Brokenness

Over the years my wife and I have remodeled the homes we have lived in.  Now, if you have never undergone the process of a remodel there are a few things you need to know.

Remodeling can be disruptive.  There is the noise of cutting and hammering and removing the trash; but you also have to deal with all the dust that remodeling creates.

But in order for you to experience the transformation that occurs in a remodel, you must put up with the pain of tearing our the old.

This is exactly what God desires to do in the lives of every believer.  Brokenness is the key to achieving breakthroughs in our lives.  God wants to reveal His Son in our lives, but first He must remove everything that is in the way: our pride, independence, self-sufficiency, and sin.

Revealing these ingrained attributes that cause us to rebel against God is messy business.  But brokenness must come before we can experience a breakthrough.  Consider the picture of a wild horse.

While living in Montana, I was privileged to know a few cowboys who broke horses.  Now a wild horse doesn't mind when the cowboy provides food, water, and shelter, but once that cowboy tries to get on their back - watch out!  That horse will buck and kick, twist and turn; anything to get that cowboy off his back.

Isn't that what we do to God?  As He begins the remodel process, we balk.  Just like the wild stallion we say, "God you can bless me all you want.  Provide me with food, a job, a house, a family, etc... but don't get on my back.  Don't tell me how to live."

You see, the goal of the cowboy is to get the horse to submit to the directions of another.  In the wild, the horse is free to go where he wants, when he wants, and with whomever he wants.  Once it is broken, the strength of the horse is not changed; its muscles have not diminished, it hasn't lost its God given uniqueness or identity as a horse.  It's just a horse under the control of another.  Same is true with you and I.

God wants to break us in order to make us.  Paul says in 2 Cor. 1:8-9, "For we do not want you to be unaware, brethren, of our affliction which came to us in Asia, that we were burdened excessively, beyond our strength, so that we despaired even of life indeed, we had the sentence of death within ourselves so that we would not trust in ourselves, but in God who raises the dead; who delivered us from so great a peril of death”
 

Sometimes God will take us further than we can bear so that we can no longer trust ourselves, our resources,  our abilities.  He says, "I want you to trust Me."  Who are you trusting?  Maybe it's time for you to be broken.

For the full message shared on 04-14-13 at First Church of God, Racine, WI; go to:

Brokenness