Is it actually possible to dance with your broken bones?

Matt Heard:
Is it actually possible to dance with your broken bones? Let’s talk about it, on Key Life.

Matthew Porter:
This is Key Life. We’re here to let you know that because of what Jesus has done, God will never be angry at you again. Steve invited our friend Matt Heard to do the teaching this week. Matt is a speaker, teacher, writer, pastor, coach, and the founder of a ministry called Thrive.

Matt Heard:
Thank you Matthew. And greetings to all of you in the four corners of the planet and the universe. We are just delighted that you would spend some time with us here at Key Life this week. And I hope your week-end was great. And as Steve often says, hope your pastor’s sermon was as good as my pastor’s sermon. So, I’ll wish that for you as well. I am so looking forward to diving into the topic that we’re going to be unpacking together. I’m going to call it Dancing with Broken Bones. And before we start, I’d like to acknowledge who the real teacher is here. It’s not me. So, let’s talk to him about you and me and our journeys and the broken bones that we’re grappling with right now. Father, thank you. Thank you for the gift of being able to connect via technology. And wherever my friends are, friends that I’ve met and friends that I’ve not met, friends that I won’t meet this side of the magic, beautiful new kingdom. I thank you for each of them. I thank you for our journeys. I thank you for your authorship of our journeys. And as we navigate through this world that’s broken, and we get plenty of reminders of that each day, we want to thank you for the hope of the gospel, for the gift of grace, and for your strengthening smile that’s very real. And I ask that you would give me real wisdom you, as I think out loud under the illumination of your word regarding what it does look like for us to face the storm instead of just run from it, for us to, we can’t avoid getting broken bones, but would you teach us how to dance with them? And I pray this in the name of the one who is our Shalom and tells us to take heart in the midst of trouble. I thank you for Jesus. Amen. So, as I mentioned, what we’re going to do is talk about dancing with broken bones. Now, broken bone is literal at times, obviously, but I’m referring to those metaphorical, symbolic broken bones that we have in our journey. And we can’t avoid the broken bones, but what we do have a choice in is regarding what we’re going to do with them. And so, when I say dancing with broken bones, it’s not a happy, clappy, just paste a smile on. The gospel never calls us to just paste a smile on and pretend. It calls us to engage with the reality of who God is in the midst of what we’re really dealing with. And today there’s a Psalm I want to start with. It’s Psalm 51. And a gentleman that had a big impact on me years ago, Eugene Peterson, he was very encouraging as I was writing my book, life with a capital L. He wrote a translation, some refer to it as a paraphrase, others refer to it as it’s kind of a combination of both called The Message. Here’s Psalm 51, at least the first portion of it. I want you to listen to it.

Generous in love— God, give grace! Huge in mercy— wipe out my bad record. Scrub away my guilt, soak out my sins in your laundry. I know how bad I’ve been; my sins are staring me down. You’re the One I violated, and you’ve seen it all, seen the full extent of my evil. You have all the facts before you; whatever you decide about me is fair. I’ve been out of step with you for a long time, in the wrong since before I was born. What you’re after is truth from the inside out. So, enter me, then; conceive a new, true life. Soak me in your laundry and I’ll come out clean, scrub me and I’ll have a snow-white life. Tune me into foot-tapping songs, and set these once broken bones to dancing.

Now, you know where I got the title for this week. The New English Bible long ago put Psalm 51:8 in this language.

Let the bones dance which thou hast broken.

David wrote that Psalm and he was dealing with a very broken bone experience of his own sin and how things had imploded as a result of that. But what do we do once our bones are broken? Now, you guys know every now and then I will try having props on the radio and in podcasts. It’s pretty challenging to do, but today you might be able to hear it. I’ve got a hammer and out on the sidewalk of the studio before, I broke a little bowl, a little pottery bowl. And these pieces are going to be staring at me all week, just to remind me of my broken bones, of your broken bones. But there’s something else on this desk next to the pieces of pottery. It’s another identical bowl, and Jeremy in the booth can back me up on this, that I’m also holding. An artist’s rendition of a Kintsugi dish. Now, Kintsugi is an ancient Japanese art, started back in the 15th century probably, where broken pottery and broken tea pieces were repaired with a lacquer, a glue that was infused with real gold. And a Kintsugi master, and I’ve actually, as part of my work with the international arts movement in Makoto Fujimura, we’ve talked much about Kintsugi and had a Kintsugi master come and instruct us and had trained for a long time. So, a Kintsugi master takes that broken dish and repairs it. Now, Kintsugi literally means golden joinery or golden repair. And once a Kintsugi master has finished repairing that broken bowl, it’s more valuable and more beautiful than it was to start with. Now, the bowl is still broken, but it’s repaired. It’s restored. And that process of restoring infused more value into it. You know, a lot of people thinking about the gospel, we make the gospel story a two chapter scenario. We start with the fall. And chapter two is redemption, and so we say, well, the gospel is all about us being fallen and sinners, and Jesus coming and redeeming us. All of that is true. But that’s not the entirety of the gospel story. The gospel story really is four chapters, not two. And so, often you’ll hear people start sharing the gospel by focusing in on, well, we’re all sinners. Yes, that’s true. But the gospel story started in chapter one, which was creation. There was something that God made and it was good. And it was infused with life and we had access to the tree of life. And then the rebellion happened that we all have PhDs in even to this day. And the fall occurred and we were exiled from the tree of life. And God loved us in the midst of that and came to redeem us in the person and work of his Son Jesus. And that redemption leads us to restoration. So, in my brokenness, and as I look at this broken dish, God looks at your life and mine and we’re born broken people and we bring more shrapnel into our lives and more happens to us as well. He loves us in our brokenness. But he doesn’t just love us. For God so loved the world in the midst of our fallenness, yes. But He doesn’t just love us, He forgives us. He forgives us of all the stuff that we do that shatters our journeys and the journeys of people around us. But He doesn’t just love us and forgive us, He restores us. He restores us and wants to bring us back into what Paul refers to as the new creation. And it’s that restoration process that David in Psalm 51 is pleading for. I don’t know what your brokenness looks like, but it’s a gate and it’s an opportunity. It comes in the form of pain. All the gates in our journeys, and I’ll talk about this a little bit more tomorrow are opportunities for us to move into new realms of maturity. But the gates that get us to those new pastures, so to speak, of maturity, are things like loss. What kind of loss have you experienced? Maybe a loss of health, or a job, or some dreams, or a loss of pride, possessions, loss of hope, loss of comfort, maybe it’s sin is what our pain looks like right now. We bring it upon ourselves. We bring the brokenness upon ourselves. Maybe it’s other people, quiet rejection, demeaning judgment, crazy making abuse, poisonous slander against us, brutal betrayal. Maybe it was an accident. Oh, there was physical injury. Maybe I’ve experienced the death of a friend or a family member. We were just talking about that before we came in the studio about some of the things that we’ve experienced in our lives and close friends and family members. Maybe it’s some kind of a disease or an illness or a child’s rebellion or financial failure, marriage, marital stress or loneliness or rejection. You getting encouraged now? But it’s reality. And too often when that brokenness comes into our lives, we feel like we’re relegated to the sidelines. We’re no longer on the dance floor of being human and being a follower of Jesus. And so, I want to encourage you, take a look out at that dance floor and say, you know what, is it possible for me to get back out there, even though I’ve got some broken bones? We’re going to unpack that more this week. But in the meantime, in your brokenness, I do hope you thrive today.

Matthew Porter:
Thank you Matt. That was our good friend Matt Heard, teaching us today as we kick off a week long series called Dancing with Broken Bones. Did that resonate for you? Boy, it did for me. Hope you’ll run with us all this week. So, by now, you’ve probably heard about the latest edition of Key Life Magazine. It features articles from Steve, Chad West, Alex Early, and Kendra Fletcher. But listen, we now have our annual summer digital issue of Key Life Magazine. Whole different thing. This one has pieces from Steve, Kendra Fletcher, Barry Smith, and even me. That digital magazine is available now at keylife.org/magazines and again, if you haven’t yet claimed your free copy of our print magazine, call us right now at 1-800-KEY-LIFE that’s 1-800-539-5433. You can also e-mail [email protected] to ask for that magazine. Or to mail your request, go to keylife.org/contact to find our mailing addresses for the U.S. and Canada. Just ask for your free copy of Key Life Magazine.. And Hey, before you go, if you value the work of Key Life, would you join us in that work through your financial support? Giving is easy. Just charge a gift on your credit card or include a gift in your envelope. Or simply text Key Life to 28950. And of course, if you can’t give right now, or maybe you’re not called to, all good. But if you think about it, please do pray for us, would you? Always needed, always appreciated. Key Life is a member of ECFA in the States and CCCC in Canada. And as always, we are a listener supported production of Key Life Network.