Make Me Broken

Learn this lesson: not to trust Christ because you repent, but trust Christ to make you repent; not to come to Christ because you have a broken heart, but to come to Him that He may give you a broken heart; not to come to Him because you are fit to come, but to come to Him because you are unfit to come. Your fitness is your unfitness. Your qualification is your lack of qualification.  Charles Spurgeon

Have you ever prayed to be broken?  Brokenness is not fun and it isn’t meant to be.  Brokenness means we are at the bottom not the top.  In our humanness we want to be unbroken and untouched where tragedy and trouble don’t happen.  The problem is if we remain unbroken we often will never see God as the Redeemer of brokenness.

There have been many times in my life when I was broken and I admit I never prayed for it.  The thing I have since learned is that God loved me enough to allow me to be broken whether I wanted it or not.  One of the definitions I read about the word brokenness is that it means to not function properly or to be out of working order. 

What does brokenness do for us? It helps us to understand that we can’t do it on our own.  Our strength is not enough and never will be enough.  It brings us to the end of ourselves.  When we are at the end of me we are then free to accept that we can’t do it alone and we are then able to look up.  God never intended for us to go on this journey alone.  He wants us to turn to Him but sometimes we won’t do that until we learn that He is the only one that can help us. If we allow pride or selfishness to stand in our way, then we will never see God in the proper light.  

Too many times when we are in the midst of trouble and sorrow, the first thing we do is look for an escape.  How many times have you asked yourself “If I can just escape the pain I will be fine”?  If you have ever done that and then later looked back, you will probably find that you didn’t learn much from the escape.  The times that I learned the most and became the closest to my Creator was when I didn’t escape and went through it.  If your escape includes going around, over or under the obstacle; stop what you are doing and look up.  God will help you through it if you will let Him.

Prayer for the Day: Heavenly Father, I have been broken over and over again in my life.  The one thing I know above everything else is that You held me when I was broken.  You loved me through it all.  If I had never been broken, I would never have seen You as my Savior and Redeemer.  I praise You for my brokenness because it helped me to know what Your love is and if brokenness draws me closer to You, then I am thankful.

Scripture:  The Lord builds up Jerusalem; He gathers together the outcasts of Israel. He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds.  He counts the number of the stars; He calls them all by name. Great is our Lord, and mighty in power; His understanding is infinite. The Lord lifts up the humble; He casts the wicked down to the ground.  Psalm 147:2-6