Broken Bookends & Seabiscuit

The Spirit of the Lord is still calling His people into alignment with heaven’s purpose. Isaiah declared, “The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me… He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to captives” (Isaiah 61:1). Those words continue to resonate, especially in seasons when life shakes us so deeply.

Recently, something happened at home that caused me to reflect on Paul’s charge to Timothy to “fight the good fight… keeping faith and a good conscience” (1 Tim. 1:18–19). When faith feels thin and the battle has worn us down, God does not discard us. He prepares us.

I once saw a vision of a massive army stretching as far as the eye could see. The Lord walked among the ranks inspecting His warriors. When He reached us, He paused and said, “You don’t have all your armor on… you’re lacking weaponry.” We wanted to fight, but He knew we were too wounded, too depleted, too stripped down to our shell. That was a time in our lives when we had been so beat up by the enemy that we were just a shell of what we were supposed to be.” Stepping back created a gap in the army and I felt like I was failing the Lord, but that space also created a time for healing, strengthening, and re‑arming.

God is calling His people again. This time, not just as warriors, but as overcomers, those who walk in the fullness of what He has already provided: “His divine power has granted to us everything pertaining to life and godliness.” (2 Peter 1:2–4).

This truth came alive to me through a simple experience I had.  Years ago when I was an exchange student in Turkey, I had purchased a pair of white marble bookends, each one beautifully chiseled into the head and flowing mane of a horse. During one of our moves, one of the bookends broke. To hide the damage, I had to angle it so that the missing piece of the mane couldn’t be seen. At some point I carefully wrapped the broken fragments, intending to repair it, but over the years the pieces were misplaced and the bookend remained broken.

Then one day, while cleaning out an old, seldom‑used desk, I found the wrapped pieces, much to my delight. I went searching for the right adhesive; simple Elmer’s glue would not do the job. And after carefully fitting the fragments back into place and letting the special glue set, the bookend was finally restored. Once repaired, the break was invisible—its strength and beauty fully recovered.

It reminded me that God never forgets the broken pieces of our lives. Even when we misplace them, He knows exactly where they are. And when the time is right, He brings them back into our hands so He can restore what was damaged. What once had to be turned to the wall can stand upright again.

Recently the movie Seabiscuit came to mind. It is a favorite movie, a true account and his story struck me deeply. It’s the tale of an unlikely champion—a small, battered horse who came from flawed bloodlines. He was dismissed as lazy, broken, and useless. A quote from the movie:“He was a small horse… hurting too… a limp in his walk, a wheezing when he breathed.” Yet in the midst of the Great Depression, when 25% of Americans were unemployed and families wandered the roads with their last remaining possessions this little horse lifted a nation’s spirit.

The miracle of Seabiscuit revealed the convergence that came when four broken individuals were brought together in a moment of divine alignment. There was his owner who was grieving the death of his child, his marginal trainer, a half blind jockey and a horse no one wanted. Together, they healed. Together, they rose up and together, they won. And when the moment came, Seabiscuit defeated the mighty War Admiral by four lengths and became Horse of the Year in 1938. A horse whose reputation had been shattered and then rebuilt became a symbol of hope for a nation mired in despair during the Great Depression.

Seabiscuit’s miracle wasn’t about speed or simply finishing the race. It was about the power of belief: how others saw potential in a broken horse and chose to have faith that there was something within him that could rise, endure, and ultimately win. His victory was born not from perfection, but from the trust and hope of those who refused to give up on him.

Paul wrote, “I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.” God chooses the unlikely—just as He chose a harlot, a Gentile, and a teenager in the Messiah’s lineage. He delights in transforming the ordinary into the extraordinary. But transformation requires healing. It requires rebuilding.

When we moved back to New Jersey from North Carolina, we bought a house so in need of repair that we had to take every wall down to the studs. Everything had to be stripped away—insulation, sheetrock, flooring—until only the framework remained. “It was a picture of our lives… we had to take everything down to the framework and start from there.” The lies of the enemy had to be torn out. The structure had to be rebuilt. Bob Jones once told us we had “breathed in bad air” and needed refreshing. He was right.

Before you can re‑enter the battle, you must be healed.

Rick Joyner wrote in The Torch and the Sword that movements are like horses—given by God to take ground from the enemy and establish strongholds of truth. In that book, John Wesley told him, “You are there to prepare the coming ones.” Movements become safe places where captives are healed, restored, and armed for battle. Wesley also said, “Many who will come will be badly wounded… but after the council they will never retreat before the enemies of the cross.”

This is our era. The veil between realms is thinning. The bridge is strengthening. We must learn to live in both worlds. We are not of this world yet we are in it. We are citizens of a heavenly kingdom. Soldiers of the King. Harvesters in the final hour.

But soldiers must be healed. Movements must be purified. Warriors must be re‑armed.

God wants to restore dreams, hope, and vision. But restoration precedes mobilization. Healing precedes warfare. Resolve precedes victory.

The Lord is assembling His army again. He is inspecting His troops. And He is calling each of us to step forward: healed, whole, armed, and ready.

This is a new era. A new movement. A new mobilization.

And the King is calling His overcomers to rise up and finish the race.

Romans 8:37 — “In all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us.”