Not the Perfect, but the Broken | Rev Elisha Satvinder

Pray sincerely that we will find freedom, healing, and encouragement from what Jesus did on the cross. Let’s look at these few scriptures together today, starting with Matthew 11:28-30. We’ve probably heard it a few times. Sorry, can I get the screen back the other way? Yes, no? Okay, there’s a demon manifesting in the screen again. Do I need to wait for you? Okay, okay, we’ll wait a bit. Can we get it back? Okay, we got it.

Then Jesus said, “Come to me.” The challenge for us is this: we often look for solutions many times elsewhere. The trouble is this: we always feel God has not been there for us. But He very specifically says, “Come to me, all of you who are weary and carry heavy burdens.” Whatever burden, whatever challenge, whatever pain, whatever brokenness—all of you who are weary and carry heavy burdens—and I will give you rest. Can I say this? Most believers, let alone those who do not know, do not know how to find rest in God, in His word, in His truth. Many times, peace is elusive. We don’t know what true peace is. We get anxious very quickly, we get angry, we get upset, we get unsettled. He says, “I will give you peace, I will give you rest.”

Verse 29: “Take my yoke.” The very thing is this: we take a lot of other things on ourselves, and sometimes we carry this yoke of unforgiveness, this yoke of problems, this yoke of performance, this yoke of disappointments and failure. “Take my yoke upon you. Let me teach you.” The reason I picked this version is simple: many times we treat God like a genie or an ATM machine. Dr. John brought that up. Very ATM machine, you know? It doesn’t happen. We kick the

machine and say, “Hey, where are you?” Many times we do that to God. “Where are you? You know, hence, you don’t work.” So He says, “First, remember, come to me.” Now He says, “Take my yoke. Let me teach you.” So if I don’t learn, I never know what to do. So when we have memory verses, it’s not so that we feel good at the end of the year. It’s so that we have taken hold of the handles of God’s truth, God’s personality, God’s character, God’s wisdom, God’s understanding, and answers to life, even in the midst of problems. “Take my yoke. Let me teach you because I am humble and gentle at heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy to bear, and the burden I give you is light.”

Next, we will look at this scripture, Ephesians 2:8-9. It says, “God saved you by His grace when you believed, and you can’t take credit for this. It is a gift from God. Salvation is not a reward for the good things we have done, so none of us can boast about it. We don’t earn, we don’t earn brownie points from God. We don’t turn around and do things just because we want the right karma. We do it because God enables us. God saved you by His grace when you believed, and you can’t take credit for this. It’s a gift from God. Salvation is not a reward for the good things we have done, so none of us can boast about it. For we are God’s masterpiece.”

As I move into what I want to say this morning, how many of you feel like you’re God’s masterpiece? So who is mistaken? God, or are you? We have a problem, isn’t it? The issue is identity. For we are God’s masterpiece. He has created us anew in Christ. “Come to me, learn of Me, in Christ.” That means if I have a detachment, either I feel I’m too good, or in my struggle, I’m looking for something else so we can do the good things He planned for us long ago. We can be deceived into believing a lie. I asked you, “Masterpiece,” thinking that God only uses a certain kind of people, or God would respond to a certain kind of people. Why? Because society and sometimes very close to home and friends, we are accepted only when we say certain things that are accepted. At home, you are accepted more if you are doing well in school, you’re doing well in your sports, you know? You see, we ourselves at home can communicate amazing rejection unless you meet a standard. We do that at work, school, college; it’s constantly communicated. In society, it’s communicated. We carry this fractured image. We carry this broken image. We carry this unrealistic image. Who do we think that God uses? God uses a certain kind of people. Maybe they’re great in knowledge, they’re really smart, or they remember all their Bible verses, all the memory verses, they ace it, man, they’re so good. Okay, they have money, they have good money, they always get good grades. Yesterday, we had the graduation,

you know? We had 59 or whatever kids, and on my table, you know, they were making comments. And the owner of UCSI University himself, he says, he says, “I bring too many,” you know, the ambassador of America, all these guys were watching the students. And the thing is this, I know the students better than them, and I know what their life is at home, and I know how many of them really, actually just by their skin of their teeth came through. But we were not coming there to celebrate them getting through by the skin of their teeth. We were coming there to celebrate that they have achieved something in life, that they know they can move further in life.

Maybe we were told you’re not good enough, why you’re smart enough. We know this, isn’t it? Why can’t you be like so-and-so’s child? Why are our children like this? Why am I like that? So we have this fractured image, and we can never see the masterpiece of God. If only you’re better educated, if only the looks are better, the skin color must be right. I always tell people, “Don’t be jealous, I’ve got the best skin color.” We say, “No, fairer is better.” Who sold you that lie? Who says fairer is better? But many of us sit here thinking fairer is better. That’s why we have products called Fair and Lovely. It goes synonymous: fair and lovely. Why not brown and fantastically beautiful? You see, we ourselves perpetuate that lie. We live that lie. We sell that lie.

No, God uses those who respond to His grace. Come to me, come to me. Those He uses are those who acknowledge their need for Him. He says, “Then I will teach you.” So if I don’t acknowledge what I need, then I can come and sit, and the sermon can go in one ear, out the other. Why come? I hear the same thing, but has the same thing now shaped you into the masterpiece that He sees you to be? Those who acknowledge their need for Him and pursue His truth and plan take my yoke. Come to me. So most people despise broken things, right? So when you go through whatever you go through, it’s broken, let’s throw it out. Or if you are a crooked businessman, fix it, sell it, so that guy gets something inferior. Okay, so we despise

broken things, we throw them away. And even when we hear the word broken, immediately the thing is something is wrong, something is not right. Something, can it be fixed? Can it not be fixed? So it implies it is not working. Now, we not only throw broken things away, the problem is this: we throw broken people away.

You know, of late, in our school, we’ve opened up challenging. I thought Trina and the team took a very brave step. I don’t know whether I would have taken it, to bring children with learning difficulties. And right across my room, sometimes I can hear how they are disrupting the entire class. And one day I walked across and I watched this teacher handling this child. And I’m thinking, “Oh dear me, I’m observing the class, I’m observing the teacher.” They didn’t see me standing there at first. Yes, yes, you can congratulate me later. I was just watching this, and I’m thinking, “Hmm, what are the parents going through?” And I looked at the class. Three quarters of the class carried on doing what they were doing. Now, that was a delight to me because they’ve accepted the child as he is. Broken people, is there something broken in you that you hide very well, or it manifests in insecurities, or it manifests in anger, or arrogance? How would it manifest? We’ve always got medicine for everything, isn’t it? 

But on the contrary, God seems to love broken people. If you read the scripture, it’s amazing. People who have failed and are so faulty, and God uses them. And yet somehow we sell this lie, please, please hear me, we make the gospel so picture perfect, and that’s not true. God is perfect. His grace is amazing. His love is pure and perfect. His salvation is everlasting. It’s healing. It’s restoring. But we cannot paint a picture. You see, we try to do so many things, isn’t it? Why? We are all wanting to be the masterpiece that only God can tell us what it looks like because He created us. But we have these false images in our society running everywhere, and I will bring some examples to you. So on the contrary, God loves what is broken. Somehow it gets His attention. Look at Jesus in the Gospels. Who did He go to? He said, “It’s not the well that need a doctor, it’s the sick that need the doctor.” And He goes to the lady who is a prostitute. He goes to the widow. He goes to the rejects of society. And we want to hang around with the top of society. God is drawn to brokenness. Why? He looks at it and says, “Time to work on my masterpiece. Time to work on my masterpiece.” So why does God use broken people? Why does He love them? We’re going to see this beauty in brokenness.

But let me address the problem first: society’s pursuit for perfection. We must have the right image, the right image of success, the right image of family, the right image of personality, whatever it may be. So the pursuit of perfection has done one thing: it has led us to very serious issues, increased social and psychological problems. Those of us who are 40 and above, where did we hear all this when we were growing up as teenagers? Mental health issues, all these different issues that are taking place. My goodness, if you read the stats and the research, you know, social problems, psychological issues, and they manifest in one: anxiety. There’s so many disorders. Anxiety disorder, post-anxiety, after-anxiety, God knows what anxiety. We have all kinds of issues. Depression, low self-esteem. Why? Because we have not understood whose masterpiece we are. We’ve not realized it. So, can I have my next? In society, there exists an ever-present pressure for perfection. It’s empowered or powered by these harsh standards, often false, imposed by culture. And culture is not just the culture outside. Culture is your own ethnic culture as well, whether it’s the Punjabi culture, Indian culture, Chinese culture, Baba culture, African culture, whatever culture. We all have this sense of wanting to be perfect, and we perpetuate it in marriage, with the children, in community. We do it. So imposed by culture, media, and social media platforms, and even parents. Even parents. So from airbrushed magazines, you look at it and say, “Oh,” and then you immediately, what do you do? You immediately feel an imperfection. You look at your, what is this? South, is it Korean? They starve them. They have to, they cannot go over a certain weight. And then we see them and we say, “Oh, I want my hair to look like them. I want to dress like them. I want to be as thin as them.”

You are buying a false image. You’re buying a lie. And that’s why the gospel cannot transform you, because the lie is screaming louder. The lie is screaming much louder. So airbrushed magazines. I know somebody took out my picture to promote something. When I looked at it, I couldn’t recognize myself. The joker airbrushed me. I’m like, “Who the heck is this?” So I actually called, “Oh, can I?” You know, Reverend, I said, “Ken, that’s my face. What makes you think I’m embarrassed in how I look? What makes you think, if you are embarrassed in how I look, then don’t let me come and don’t ask me to speak for you either. I don’t have to come and speak in this conference. I don’t have to speak in your conference.”

So airbrushed magazine covers, curated Instagram. Oh, look at the way we do it. Okay, what does it showcase? Flawlessness. Wow, seemingly flawlessness lives that are flawless individuals. And you and I are flooded with this image. We are crowded by this image. We are bombarded by these images all the time, and this narrative, and it keeps perpetuating what? An idolized notion of perfection. So the concept of this perfection is not based on reality. So today, even they say, you know, so pastors get caught up with this. The very senior person who oversees a very large amount of churches, he says, he says, “The young people, the young pastors and the youth pastors, even the shoes that they wear now, they must be the right kind of shoes, man.” So the problem is this. This whole pervasive influence extends beyond just our physical appearances. It goes down to every aspect of our lives. Academic achievements. Look at the way some kids are stressed out. Why? Because the parents are so stressed out because their image is at stake if the kid doesn’t do well. What to say to the relatives? My kid didn’t do well. My goodness. Seriously, are they living for your relatives or are they going to live for your ego? Not very popular sermons, huh? But I’m also not going to curate a sermon that, you know, make it a happy clappy service, and then you go and you walk with this false image from Monday till Saturday, and then you never understand we were created in the image of God. In His image. So academics. Academic achievement, career successes, personal relationships, health, you name it. So research, I was looking through a few things, you know, indicates this one thing here. They said the pursuit of perfection is associated with various social and psychological problems. So this Journal of Abnormal Psychology did a research and they put this paper out, and they said individuals who display perfectionistic tendencies, that means

everything, you know, you must cross all your Ts and dot all your Is, everything must be correct, must be well, must be right, you know, they are at a higher risk of developing anxiety, and anxiety is manifested in many different ways, depression, and other mental health issues. So what happens? This constant pressure to meet unrealistic standards leads to chronic stress, feelings of inadequacy, and a weak sense of self-worth. We always find our self-worth in something else: our weight, our size, our clothes, our looks, whatever it is, the car, whatever. And then they advertise so good, “Easy, isn’t it? You deserve this.” Yes, I do. They just triggered your ego. And then this happens. The rise of social media, and it’s crazy today, isn’t it? Has made this trend worse. What has it done? It has created a culture of comparison and competition. Do you feel elated after going through all your TikToks and whatever talk, and Instagram, and all that? You always all of a sudden don’t feel like what you don’t have, what you’re not, what you are not, what my family doesn’t have, my goodness. And you are fixated with that thing for hours a day. And then young people, you are so fixated with it. Then there is this battle at home. Some parents are also caught with this. But then there becomes this unrealistic emotional battle. Because why? There is this false image that you are wanting to live or needing versus this reality on the ground that your parents may not be able to afford all that you want. So if mom and dad, you also trying to live up with the Joneses, if you trying to be that, you want to, you know, you want to have your Bentley, and you want to have, you know, this house, and this car, and this image, and this, then what you’re doing, you’re telling the kids, “This is the image. This is the image.” And then when they come, then they hear a stronger message. Then they say, “This is not the church. This is not the church. Let me go where there’s a bit more curated.”  

You can breathe or not, everybody? Ah, thank you, thank you, thank you. Can. Can first cough today or not? Next week is Resurrection Sunday. So what do users do? You sign up your online persona. Even your online persona is something else. You want to present a certain ideal image, a romanticized idea, an unrealistic version of yourself, and you carry this fairy tale perfection, encouraging what? Envy. Envy in yourself, envy in others, your sense of failure within yourself or others, you know, this whole defectiveness, and it goes on. It’s a generation that is struggling with not understanding the real image. They have beauty as external, beauty is not within. That is a lie. Beauty is from within, and that’s why God works from the inside first. Pew Research Center did this research recently, and they said, it indicates that a significant percentage of social media users reported feeling pressure to post content that makes their lives appear more glamorous and exciting than they truly are. So businesses, they have to picture perfect. They have to post all the right things, make it look good, really good. Homes, weddings. Hey, why don’t you go out? Cannot. I have to look very fair for my wedding. Huh? Serious? So what if the joker one day go out after you get married, you get sunburned? You said, “Hey, who did I marry?” So what are you trying to do? What are you perpetuating? You know? So the weddings, look at the money they spend on weddings. I calculate. Hey, idiots, give me the money. I can educate the poor. A million, half a million, two million, three million. Wow. The rich flaunt, and those who come, “Oh, when is my prince coming? When is my queen going to come? You know, I hope she has got a big bank account to pay for the wedding.” Or, you know, vice versa. Why? We are living in a false image. Then we want to get our kids married. We also want to make it look good. Why? False image, ego, and status at risk. The clothes we wear. See, I, Chate Road, Chinatown, very good. I say, “Sell you fake Rolex. Original fake Rolex.” I tell you, at least they honest. Original fake Rolex. Oh, dear. Parents, we can perpetuate this for them to pursue perfection without realizing what we are doing. It’s well-intentioned effort. Yeah, we want them to excel academically, sports, music, but we can carelessly contribute to the child’s sense of inferiority and the fear of failure. We do it without realizing it. You cannot say, “It’s for their good.” Stop. Seriously, stop. Don’t. Check your heart. So the whole pressure to excel in all these areas of life, take what? Take its toll on their children, on the marriage, mental health, lead to stress, anxiety, family breakdown, relationships break down, all kinds of things happen. So what society has, this relentless pursuit of perfection by imposing unrealistic standards on individuals, and what does it do? It contributes to social and psychological problems. Anxiety, depression, low self-esteem, feelings of inadequacy, it’s all there. We must challenge unrealistic standards, but not by our standards, but by God’s standards. Amen? Encourage a culture of self-acceptance. Can you accept yourself the way you are, or do you have to make yourself look in a certain way in the mirror to feel good? You cannot be mirror, mirror on the wall, Snow White, and she was upset because it was never her who was the fairest of them all. You remember Muhammad Ali, the world’s most famous boxer? If you ever see a video of an interview of his, it’s so funny, but he did it so well. He says, “Mama,” he talks to his mother, and says, “Why is it always, why is it the White House and not the Black House? You know, why is it always the black sheep of the family? You know, why is it a black spot on my report card? Why is it everything, you know, why is the good angel white and the black angel, you know, the black angel is bad?” He says, “Why is it? Why not all black is good?” Who sold us the lie? The problem is this: a harder question: why did we buy the lie? Why did we buy it? Self-acceptance, compassion, prioritize our minds, doing well. Hey, memory

work also helps us, okay? Our well-being, our heart, our mind, our families, communities. The second issue is also this: this invasive influence extends to family life, where there is often an expectation of achieving the perfect family. You know, your Chinese New Year picture, Christmas picture, all look very perfect, but before that, fight. After that, fight. Why can’t you? Okay, everybody, smile. After that, look. Told you to smile. Smile, what? And then the kid is like, “Why do we want picture perfect?” But behind there, squabbles, quarreling, anxiety issues, fights all during festivals. Oh, think of it. So we want this picture-perfect family, so we idolize. You see how people curate their families, you know, and then everybody wants that same family. So the Journal of Family Psychology published a research paper on this. It says this: individuals who perceive their family as falling short of the idolized standards are more likely to experience feelings of dissatisfaction, anxiety, and depression. The pressure to maintain the facade of an imperfect family can lead to strained relationships, communication breakdown, and lack of authenticity within family dynamics. So we want that. On the flip side, you can have a lot of money, but you have this false humility. I must portray, you know, you’ve got these loads of money. Oh, I drive Kelisa. Why? I’m very humble. Stop it. You’re hypocritical. You don’t want people to ask you for money. Oh, I’m very simple. I go to Chate Road. I buy clothes, you know? Good for you. But honestly, don’t. My wife was talking about, you know, the few, we were talking about something. I said, “That’s false humility. That’s trying to portray something to hide something else.” I said, “Careful.” I said, “Read through. Watch it carefully. Don’t be taken in.” So social media makes it worse. Okay, we heard enough of this already. Yeah, we live in a broken world. A world with false ideas of perfection and acceptance. How and where can we find healing, true meaning, and freedom? Come to me. I want to show you a video. This is called, can I have the next slide, please? Okay, of course, we find our hope in Christ. I don’t know if you’ve seen this. Probably you’ve seen the art. It’s called Kintsugi. Okay, so we kind of put a very short video. It’s longer than, but I want you to see this. And that’s where I want to go this morning with all of you. Can we have the video? Can I have the volume? Volume, please.

It means golden joinery. It’s the practice of mending broken objects, mainly pottery, with lacquered gold. The origin of Kintsugi allegedly comes from a Japanese Shogun, Ashikaga

Yoshimasa, who wished to repair a broken Chinese tea bowl in a way that would be aesthetically pleasing. Kintsugi encapsulates two Japanese philosophies. The first is Wabi-Sabi, which embraces imperfection and impermanence. The breaking and then repairing of an object is simply an event in its life that adds to both its character and beauty. As Richard Powell says, “Nothing lasts, nothing is finished, and nothing is perfect.” There is also Mushin, which explores non-attachment and acceptance of change. The changes we undergo throughout our lives—the breaks and knockbacks—are shown in our scars, blemishes, and wrinkled skin. Objects, too, are subject to the same changes, and through Kintsugi are repaired in gold to illuminate their breaking points, which, like wrinkled skin, adds wisdom and fortitude. Japan finds beauty in the weathered and the dutifully used, and values the appreciation of transience. Mono no aware, literally “the pathos of things,” is a Japanese term for this, combining transience and wistfulness for both objects and the state of life in general.

Can I have the slides, please? The pictures. Broken. Broken things, broken lives, broken image, philosophies, mindsets, image, broken image. Such is the deception. We fail to see the amazing image of Jesus’s love. Next. And it slowly begins to be pieced together. We want God to work so

fast in our lives because why? We just want everything to be fixed immediately. If it’s not fixed, why is God taking so long? If it’s not fixed, the devil is after me. Somebody is doing this, somebody is doing that, you know? But the issue is we’ve never stopped and said, “Lord, I’m coming to you.” “Come to me, all of you that are heavy laden, you’re broken, come to me.” We don’t know how to come daily to the Lord, rest our hearts, our minds, say, “Lord, I empty myself. Lord, I surrender my heart. I surrender my frustrations, my anger, my insecurities.” I want to encourage us, be honest with God. God is not deceived. He knows exactly our insecurities and our brokenness and our faulty images. So it’s coming to Him, but it’s letting Him. Because if you look at the entire video, He starts sanding the rough edges so that they can come together again. In Christ, we are a new creation. Then the next, He begins to put it together. And then they take this lacquer. Next. It’s gold. It’s gold. But you see, all the while, the master craftsman is working on His masterpiece. The master craftsman. We are the clay. He is the potter, and He’s shaping us. Next. The last one. And it comes, and all of a sudden, it’s a beauty. Why? We want to look perfect. Amazing grace, how sweet the sound. I once was lost, but now I’m found. Which means I acknowledge God without you, I was drifting on the sea of uncertainty and false image of anger and bitterness and frustration and whatever it may be. Positions, you can come. Church, we must be able to embrace our flaws and our imperfections. This whole exercise is embracing brokenness, flaws. Can we accept broken people, or do we want perfect people? See, if we cannot accept that, we never live in a reality. We live in a deceptive mindset and image, and we’re in this conflict. Our self-acceptance struggles, and then we find it hard to accept others because I have this image of how everybody else is supposed to be. And then you become so conscious of how you look, how you dress, your weight, your color, your hair, your dressing, your car. Find freedom in the One who came to give us freedom. It’s for this reason that Christ has come, to set you free, no longer subject to a bondage of slavery. Find freedom. Live with that joy and that knowledge that we are free in God. Live in that knowledge and see how you deal with problems. See how you deal with addictions, how you deal with other things, because all of a sudden you say, “No, hey, I am a child of God. God is fixing my broken life, my broken mind, my broken emotions. He’s fixing it, and He’s putting His gold dust, His love, His forgiveness, and with His amazing hands as a craftsman, He’s putting me together.” But come to Him. Come to Him. That is the key. Come to Him. Come to Him. Come to Him. Come to Him. Sometimes we have a simple, “Hey, come forward.” I don’t want to. I have to show, which means I’m acknowledging my goodness. Come to Him sometimes is the beginning point, is saying, “I need God. I’ve been a Christian for 50 years. Oh God, I need you. God, I need you.” And I’m not going to hide behind my pride, my ego. I’m not going to hide. I’m going to come to you. Lord, I come to you. Embrace the flaws, embrace the imperfections, because there is a beauty and a resilience that can emerge from brokenness through God’s grace, through God’s love, and God’s restoration. Amen?

How does Jesus view brokenness and restoration? It is the cross. We’re going to read a few scriptures here, and I want you to take this personally and say, “Lord, this is for me.” Psalms 34:18, “The Lord is close. The Lord is what? Close to whom? And saves those who are crushed in spirit.” The spirit of the Sovereign Lord is upon me, Jesus speaking this, “Because the Lord has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor, He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the

prisoners.” 2 Corinthians 4:7-9, “But we have this treasure.” You are a treasure, and you have God’s treasure in you, His image. You’re a masterpiece. You have this treasure. The treasure is the life of God, is the grace of God, is the amazing love of God. It’s you. He has created you, the master hand of God. But we have this treasure in jars of clay. We are clay, but He brings amazing treasure out of the clay. Why? To show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us. We are hard-pressed on every side, but not crushed, perplexed, but not in despair, persecuted, but not abandoned, struck down, but not destroyed. Amen? Amen?

Can we stand together and we can read these two slides together? He was broken. Jesus was broken at the cross. You know, some of us have watched The Passion. Watch The Passion of Christ, that body beaten into a pulp so that this clay pot can receive healing and wholeness. He was broken so that we could become whole, not languish in insecurities and a false self-image. Whose image are you living with? Whose image are you trying to be? Come. What are you struggling with? Will you find the courage today to say, “I have some broken pieces. Lord, will you mend me?” In the last line, He came to heal the brokenhearted, set captives free, and restore what was lost through His death and His resurrection. He is that glue, that golden powder, those hands that take your brokenness and restore you. I want us this morning, and I’m going to ask you to do something very encouraging.