so much, but I’m in pain. And what I mean by that is sometimes in our hurt, we can have a stone over our hearts. We can be like Martha’s. If you would’ve been here, Jesus, my son wouldn’t have died.

If he would’ve been here, I wouldn’t have lost my job. We can have bitterness and resentment of things not looking like what we think. And some of it is the enemy where the enemy attacked and we got stolen from and we’re pointing our finger at God. And sometimes it’s God. And I’m not saying he’s causing the suffering.

I do not believe that, but it is passive will. He allows for greater glory. I don’t understand it all, and some things are just left up to heaven. But will we allow ourselves to be like Mary, to be tender in those places? Like the men who walked in the walk to Emmaus, they left Jerusalem and Jesus met them on the road as they were down trodden.

And he wanted their hearts, even though they couldn’t, they couldn’t see Jesus in his resurrected body, but they were so stuck in their discouragement. They couldn’t see the God who was in there in their suffering. Mary saw a God who felt, fell to his knees weeping. There’s something of a mystery in this and, and as we say that like. I don’t know where the stony parts are. The process of redemption is a process where we allow the second part is we have to stay in that Marian position that we surrender because our heart wants to get off the table. We’re living sacrifices of praise. Our life is a living sacrifice, meaning usually sacrifices are dead. You kill the animal, you put it on the table, you offer it.

We’re alive, meaning we have the will to get off the table and say, I don’t want to give this. This is too hard. In John 6, they walk away. This teaching is too hard. This is, Jesus I didn’t think you would ask for this. I didn’t think you would ask for this relationship. I didn’t think this wouldn’t work out. I didn’t think. And somehow we can get into this place where our heart gets hardened and I tell you right now, in this last season, I had to just cry out to God over and over God, keep my heart tender. Help me to remember who you are, because what the enemy wants us to do is start worshiping the wound.

Worshiping what we thought would happen or even our own hurt. And please hear me, there’s a place that we need to grieve. I’m not here saying we deny our emotions, but sometimes we can worship our stories or expectations and keep our eyes off of him. And Jesus wants us to come and just even in his weeping to meet him there.

I love the scene where Mary and Martha come, and after Mary weeps and he weeps. He says, remove the stone. And then Martha says, but Jesus, there’s going to be a stench. And I love that because scabs, when we get hurt, when life doesn’t look the way we think it’s going to look like, there can be anger, betrayal, bitterness, and it could be become a scab of judgment in our lives of pain.

And the scab usually covers, we know this with injuries or wounds. It covers up usually a wound. And I love that Martha was like, I don’t want you to take off the scab. He’s like, remove the stone. Martha’s like, but it’s going to smell. I’m angry and there’s pain and I don’t want to feel it. Sometimes it’s easier to stay in our heartedness away from God than to yield our hearts to the potter and let him break us. Staying in relationship with the Potter, staying on the wheel and letting in, even though we don’t understand it, is the, it is the life of maturity. It says in Romans 5:5 hang with me. The process that he wants to do is he wants to grow up his bride to be pure and holy. He’s coming for a spotless bride, and sometimes I don’t understand these things that happen, but sometimes by the mystery of God in the suffering, he’s doing something.

And I don’t understand it all, but it says this in Romans 5:5 hang with me. It says, I will rejoice over my sufferings, which is insane. Why would you rejoice over suffering? He says, I will rejoice, we rejoice over our sufferings because check this out. Sufferings produce endurance. Like, think about this as you’re, because Mary stands in faith. We yield ourself on the potter when our flesh, when our woundedness wants to go into that, when we want to put accusations, when we don’t want to actually feel the pain, when we don’t want to enter into the Pascal mystery, right? But when we resist this right.

When we stand in faith, we don’t let bitterness come into heart. When we actually plead mercy on our husbands who have hurt us, or the divorce that happened when we forgive the friend that betrayed us. When we let go of the expectation of the dream, when we surrender and yield our heart over and over, right as we suffer it produces endurance.

It’s like a muscle. We’re growing in faith, and as we grow in faith, right? It says it produces endurance. Endurance produces character because as you go like this, you’re actually becoming stronger in the Lord. You’re actually learning the character of God because when you say yes to him, he always shows up.

He’s faithful. So you’re going to see the character of God and the character of yourself rising in faith, right, which is the shield of faith. So endurance produces character in character, right? When you see the character and the goodness of God, it produces hope. And hope does not disappoint because God is good and he’s faithful.

And if I stand in faith and I do all these things, the process of becoming as we endure in the suffering that actually produces something. This is our faith that we would look like Jesus, even as we lay our lives down. And then the, because hope doesn’t disappoint. ’cause the joy of the Lord.

Surrender To The Pain

The love of the Lord has been poured in our hearts. The last item from the three of, of this process is again, surrender to the potter. Surrender to the potter, excuse me, surrender to the potter, surrender to the process. And number three is surrender to the pain. I think part of why Martha didn’t want Jesus into that tomb and the stenchiness is that when there’s disappointment, there’s pain, there’s accusations, there’s lies that need to be forgiven.

I had a season where I was in that season. I just had to work through a lot of lies and battling. Do I believe he is who he says he is. And my grief, it wasn’t just anger, it was grief, it was disappointment, it was loss. I lost so much in that season and I didn’t understand and I felt so lost and like, where are you? And, but as I persevered, as he held me in his faith, there was something that formed it. It wasn’t right away in the like, people that are like, I suffered and I found God in the suffering. I, that was not my experience. I’m not saying it didn’t happen for anyone else, for me in the beginning. I couldn’t feel him.

I was in pain. I was having a panic attacks. I was just, it was a horrible state of fear and not good. And uh, and that season of just the hard where I just felt like I was unraveling, um, I couldn’t do it. And there’s a place of beauty when we can’t fix it. You know, Martha and Mary couldn’t raise their brother. It was like he’s dead.

Like there’s times sometimes where when our fix it modes, like, how many times have you, you can’t raise your brother, like they’re sitting there like, I can’t fix this. You have to get to that point where like, myself sufficiently, my self-sufficiency can’t do it anymore. You need Jesus.

It comes to that place where we surrender even deeper than the initial surrender of Mary, but that deeper paschal mystery surrender where Jesus is in you know, like in the garden and saying, not my will, but your will. I can’t do this. God, I try like that surrendering to in the suffering, it’s a deep, it’s a different kind.

The initial fiat. Versus they’re both the surrendering of the will, but there’s a different calling in that. And that’s part of our transformation process as we enter into the pain. What I mean by that is part of the healing comes, we have a culture right now that says, numb it eat chocolate, go to YouTube, get, become a workaholic, push it down, make a judgment, because it’s, it’s, no one wants to feel the pain.

And the mystery of our healing is actually through the Pascal mystery. He’s not afraid of the wounds. The wounds are actually the place that actually we come to encounter him in the woundedness. You know, Paul talks about this, scripture where, I’ll just read this to you. He’s, he says this beautiful line.

He says not only that, my grace is sufficient for power is made perfect in weakness, and I’ll all the more gladly boast in my weakness of the power of Christ the power of Christ. Rest upon me, right? We know the scripture verse that there’s power and weakness, but also he says, he talks about like the, the affliction in his side.

He talks about three times he had asked, right? He had asked for a thorn, excuse me, I’m reading. A thorn was given to me in my flesh, a messenger. Of Satan to harass me, to keep me from becoming conceited. Three times I pleaded with the Lord about this, that it should leave me, but he said, my grace is sufficient. This is the idea like why God would allow sometimes to yield our knee.

I don’t know what has happened in your life and where there’s places of disappointment. I don’t know why suffering happens to the degree it happens. I have wept more in my intercession in the sea than any, but there’s something that happens as we go low. We find a God who’s already lower, and those who humble themselves are exalted and a place that we can stand with Mary at the cross and say he lives.

Can you imagine a world right now, as we say, I don’t understand, as we stand in faith, right? As we surrender our wills, as we accept the suffering, as we feel the pain of loss, and still stay faithful, can you imagine a world of right now in a culture of bitterness, anger, accusation, fists up, you know, political injustice, all these things, and for our people to actually be suffering and wounded lovers just loving him nonetheless.

Like, I know it didn’t look the way I look, I’m, I know my life isn’t perfect but I’m going to worship you. God, I love it. People that would just be worshiping lovers of Jesus that would stand despite the sinfulness, despite the woundedness, despite the disappointment. I will be faithful to my king because he lives and just like Mary, there might be, I might not see the resurrection right now, but I know there will be.

Can you imagine a people, you know, Peter, when he was in the cell an angel came and broke him out of the cell, and that same root word for that prison cell, it’s the same word as tabernacle. Meaning when Christ comes into our wounded places, he comes and he brings glory. He resurrects. As we go through the paschal mystery, there’s some place that God resurrects those broken places and they become, the test becomes the testimony, the very places of our brokenness somehow, and the divine mystery of God’s grace.

I don’t get it. But I’m starting to taste it. You know what I’m saying? Where there’s been seasons in my life where I didn’t understand, and somehow as I’m yielding, as I’m walking, as I’m trusting, he’s taking the lines. And he makes the masterpiece, not by erasing them, but by bending them so they look like him, and they give glory through resurrected wounds.

You know, when Jesus came back, he still had his wounds, but they were purified, they were resurrected, they were gold. And as you walk through the process of refinement as you. I don’t get it. My life didn’t turn out the way this hurt. I failed. Whatever it is. They could be deep shame, but God, he meets you.

Whether it’s the Walk to Emmaus where you’re disappointed, you walk away, he meets you on that road, whether it’s Mary and Lazarus and you’re weeping. He meets you in tears. Whatever the story is of God who meets you in that and actually brings resurrections even in the pieces and that tapestry of love.

It is shown most powerfully, not always in our strength, but in our weakness, that God lives and his grace is sufficient. And I want to encourage you, stay on the wheel. Let him, whatever he asks, whatever you have to accept, let him and stay. In the posture of love. God, I love you. He’s good and he’s faithful. And as we do that, you become the masterpiece and you don’t have to hide from the shame because He takes it and makes it obstacles to show his goodness and his mercy.

Closing Prayer

Let’s pray. In the Name of the Father, Son, Holy Spirit, amen. heavenly Father, I praise you. I thank you for the gift of who you are. I thank you for the gift of you molding us into a great tapestry. A masterpiece for you. God, I ask that you would take this talk and just bless us. We ask you to bless every word, every person listening.

We ask us all in Jesus mighty name.

About Mary Bielski