SERMON NOTES WITH APPLICATION - 'GETTING BEYOND BROKENNESS" PT II - JOHN 16:31-17:5

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Series: ENGAGING IN THE HOLY

“GETTING BEYOND THE BROKENNESS” — PT II - John 16:31–17:5 (MSG)

Year Theme: HIGH AND LIFTED UPMovement: Moving from surviving what broke us toward becoming who God has been forming through us.

BIG IDEA (For Everyone)

Part I taught us to Speak Over Your Life, Seek God’s/The Word’s Revelation, and Settle In Your Promise. Part II asks: What do I build once I have decided brokenness will not define me?

Jesus is standing on the threshold of betrayal, abandonment, suffering, and death, yet He speaks from a future that has already begun invading His present. He knows the disciples will scatter, but He is anchored: “The Father is with me.”He knows suffering is coming, but He declares victory: “I’ve conquered the world.” And before the cross ever becomes visible, Jesus begins speaking about splendor, life, completion, and glory.

John's theology gives us a powerful way to understand hope: the future God has promised can begin changing how we live before our present circumstances change.

Getting beyond brokenness, then, is more than recovering from what happened.

It is becoming anchored enough to survive the breaking, braced enough to shine through it, and awakened enough to discover that there is still more of you waiting to live.

1. BUILD AN ANCHOR LIST (John 16:31–33)

What’s Happening?

Jesus knows His circumstances are about to become unstable.

His disciples will run.

People He has poured into will abandon Him.

The cross is approaching.

Yet Jesus identifies what remains stable:

“But I’m not abandoned. The Father is with me.”

That's an anchor.

Then He gives the disciples another:

“Take heart! I’ve conquered the world.”

That's an anchor too.

An anchor doesn't stop the storm. It keeps the storm from deciding where you end up.

Jesus' words suggest a powerful practice for broken seasons: identify what remains true when everything else feels uncertain.

Your anchor list might include:

God is still with me.I am still here.I still have purpose.I still have people who love me.I still have gifts.I have survived difficult seasons before.My present condition is not my permanent identity.There is still future beyond this moment.

Brokenness makes you count what you've lost; an anchor list reminds you to count what remains.

Cliff Note (Plain Talk)

When life becomes unstable, don't build your identity around what moved.

Anchor yourself to what remains.

Practical Application

Christian:Build your anchor list from God's character, God's Word, previous experiences of God's faithfulness, and the people God has placed around you. Read it when emotions make you forget what you know.

Non-Christian:Identify your non-negotiables—values, relationships, lessons, strengths, practices, and truths about yourself that remain dependable when circumstances become unstable.

Gen Z / Millennials:Don't let one breakup, rejection, job loss, financial setback, family conflict, or social-media moment convince you that everything is falling apart. Ask, “What is still true?”

Professionals:When a plan fails, separate the failure of the strategy from the value of the person. Your title, position, income, or company may change without eliminating your knowledge, network, experience, or capacity.

Families & Friends:Sometimes community becomes somebody's anchor list. When they cannot remember their strength, you remember it for them. When they cannot see their future, you help hold the possibility until they can see again.

Black Community Word:Our history is filled with people who maintained anchors while the world around them was deliberately destabilized. Faith. Family. Education. Music. Culture. Church. Mutual aid. Community. Ancestral memory. Hope. We survived not because the storms were small, but because generations before us kept finding something deeper than the storm to hold onto.

This Week:Create an actual Anchor List of five to ten truths you can return to when life becomes difficult. Keep it somewhere visible.

2. BRACE YOURSELF TO SHINE (John 17:1–3)

What’s Happening?

Jesus finishes speaking about trouble and immediately does something striking:

“Then, raising his eyes in prayer...”

He looks up.

And His prayer begins:

“Father, it’s time. Display the bright splendor of your Son so the Son in turn may show your bright splendor.”

Jesus knows the impact is coming.

Yet He doesn't simply brace Himself to survive it.

He braces Himself to reveal something through it.

To brace means to secure, support, strengthen, or prepare for impact. But something that is braced is strengthened precisely so that pressure does not destroy its structural integrity.

Jesus' prayer therefore changes the question from:

“How do I avoid this?”

to:

“How can God's splendor still become visible through this?”

The cross will wound Jesus, but it will not extinguish what He came to reveal.

Sometimes you cannot avoid the impact, but you can strengthen what is inside you so the impact does not extinguish your light.

Cliff Note (Plain Talk)

You've spent enough time bracing yourself for the worst.

Now—

brace yourself to shine.

Practical Application

Christian:Strengthen your inner life before the next crisis. Prayer, worship, Scripture, rest, healthy relationships, reflection, and spiritual discipline are not emergency equipment; they are structural reinforcement.

Non-Christian:Build emotional and relational resilience before you need it. Healthy routines, trusted relationships, reflection, professional support, and clear values strengthen your capacity to withstand pressure.

Gen Z / Millennials:Healing isn't only about returning to who you were before something happened. Sometimes healing reveals someone wiser, clearer, stronger, and more authentic than before.

Professionals:Pressure reveals structure. Develop the emotional intelligence, ethical clarity, adaptability, and relationships necessary to lead when circumstances become difficult.

Families & Friends:Don't only show up after somebody collapses. Healthy community strengthens people before crisis arrives.

Black Community Word:Black brilliance has often become visible under circumstances designed to suppress it. But we should never romanticize suffering—we do not need oppression in order to be excellent. The deeper truth is that oppression has repeatedly failed to extinguish our creativity, faith, intellect, beauty, enterprise, art, scholarship, leadership, and joy. We don't shine because we were broken. We shine because brokenness could not destroy what God put inside us.

This Week:Ask: “What needs strengthening in me before the next impact comes?” Strengthen one area intentionally.

3. BEGIN THE AWAKENING (John 17:4–5)

What’s Happening?

Jesus says:

“I glorified you on earth by completing down to the last detail what you assigned me to do.”

Then He looks beyond the immediate suffering toward what has always been true:

“Glorify me with your very own splendor, the very splendor I had in your presence before there was a world.”

Jesus' identity predates the crisis.

The cross is something He will experience.

It is not the origin of who He is.

That distinction matters for anybody recovering from brokenness.

Pain can become so consuming that we begin organizing our identity around what happened:

the divorce,

the death,

the betrayal,

the bankruptcy,

the diagnosis,

the rejection,

the failure,

the childhood wound,

the season when everything fell apart.

But healing can produce an awakening—the discovery that beneath everything that happened, there is still a self capable of becoming.

You are not beginning from nothing; you are awakening to something that brokenness could not erase.

Cliff Note (Plain Talk)

Your survival self got you through.

Thank that version of yourself.

But don't assume survival is the fullest version of you.

Wake up to who you're becoming.

Practical Application

Christian:Ask God not simply to restore what was lost but to awaken what has not yet fully emerged in you—gifts, courage, wisdom, calling, imagination, and purpose.

Non-Christian:Recovery can become discovery. Ask not only, “How do I get my old life back?” but “Who am I becoming now?”

Gen Z / Millennials:You are allowed to outgrow identities created during survival seasons. The person you needed to be at 18, 25, or 30 does not have to control who you become next.

Professionals:Career disruption can awaken dormant capacity. A closed position, changed industry, failed venture, or unexpected transition can force you to discover abilities you never needed to exercise before.

Families & Friends:Don't keep people trapped inside outdated versions of themselves. Healthy love recognizes growth and makes room for people to become.

Black Community Word:Our liberation cannot stop at surviving systems that were never designed for our flourishing. There must also be an awakening to what Black life looks like when it is not organized primarily around resistance: healthy families, economic strength, creativity, rest, property, scholarship, entrepreneurship, joy, spiritual wholeness, and communities where our children inherit possibility rather than merely survival strategies.

This Week:Ask yourself: “What part of me has been hidden because so much of my energy has gone into surviving?” Give that part of yourself some room to emerge.

BIG PICTURE TRUTH

Part I helped us reinterpret brokenness:

Speak Over Your Life.Seek God's/The Word's Revelation.Settle In Your Promise.

Part II teaches us how to build beyond it:

BUILD AN ANCHOR LIST.

Know what remains true when everything else starts moving.

BRACE YOURSELF TO SHINE.

Strengthen yourself not simply to withstand pressure but to remain luminous through it.

BEGIN THE AWAKENING.

Stop allowing your survival self to become the final version of you.

And all three happen before Jesus' circumstances improve.

That's the theological power of this text.