Indispensable People
Making the Gospel Accessible to people of ALL abilities so that they may know Christ, grow in Him, and serve Him with the gifts He has given them.
Indispensable People
The World Says Self-Reliance, God Says Faith Through Brokenness
We explore how God uses our brokenness to display His grace, challenging cultural narratives that equate value with ability. The gospel flips worldly expectations upside down, revealing that weakness is precisely where God's strength becomes most evident.
• Over 65 million Americans have disabilities (25% of population), yet 80% aren't in church
• The world measures worth through ability and self-sufficiency, while God defines success differently
• "The opposite of faith is not doubt but self-reliance"
• Personal reflection on questioning my own value after COVID limitations
• Accepting our creator and embracing our brokenness allows God's purpose to manifest
• Viktor Frankl said "despair is suffering without meaning"
• Our value comes from being created in God's image, not from what we can produce
For deeper dives into these topics and more, check out indispensable-people.com and visit Amazon to purchase the books "The Indispensable Kid" and "Gospel Accessibility" and the "Indispensable People."
Hi, my name is Tracy Correll and welcome to Indispensable People. I'm a wife, mom, teacher, pastor and missionary and I believe that every person should have the opportunity to know Christ, grow in Him and serve Him with the gifts that he has given, no matter their ability. Over 65 million Americans have a disability. That's 25% of the population. However, over 80% of them are not inside the walls of our church. Let's dive into those hard topics, biblical foundations, perceptions and to this episode of Indispensable People.
Speaker 1:Today we're going to be talking about brokenness, and that might seem like a pretty obvious statement when we're considering ministering to people with disabilities, but in all truthfulness, it is literally the truth of all of us. We live in a broken, marred world, which is why we have sickness and ailments and physical disabilities and intellectual disabilities and all of those kinds of things. And although the world would beg to tell us that, because of the brokenness, because of the weakness, because of the disability, the cannots are the biggest, however, the gospel flips it on its head and says in your weakness is where God is strong. So how do we take what the world tells us and, honestly, how we have built lives based on our strengths right? I think of. I am a transition coordinator at a high school and what I do there is I speak to the students, I do assessments with them to help them identify what are their weaknesses, what are their strengths, and how do we capitalize on those strengths so that they can do the job that they are hoping to do? And so we've really built our lives on a strength as our assets, our strengths as our catalysts to complete or to do anything. But the gospel flips it, it changes it, and that is so very important when we consider people with disabilities in the body of Christ, knowing that scripture tells us that those that seem the weaker are actually indispensable. And this fits that model as we look further into scripture. And so I am looking at I've been reading a book called Disability in the Gospel.
Speaker 1:I jumped into it a few years ago. I have jumped back into it and the kind of tagline says how God uses our brokenness to display his grace. And the author is Michael S Beetz, if I'm saying that correctly, b-e-a-t-e-s. And I'm going to read you some of this book and we're going to kind of stop in some places. And this is in chapter four of this book and the chapter is called Biblical Conclusions and Reflections and it's kind of where it takes all of the scripture and the parts and the pieces that it had put together to explain this to kind of a conclusion.
Speaker 1:And it says someone has said that the opposite of faith is not doubt but self-reliance. Very interesting there. Right, the opposite of faith is not doubt but self-reliance. We try to convince ourselves that we can do it and we can take care of it and that we are enough. But the gospel says the complete opposite, which is what is required of faith to believe that God can do it, that God provides, that God takes care of things. And it goes on to say when we determine, despite massive and overwhelming evidence to the contrary, that we are sufficient and able on our own, we begin to live as if we no longer need God or faith.
Speaker 1:The true sign of cultural unbelief is the perception that we are doing okay, that things are all right. Recognizing our essential weakness and brokenness is not a pleasant prospect and our culture works hard to deny that reality and proclaim its self-sufficiency, which is what I said from the beginning the world was built on. Let's see what your strengths are, let's prove what you can do. Get out there with your work ethic, how are you gonna make this happen? Kind of a perspective. And the more self-sufficient you are, then that must mean the more successful you are. But the gospel asks us to do the complete opposite. It asks us to rely on Christ so that we can be successful in the body of Christ. And I think the big change up there is the world's definition of success and God's definition of success are not the same.
Speaker 1:And it goes on to say that another person named Sharon Fetcher says what seems to the cultural eye, the physical obstinacy of disability suggests rather a religious, philosophical or cultural rejection, namely an undigested or inadmissible awareness to live will involve us at some time, at some level, in physical or some kind of suffering. And so, again, looking at the perspective of the world and the perspective of scripture and what God had intended and here is a this the book highlights a movie that I watched a long, long time ago, a long long time ago, which was in 1999, guys, 1999 feels like it wasn't that long ago, but 26 years ago. The film the Matrix came out okay, and the book says the character Neo is rescued and awakened and he opens his eyes to a world that is terribly ugly, broken and dark. And he learns his eyes to a world that is terribly ugly, broken and dark. And he learns that humanity for the most part continues to live as slaves in a computer generated dream world of sorts, never grasping the true nature of the desperate and lost situation. And at one point, early in his rehabilitation, neo asks he asks, why do my eyes hurt? And his companion Morpheus responds simply you've never used them before. So for us, sometimes, after God saves us to himself and our eyes are open for the first time, spiritually, we begin to see our brokenness and the ugliness of the world and the ugliness of the world. But this is a necessary first step to embracing the hope of the gospel, renewal and reformation into the image of Christ and final restoration with God. And that is why, right there, that ministering specifically to people with disabilities is so incredibly important, because the way that the world shows them their brokenness and equates it to an unsuccessful life, to something that can't live up to or that's not valuable, that lacks, all of those kinds of things are going to sit hard and strong. And I have told this story before. I've talked about my COVID experience and afterwards, coming home from the hospital and spending most of the time in a recliner because my body didn't want to work, my brain didn't want to work, my language didn't want to work, all of those kinds of things.
Speaker 1:And, honestly, as a credentialed minister knowing the scriptures, I sat in that recliner and questioned my value to this world as a minister to people with disabilities and I questioned myself, saying what do I have to offer? What worth do I have now if I can't do what I did before? And that bugs me so very much, because the message that we tell all of the people that we minister to on a regular basis, those with disabilities of all kinds the message always is your value is not in what you can do or what you have to offer. It is in the creator, who made you, and scripture tells us in Genesis 127 that each of us are made in the image of God. Okay, we know that we were created for the works of his glory. We know that he has a plan and a purpose for our lives and it is not based on what I can do, it is based on who he is.
Speaker 1:And if I can sit here as a credentialed minister, as a minister to people with disabilities, and question my value and worth after a major health incident, then what are those who don't have Christ doing? What are they thinking? Where are they seeing their value? And we live in a world that is ever-changing and ever-evolving, and I would say that a good portion of the thought processes from 40, 50, 60 years ago are changing as it comes to people with disabilities, but they're not necessarily changing in saying fully the value and worth that exists. What they're doing is saying you can live this life however you want and do whatever you want and engage in whatever activities that you want, and your disability doesn't stop you from that. So we're opening up doors into things that still do not communicate the value and worth of someone. We're just telling them you can have access to all things. So I want to read this next part, and it is.
Speaker 1:Adam Nelson wrote this and he said brokenness seems to be a prerequisite that God demands before doing lasting work through a person, but the term broken is almost always perceived as negative. Viktor Frankl said despair is suffering without meaning. Brokenness helps us to avoid despair when our dreams do not come true and when we suffer, because it gives us meaning when we need it most, only after we are broken in the right place can we be truly healed and experience wholeness? One of the things that I used to say all the time is that we cannot fully be who God intended us to be until we accept how we were created.
Speaker 1:We have this cultural tension between the experience and of who we are in our weakness and the disability and the model that scripture tells us that brokenness is what is required. Now there's brokenness in all kinds of ways, right, there's brokenness in our intellectual abilities. There can be brokenness in our physical abilities, there can be brokenness in our emotional. But we, our culture, says avoid the broken and the disabled, hide your weaknesses and blemishes, act as if they simply aren't there. But scripture gives us a story after story. This is what the author says and is positioning us to say. Instead, understand that you, all of you, in some sense or another, are broken.
Speaker 1:Stopped avoiding the truth and embrace it, for in that embrace we begin to grasp the power of God through his grace may manifest in human weakness.
Speaker 1:So what do we need to do?
Speaker 1:Accept our creator, accept his creation, which is ourselves, embrace the brokenness and then look to God and say and what do you want to do? Let's do it. Our value and our worth does not come in what we can do, does not come in what we offer this world, but it comes in the creator, who made us with a plan and a purpose for the works of his glory, with much more to do, because we were created in his image. Every person, every situation made with a purpose, made with a plan. If you have breath in your lungs, you have purpose on this planet. Do I know everything about disability ministry? Do I have all the answers? Have I done everything perfectly? I've absolutely not, but we are going to continue this conversation so that people of all abilities can have the opportunity to know Christ, grow in Him and serve Him with the gifts that he has given them. For deeper dives into these topics and more, check out indispensablepeoplecom and visit Amazon to purchase the books the Indispensable Kid and Gospel Accessibility and the Indispensable People.
