How God takes your brokenness and uses it to minister to others.
The Father’s love not only heals your heart. It takes the years the cankerworm has eaten and restores them. It works all things for good. Regardless of what you’ve suffered God will give you beauty for ashes.
Compensation
God’s divine power has given us all things that pertain unto life and godliness. 2 Pet.1:3
I grew up in a broken home. My dad was an addict, angry, and abusive. I had a very limited support system for knowing how to succeed socially, academically, or financially.
In 2003 I found myself teaching 100 pastors from Cambodian villages about Father God’s love. A pastor had come with me to Cambodia to share the teaching load and he was having some trouble connecting to the people. Even though I didn’t speak their language, I was very much connecting with them; they all had come from broken homes like me. Not 50%, like in the US, but all of them had been abandoned by their dads or abused by them. Also, because I had 
pastored a church in a poor area of the Dominican Republic, I understood their circumstances and how they lived. I knew how to teach principles of God’s word to people with little or no formal education. My life experiences had perfectly equipped me for this situation.
God had compensation for me; He had given me all I would ever need for life and godliness. Not just for overcoming my past but for fulfilling my destiny. And here’s some great news. Everyone of you reading this also has compensation from God. You may not have discovered it or unpacked it yet, never-the-less it is there. God has given to you all things that you need for life and godliness.
Beauty for Ashes
If you consider the stages of grief, the final stage is finding some good out of the loss. For example, a mother who lost her teenager to a drunk driver founded MADD, Mothers Against Drunk Drivers. The most meaningful core values in our lives are often derived out of the most substantial pain we have gone through.
The Army of the Healed Broken
I have the privilege of working daily with people that grew up in some really broken homes. These are often the bravest people I’ve ever met. Many of them have a real passion for God that isn’t always seen in those who grew up in healthy families. What’s exciting is that as these people overcome the abuses they’ve experienced, they are uniquely equipped to help others that have been through similar things.
This is very exciting to me. I believe there will be one last great harvest of souls. I believe this is what the ends
times are about, not God vindicating His bruised ego. I don’t believe God has issues with inferiority or rejection. I believe the end times are about God’s final outpouring of His incredible love to see as many saved as possible before the conclusion of the age. This will require an army of people that have worked through their own wounding and know how to help others. We live in a generation where the dark is getting darker. Kids are growing up in single parent homes with video games as their nannies. Yet as the dark gets darker, the light also increases. We are seeing huge advances in how to bring God’s healing to people and I believe it will become as main stream as the grace message did in the ’80s and ’90s.
Wonderful! Yesterday, coincidentally, I was thinking about an abuse instance where my mother beat my hands and feet, both sides! I thought about the principle of compensation and thought……hmmm, “what if” my feet were beaten, but it opens up the compensation for God to bless the paths that my feet go to? “What if” my hands were beaten and that opened up the compensation for God to use them for healing others? It is extraordinary to me that the Lord would disclose this to me a day before I read your blog. Man…talk about confirmation that God is up to something! Thank you for the article!