Broken In The Right Place - Alan E Nelson

While I was in the hairdresser this evening, I completed reading the book "Broken In The Right Place" by Alan E Nelson .... I was already half way and completed the book by the time the hairdresser finish her work on my hair ....

This is a very interesting book ... rather, it somehow suits my mode for now. Found a lot of meaningful and reflective nuggets and one of it is entitled The Mature Person - which is a result of brokenness - a tamed soul which is mature. Alan listed seven characters of a mature person which caused me to reflect on my own inner man.













A mature person will :

1) Keep loving when they do not receive love in return - can I love consistently? Broken people tend to be good lovers. They are slow to anger, quick to forgive, reticent to condemn and swift to affirm.

2) Able to maintain a positive joy flow during times of times of emotional recession. Joy during trials and temptations. They are emotionally consistent.

God is a great recycler. He takes the garbage that happens to us and makes something good out of it. The breaking process has a spiritual ecology. Problems are never wasted. Mature people who not rise and fall with their day-today emotions.

3) Live in holiness. E Stanley : "outer sins are only fruit - the unsurrendered self is the disease"

4) Not preoccupied with possessions or status. Brokenness reveals the true value of tangible things. A person rich in relation to the things he or she can live without.

5) Consistently service-oriented. Mature people are not driven to serve but they are called to serve.

6) Mature person learn from the past, live in the present but aim for the future. Immature people live in the past, complain about the present, and usually avoid the future. Mature people are perpetual learners. They are always growing. They press forward and progress-oriented. They use the past to provide wisdom for the future. They quit licking yesterdays wounds.

7) Humility - humility is one major result of breaking process.

Nelson made another thought provoking statement : most quarrels come from inner conflict, not external circumstances. And I think that if we look deeper .... into our soul .... there are any conflicts within us. Only when we can settle the raging storm within us with God, we can be at still and peace -- enter another milestone of maturity.

There is just so much of nuggets of gold in this book -- this is a book that I highly recommend!