BROKENNESS
Let
my heart be broken with the things that break the heart of God.
Bob
Pierce
Our wills
must be broken to His will. To be broken is the beginning of revival. It is
painful, it is humiliating, it is the only way. It is
being ‘Not I, but Christ,’ and a ‘C’ is a bent ‘I.’ The Lord Jesus cannot live
in us fully and reveal Himself through us until the proud self within us is
broken. This simply means that the hard unyielding self, which justifies
itself, wants its own way, stands up for its rights, and seeks its own glory,
at last bows its head to God's will, admits it’s wrong, gives up its own way to
Jesus, surrenders its rights and discards its own glory – that the Lord Jesus
might have all and be all. In other words, it is dying to self and
self-attitudes.
Roy Hession
The Calvary Road, Christian Literature Crusade, 1950,
p. 21-22. P.O. Box 1449, Fort Washington, PA 19034-8449. Used by Permission.
Brokenness in
daily experience is simply the response of humility to the conviction of God.
Roy Hession
The Calvary Road, Christian Literature Crusade, 1950,
p. 23. P.O. Box 1449, Fort Washington, PA 19034-8449. Used by Permission.
To be broken
means to have no rights before God and man. It does not mean merely
surrendering my rights to Him but rather recognizing that I haven't any, except
to deserve hell. It means just being nothing and having nothing that I call my
own, neither time, money, possessions nor position.
Roy Hession
The Calvary Road, Christian Literature Crusade, 1950,
p. 48. P.O. Box 1449, Fort Washington, PA 19034-8449. Used by Permission.
In order to
break our wills to His, God brings us to the foot of the Cross and there shows
us what real brokenness is. We see those wounded Hands and Feet, that Face of Love
crowned with thorns and we see the complete brokenness of the One who said,
“Not My will, but Thine be done,” as He drank the
bitter cup of our sin to its dregs. So the way to be broken is to look on Him
and to realize it was our sin which nailed Him there. Then as we see the love
and brokenness of the God who died in our place, our hearts will become
strangely melted and we will want to be broken for Him and we shall pray, “Oh,
to be saved from myself, dear Lord, Oh, to be lost in Thee, Oh, that it might
be no more I, But Christ that lives in me.” And some of us have found that
there is no prayer that God is so swift to answer as the prayer that He might
break us.
Roy Hession
The Calvary Road, Christian Literature Crusade, 1950, p.
48. P.O. Box 1449, Fort Washington, PA 19034-8449. Used by Permission.
This is ever
the nature of true confession of sin, true brokenness. It is the confession
that my sin is not just a mistake, a slip, a something which is really foreign
to my heart (“Not really like me to have such thoughts or do such things!”),
but that it is something which reveals the real ‘I’; that shows me to be the
proud, rotten, unclean thing God says I am; that it really is like me to have
such thoughts and do such things. It was in these terms that David confessed
his sin, when he prayed, “Against Thee, Thee only, have I sinned and done this
evil in Thy sight, that Thou mightest be justified
when Thou speakest and be clear when Thou judgest” (Psalm 51:4).
Roy Hession
The Calvary Road,
Christian Literature Crusade, 1950, p. 107. P.O. Box 1449, Fort Washington, PA
19034-8449. Used by Permission.
The broken
person…will find that all of the resources of heaven and all of the Spirit’s
power are now at his disposal and, unless heaven’s riches can be exhausted or
the Spirit’s power can be found wanting, he cannot come up short.
Jennifer
Kennedy Dean
He Restores My Soul: A Forty-Day Journey Toward Personal Renewal, Broadman and Holman, 1999, p. 27.
True
brokenness is a lifestyle – a moment-by- moment lifestyle of agreeing with God
about the true condition of my heart and life – not as everyone else thinks it
is but as He knows it to be.
Nancy
Leigh DeMoss
Brokenness, The Heart God Revives, Moody
Publishers, 2002, p. 53.
Brokenness
is the shattering of my self-will – the
absolute surrender of my will to the will of God. It is saying “Yes, Lord!” – no resistance, no chafing, no stubbornness – simply
submitting myself to His direction and will in my life.
Nancy
Leigh DeMoss
Brokenness, The Heart God Revives, Moody
Publishers, 2002, p. 53.
Brokenness
is the stripping of self-reliance and
independence from God. The broken person
has no confidence in his own righteousness or his own works, but he is cast in
total dependence upon the grace of God working in and through him.
Nancy
Leigh DeMoss
Brokenness, The Heart God Revives, Moody
Publishers, 2002, p. 54.
Unbroken
people…cannot rejoice over repentant sinners.
They are consumed with a sense of their own rights and
expectations. And if they don’t get the
treatment they feel they deserve, they throw a pity party for themselves.
Nancy
Leigh DeMoss
Brokenness, The Heart God Revives, Moody
Publishers, 2002, p. 79.
Proud people
focus on the failures of others and can readily point out those faults. Broken people are more conscious of their
own spiritual need than of anyone else’s.
Nancy
Leigh DeMoss
Brokenness, The Heart God Revives, Moody Publishers, 2002, p. 88.
Proud people
have a feeling – conscious or subconscious – that “this ministry is privileged
to have me and my gifts.” They focus on
what they can do for God. Broken people
have a heart attitude that says, “I don’t deserve to have any part in this
ministry”; they know that they have nothing to offer God except the life of
Jesus flowing through their broken lives.
Nancy
Leigh DeMoss
Brokenness, The Heart God Revives, Moody
Publishers, 2002, p. 91.
Proud people
keep others at arm’s length. Broken
people are willing to take the risks of getting close to others and loving
intimately.
Nancy
Leigh DeMoss
Brokenness, The Heart God Revives, Moody
Publishers, 2002, p. 94.
Jesus said,
“Blessed are the poor in spirit” – contrary to what we would expect, brokenness
is the pathway to blessing! There are no
alternative routes; there are no short-cuts.
The very thing we dread and are tempted to resist is actually the means
to God’s greatest blessings in our lives.
Nancy
Leigh DeMoss
Brokenness, The Heart God Revives, Moody
Publishers, 2002, p. 105.
The Word,
circumstances, and other believers – these can all be tools to show us our need
and create opportunities to choose the pathway of brokenness. The Spirit of God is the arm that wields each
of these instruments to bring us to a point of brokenness. However, we must respond to His initiative.
Nancy
Leigh DeMoss
Brokenness, The Heart God Revives, Moody
Publishers, 2002, p. 131.
God is not
looking for the powerful and the successful and those who are able
communicators. Instead, He looks for the person who has a broken and contrite
spirit. Those individuals, whether they are extroverted or introverted,
humorous or melancholy, are regularly in the quiet place bowing before God’s
Word with a trembling heart and seeking fresh enabling from the Holy Spirit.
They have been brought to see that they did not make themselves, nor did they
save themselves. They are totally dependent upon God’s grace (Isa. 66:2).
Alistair Begg
Made For His Pleasure, Moody Press, 1996, p. 164.
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.
C.H.
Spurgeon
When
you come to the end of yourself, you find the beginning of God.
Author
Unknown