Finding God’s Blessings in Brokenness - Charles F. Stanley

Although small and short, this book delves deeply into the topic of brokenness--its purposes, the process, and the promise in it. The book is about 150 pages, and a good fraction of those are photos of nature scenes (which I frankly found distracting at times). The purpose of brokenness is said to be so that God can bring forth something new in us. Our resistance to it stems from our self-sufficiency, abilities, and trust in our self and resources. Spiritual maturity is God’s ultimate goal for us. Of particular benefit were the sections on the areas in our character God targets: strengths and weaknesses; attitudes, habits, and relationships; and desires; and God’s tools: our enemies, family, and circumstances, in order to call us to salvation, sanctification and service, and form in the Christian the character of Christ, as described in Gal. 5:22,23 as the fruit of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. The author lists the “five great blessings from brokenness”: the blessing of understanding God better, understanding ourselves better, increased compassion for others, greater zest for life, and an increased awareness of God’s presence. This book was almost exclusively an excellent objective, third-person examination of the biblical subject; only once did I read a subjective, first-person paragraph by the author. That could be good or bad, depending on what the reader wants. I received this book for free in exchange for my unbiased review through the Thomas Nelson BookSneeze Program.