Kintsugi is a 500-year-old Japanese art with an interesting philosophy. In kintsugi, broken pottery is valued as a treasure rather than a piece of trash. The art treats breakage and repair as part of the esteemed history of an object—something of a redemptive beauty—rather than something to disguise, cover up, or replace altogether. That’s why in Japan, people will pay big money for the elegance and aesthetic appeal of “golden joinery,” the kintsugi method of mending a vessel after it has been fractured.

The brokenness of our past is an integral part of our unique story, and God’s glorious art of making beautiful things out of broken pieces. When you consider all the people in Scripture who God used in redemptive ways, there is hope for anyone. God never sanitizes the stories of people in the Bible. Our modern church curricula and publishing agencies often “clean up” the stories of these “heroes,” especially when teaching them to children in Sunday School classes. Yet God gives the entire account for a reason. He gives the whole story—the good, the bad, and the ugly. The flaws and failures of others are canonized for a purpose. This is so that we would not glorify their successes or their failures, but that we would always make much of the God who is gracious enough, and faithful to love them despite themselves.

Abraham’s brokenness could be seen in the apparent biological flaw of being too old for God to use. Timothy’s brokenness could be seen in the opposite—being timid in the face of people who thought he was too young for God to use. Peter’s brokenness was exposed in his temperament, his impulsive behaviors, and his rash words at times. Plus, he denied Jesus three times when so much was on the line. The brokenness of Ruth and Naomi was felt in the grief of widowhood, the loss of loved ones. Hagar’s brokenness was rooted in a love triangle manifesting itself in jealousy, bitterness, and rejection. Hosea’s broken marriage was an embarrassing adulterous object lesson for an entire nation. Jephthah’s mother was a prostitute. Samson had a real problem with womanizing and revenge. Gideon was fearful and insecure. Martha was a chronic worrier. Elijah got suicidal. Jacob was a conniving, scheming cheater. Jonah was a prophet who ran from God because he didn’t like the people God sent him to minister to. Paul was persecuting Christians… before he became one. Noah got drunk… after doing something heroic for God. Joseph, well he came from a dysfunctional family that would’ve been typecast for a Netflix drama involving sibling rivalry, parental favoritism, abuse, and betrayal. These are the “elite” characters of that number one bestseller of all time—The Holy Bible.

Each of these characters are a picture of kintsugi—the way God views and values broken people, uses them for His glory, and redeems their stories for other broken people like you and me to be inspired with hope. Broken people are a treasure to God, and He has proven that throughout the ages.

If Jesus were the one telling our stories to others, what would the narrative sound like? If He was the one sharing your testimony, how would the story be told? What would be included? Imagine how pure, raw, and unrefined that would be.

The post God Uses Broken People: 33 People God Used Who Were Broken appeared first on Outreach and Ministry Resources.

In life it’s easy to get caught up in playing for the approval and the opinions of others, but in the end, it’s not our scoffers or critics by whom we will be judged, only God. This book offers 52 weekly devotions for what it looks like to play for an audience One—to seek first the approval of God over all other voices and influences in our lives.

This doesn’t mean you have no affinity or accountability to your teammates, coaches, family members, or neighbors. Playing for the audience of One means those relationships will be more deeply impacted by the fact that you are playing for a bigger purpose—the chief aim being to please your God and bring Him alone the glory in your life. Playing for an audience of One means you will bring honor to your godly leaders, while ignoring the critics, the haters, and those who are not in your corner. It will even entail overcoming your most difficult opponent: yourself (your fears, your insecurities, your doubts, your lack of confidence). None of these need to get the final word in your performance or the spiritual marathon you are running. By playing for an audience of One, you choose to put God first over all others, including those inner voices that speak contrary to God’s best intentions and His ultimate reign over your life.

Each devo comes with a prayer and questions for personal reflection or group discussion, fitting for athletes, coaches, parents of athletes, and sports ministry leaders who work with athletes. The format of the devos also work well for fostering devotional times and gospel sharing at sports camps/clinics during mission trips.

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In 13-Foot Coffins, Breakaway Outreach founder Jimmy Larche chronicles God’s redemptive fingerprints through abandonment, abuse, and fatherlessness. Like the ancient Roman gladiators, we don’t get to choose the arenas we fight in, but we do get to choose how we will fight, and to what honor we will uphold. Pain, suffering, and injustice are often the catalysts that God uses to birth champions of His Cause.

Born to a teenage mother, Jimmy spent most of his childhood years fatherless. But he went from one extreme to the other when his biological father remarried his mother and began a seven-year string of violent abuses. At fourteen-years-old, Jimmy ran away over 1,000 miles across the country. He eventually landed in a juvenile detention center; a place that served as a spiritual boot camp for him to begin to learn how to face his giants with grace and courage.

When we run from our giants, we rob God of the glory He longs to get from our stories. Jimmy learned that the giants of fear, bitterness, unforgiveness, anger, and a victim-mentality must be slain in order to find holistic recovery, ultimate freedom, and the courage to break generational curses.

There is a dance with destiny awaiting us all if we can learn to live from a forgiving heart and fall relentlessly into the arms of grace. Jesus, the master choreographer of this dance, will never waste our pain and suffering. When we allow him to redeem our past, it gives our life purpose, meaning, and an enduring legacy. Most importantly, our courage to face our giants affords God the glory He longs to gain from our lives.

Humanity is a messy place to learn how to become fully alive.  Nevertheless, it is indeed a boot camp of faith; a spiritual gauntlet in which God calls every one of us to go through if we are to bear the resemblance of His Son, Jesus.  And I’ve learned over the years that pain is not only an unfortunate part of this growth process; it is indeed a very necessary, vital, and essential part of our journey.  My hope is that as you read this book you will come to experience the same grace I’ve experienced in discovering God’s redemptive purpose through pain and suffering, and to have the perfect peace that even when our pain doesn’t make sense, our heavenly Father’s love remains steadfast.

His love can be trusted even when a “Why” cannot be traced.

13-Foot Coffins is not necessarily my story, it’s His-story; one where I have been given the humble privilege of being an extra that points to the main character in this story: Jesus Christ.  This account is a living chronicle of God’s redemptive work in a fallen world where generational curses run rampant, and specifically, His intimate dealings in rescuing a helpless child out of the cruelty of injustice and the despair of abuse, to setting him free from a victim mentality, to becoming a difference maker in giving hope to countless young people across the globe.  I am no longer a victim; I am more than a conqueror through HIM who loved me out of darkness and into His glorious light (Romans 8:37).  Healing, forgiveness, and freedom can be found for those who truly want to become fully alive.

Welcome to His story; one in which I serve as a humble stagehand in lifting up the unbound Healer, faithful Redeemer, and Prince of Peace: Jesus, the risen Christ!

Join me in this rich journey of grace in slaying a victim-mentality and finding your God-inspired dance with destiny!

The world is waiting!

-Jimmy Larche

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The Genesis story of Joseph is a remarkable account of one who experienced unimaginable pain and disappointment, although never growing bitter or resentful. As a teenager, Joseph had a God-inspired dream. He also had jealous brothers and a dysfunctional family. Betrayed by those closest to him, Joseph is sold into slavery. As a loyal servant in a foreign leader’s palace, this young man is falsely accused by an Egyptian temptress and thrown into a prison cell—disgraced and forgotten. The Hebrew prisoner must find a way to rise from the ashes of ruin and injustice. Though everything is stripped away from him, including his reputation and dignity, Joseph manages to hold fast to his faith in God’s redemptive purposes. Years pass until the Pharaoh of Egypt, troubled by two puzzling dreams, hears of Joseph’s abilities. Pharaoh summons Joseph to exercise his gifts in interpreting the dreams, thus catapulting him into a powerful position of leadership and influence. Then a worldwide famine brings him back face to face with the past. The result is an inspiring depiction of forgiveness and reconciliation. Through this amazing narrative we are reminded that God will never waste our pain, and that some of the most beautiful things indeed rise out of the ashes of our pain. This book is my reflection on life lessons drawn from Joseph’s timeless story.

Order from Amazon (download the first chapter for FREE!)

Table of Contents

Chapter 1: Beautiful People Don’t Just Happen, They Rise
Chapter 2: When The Dream Becomes a Nightmare
Chapter 3: It Might Get Worse Before It Gets Better
Chapter 4: Are You Facing a Setback or a Setup?
Chapter 5: From The Pit to The Palace
Chapter 6: Everything Is Made Beautiful In It’s Time
Chapter 7: Waves of Mercy, Grace, and Forgiveness
Chapter 8: They Intended Harm, God Had Other Plans
Chapter 9: Your Story Is Bigger Than You Think

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Esther reminds us there are no accidents with God. He is always at work, especially behind the scenes in our lives. Through this study you will see that every single thing that has ever happened in your life is preparing you for something that’s meant to come. Everything in your life—the good and the bad, the pretty and the ugly, the blessing and the bleeding, the pleasant and the hurtful, the laughter and the tears, the privilege and the under privilege, the joy and the regret—has been working together to shape you for what God is up to right now in this very hour.

You have been uniquely designed and divinely positioned to live with purpose for such a time as this.

Order from Amazon (download the first chapter for FREE!)

Table of Contents

Chapter 1
God is On the Move: Even When Humanity is at its Worst

Chapter 2
Beautifully Flawed: You Were Made For This Moment

Chapter 3
Seize The Day: It’s Now or Never

Chapter 4
Prayer and Fasting: Power to Make a Difference

Chapter 5
The Scepter of Grace: Come Boldly to the Throne

Chapter 6
Finding Your Identity: On This Your Life Rises and Falls

Chapter 7
It’s All Good in the Hood: Increasing Our Faith

Chapter 8
How to Change the World: It Doesn’t Have to be Overwhelming

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If we think this story is just about food we are missing something really essential to how God longs to relate with us, His children.

I seriously doubt the little boy in this story set out to be part of a miracle that day. We can bet that he didn’t wake up that morning expecting Jesus to be able to take his small lunch and feed an entire city. If the boy had held back his lunch because he thought it wouldn’t be sufficient enough to make a difference, it would’ve remained little. But that boy became part of an epic story on a day when Jesus took his small lunch and used it to show forth God’s limitless Kingdom and infinite supply. Jesus uses inadequate people with limited resources to show forth His power, His provision, and His adequacy.

This story found in all four gospels boldly underscores that great things can happen when our inadequacy meets Christ’s sufficiency. I believe the Lord performed the miracle in this way to teach the disciples that His method for meeting the needs of a lost world is through people—utterly, seemingly insignificant, small people, I might add. That’s what this booklet is all about.

Are you feeling a little inadequate today? Remember, God can perform miracles in ways that are infinitely beyond our capacity for understanding, yet the God of this universe wants us to know that our little means so much to him. Whatever your seemingly insignificant five loaves and two fish may be, in the hands of God, they are a miracle waiting to happen. Your little can never remain little in the hands of a big God.

Table of Contents

Five Loaves, Two Fish: Your Little Is Never Too Small In The Hands of a Big God
Chapter One: Recognize the Needs Around You
Chapter Two: Realize That God is Up to Something
Chapter Three: Refuse to Be Paralyzed by Inadequacy
Chapter Four: Rightly Steward the Brokenness
Chapter Five: Resist the Need for Recognition

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This story isn’t just about an urban revitalization project; it’s a fascinating narrative of a leader who sacrificed so much to restore hope in people who were hurting. Nehemiah shows us that character-based leadership, who we are and what we do consistently, will come to define us. He teaches us that it’s good to have our hearts broken for the things that break God’s heart. He is a living example that if we are bold in faith, mighty forces will come to our aid.

Nehemiah gives us a blueprint for living in missional community together with others. His adversity reminds us that resistance is important to our lives because it shapes us, and who we are becoming is more important than what we are accomplishing. Like any warm-blooded leader, Nehemiah gets angry at times. But he is wise enough to know that what we do with our anger shapes us.

Finally, we see that the story of Nehemiah is not so much about a wall as it is about people. A wall was a practical need that Nehemiah could meet in the lives of suffering people, but in the end, it was more about helping people rediscover their heritage, re-imagine their future, and ultimately find their place in His-story.

Chapters (Order from Amazon)

1. CHARACTER: It Determines Your Destiny
2. COMPASSION: Has Your Heart Been Broken?
3. VISION: Be Bold and Mighty Forces Will Come
4. COMMUNITY: God Works Through Missional Tribes
5. ADVERSITY: The Hard Is What Makes It Great
6. ANGER: What You Do With It, Shapes You
7. MISSION: It’s Not About a Wall, But People
8. FOCUS: No Time For Self-Vindication
9. PURPOSE: Finding Their Place In His-Story
10. WORSHIP: Breaking Away From Idolatry
11. CELEBRATING: Don’t Forget To Party

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Life is no place for the timid. We all want more courage… more boldness… more audacity. But audacity comes with a cost. Are you prepared to pay the price?

There is a risk you can’t afford not to take.

Throughout history, the people who have changed the world discovered God’s love language—faith—and boldly danced with it. They were common, ordinary people, very flawed, who made a decision to be defined by courage rather than fear and complacency. They didn’t die with the music still inside of them. They risked their personal comfort and security, even their own reputations, to be part of a much bigger story.

You can be part of that story as well. You can find your AUDACITY.

But first, you’ll need to find your crazy!

Audacity is a journey to become fully alive. It’s a dance with adventure, meaning, and purpose—yet never without uncertainty and ambiguity. It’s a dance into the glorious unknown, with Jesus, the graceful and often mysterious Choreographer.

This dance is the only kind that will leave us at the end of our days harboring no regrets, only the joy of a life completely yielded to God’s purpose. It’s a dance that will at times look silly. It’s both messy and beautiful at the same time. It’s marred with failures. You still get punch-drunk at times from setback after setback, yet this dance limps faithfully to its end, knowing it has left it all on the floor.

Dare to forsake the ONE thing that could keep you from missing this dance.

Get Audacity: Find Your Crazy. Change The World.
(download the first chapter for FREE!)

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