Brokenness

Brokenness—Don't say no to regrets; Say yes to them! Sorrow and remorse are the scars of brokenness upon our hearts proving that we belong to Jesus; in the same way that His own broken body proved His identity as our coming Messiah. There is a saying in our society; NO REGRETS. It's the thought that we can just throw all of our mistakes and hurts into a pile and just walk away from them and never give them another thought. As great as that would be - I'd like to talk to you about how it really isn't that easy no matter how much we would wish it to be; because it isn't God's plan. To regret is to feel sorrow or remorse or think of with a sense of loss or disappointment.God's desire instead is for us to feel sorrow and remorse and think upon our lives and our choices with a sense of loss and disappointment because that is what will actually bring change. When we regret; we learn and we grow AND we also rid ourselves of pride in our lives.

So I'd like to tell you; don't say no to regrets; but say yes to them. When someone asks you do you regret something? My hope is that you will tell them "yes I do, and with all my heart". Brokenness will lead us to repentance. We have continually gone over again and again how as true believers this is not our home; God tells us that we should not feel comfortable here so it's no surprise to me that this world would again tell us something that doesn't match up with what He would desire for us. Last week I spoke to you about the Parable of the Sower; and how God looks to have His seed which is the word of God planted into good, rich soil and not unlike when we till up a garden or a farmer tills the soil God also prepares our hearts with brokenness so that we will receive His truth and His forgiveness.  Whereas this world tells us we can respond to our past and problems with a blanket… NO REGRETS, which is actually quite an egotistical, prideful response. God tells us instead to humble ourselves and REGRET and think over who we are and what we did and learn from it...:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />

Mark Buchannan in the book – Your God is too safe says - Brokenness is the one soil that usually withers pride.

Psalm 51:17 the sacrifice you want is a broken spirit. A broken and repentant heart, O God, you will not despise.

It's kind of like our brokenness is a whisper of Jesus' name or a beckoning of "come here, and come closer to me. It's a gift. In our faith we should resemble Jesus. True brokenness will mold our character closer to His more than anything else we can do.

Definitions of the word broken are:

Reduced to fragments, not functioning properly, changing direction abruptly, fragmentary or incomplete, weakened in strength or spirit, tamed, trained, or reduced to submission.

All those things need to happen when we accept Jesus as our Savior.

Alan Redpath; a Baptist preacher is quoted as saying: "God will never plant the seed of his life upon the soil of a hard, unbroken spirit. He will only plant that seed where the conviction of His Spirit has brought brokenness, where the soil has been watered with the tears of repentance as well as the tears of joy."

After Paul spoke earlier to the church in Corinth setting some things straight and explaining to them that some of the things that were going on weren't good – he sent them another letter where he tells them in: 2 Corinthians 7:8-10  I am no longer sorry that I sent that letter to you, though I was sorry for a time, for I know that it was painful to you for a little while. Now, I am glad I sent it, not because it hurt you, but because pain caused you to have remorse and change your ways. It was the kind of sorrow God wants his people to have so you were not harmed by us in any way. For God can use sorrow in our lives to help us turn away from sin and seek salvation. We will never regret that kind of sorrow. But sorrow without repentance is the kind that results in death.

True godly sorrow will always produce repentance.

And our mourning and our repentance is equal to humbleness.

Worship starts with a broken heart. Calvin Miller

Humility is about being honest with God. Being the person you truly are without a mask on and letting them be exposed.

James 4:7-10 so humble yourselves before God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you. Draw near to God, and God will draw near to you.  Wash your hands, you sinners; purify your hearts, you hypocrites. Let there be tears for the wrong things you have done. Let there be sorrow and deep grief. Let there be sadness instead of laughter, and gloom instead of joy. When you bow down before the Lord and admit your dependence on Him, He will lift you up and give you honor.

God tells us to cleanse ourselves out of our brokenness –to do that we need to humble ourselves. The word humble actually means to depress oneself; to bring ourselves low. Isn't that interesting when we look at what clinical depression is?

As we bow lower to God it is then that He actually lifts us higher.

As we decrease – He increases. This isn't natural with worldly thinking.

Our tendency is to hide our pain from others, when we start to cry; we hide from people seeing us - thinking we are showing weakness because it's humbling to allow people to see us in pain and with our hurts so evident.

But God tells us that our misery and weeping are ways that we humble our hearts in true repentance.  We see people cry and we see their tears. Tears are the language of the soul and they are described as the universal language. Everyone understands tears. We know when we see them that there is something deeper going on. The early Puritans the Christian Protestants used to pray for the gift of tears. Maybe some of us should begin praying for that gift too.

Ken Gire wrote in the book Windows of the Soul that he believes that the closest communion with God comes through our tears. Just as grapes are crushed to make wine and grain to make bread, so the elements of our tears come from the crushing experiences of life.

Psalm 34:18 The Lord is near to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit.

In gardening it's said that the seed must actually die to be able to produce much more. So it is the same with each one of us; we need to be broken and die to ourselves so that we can become what Jesus actually saved us to be.

When our tears are turned toward God in brokenness they are never wasted – man might consider tears weakness but God sees them as humbleness, treasures them and actually keeps them.

Psalm 56:8 you keep track of all my sorrows. You have collected all my tears in your bottle. You have recorded each one in your book.

This is amazingly comforting….God does not forget the sorrows of His people.

Ecclesiastes 7:3 Sorrow is better than laughter, for sadness has a refining influence on us.

Have you experienced brokenness? Have you cried?

For the most part we see over and over again the dry eyed confessions of sin in a church; more so than we do a decision with true brokenness of conviction and repentance.

Take a look at TRUE BROKENNESS shown to us In Luke 7:37-50 in the story of a sinful woman.

She came to him and knelt down behind him and sat at his feet weeping one day when He was in the home of one of the Pharisees for a meal. She had brought with her a beautiful alabaster jar filled with expensive perfume and as she sat there her tears fell on his feet, and she wiped them off with her hair. Then she kept kissing his feet and putting perfume on them. When the Pharisee saw what was happening and who the woman was he said to himself, this proves Jesus is no prophet. If God had really sent him he would know what kind of woman is touching him because she is a sinner! Then Jesus spoke up and answered his thoughts. Simon, he said to the Pharisee, I have something to say to you. All right teacher, Simon replied, "Go ahead."

Then Jesus told him this story A man loaned money to two people, five hundred pieces of silver to one and fifty pieces to the other. But neither of them could repay him, so he kindly forgave them both, cancelling their debts. Who do you suppose loved him more after that?"

Simon answered, "I suppose the one for whom he cancelled the larger debt.

"That's right," Jesus said. Then he turned to the woman and said to Simon, "Look at this woman kneeling here. When I entered your home, you didn't offer me water to wash the dust from my feet, but she has washed them with her tears and wiped them with her hair. You didn't give me a kiss of greeting, but she has kissed my feet again and again from the time I first came in. You neglected the courtesy of olive oil to anoint my head, but she has anointed my feet with rare perfume. I tell you, her sins, and there are many have been forgiven so she has shown me much love.

That's brokenness!

With Joseph who went through so much – having his own brothers who were jealous of him plot his murder and then only escaping because of one of his brother's pleas who was then sold off as a slave and taken to Egypt and bought by a ruler named Potiphar who threw him into prison when Potiphar's wife unjustly accused him of trying to sleep with her. He was in prison for years and was only set free by interpreting a dream for the ruler Pharaoh and then finally was put into charge as ruler of Egypt himself. He was a man of great pain and great hurts and we are able to get some glimpses of his brokenness when he comes face to face with his brothers again when they came to ask for grain because they were starving to death in the famine and he pretends he doesn't know them when they don't recognize him either. He puts them into prison for 3 days and while they were talking to an interpreter he hears them speak about how they are being paid back for treating their brother Joseph so badly all those years ago…Joseph hearing this leaves the room and goes to find a place where he could break down in private. We see him in brokenness again when he confesses to them that he is their brother… the bible saying that He broke down and wept aloud, his sobs could be heard throughout the palace. And again when he sees his younger brother Benjamin and his father Israel again after all these years.

Our world lies and tells us it's not manly to cry but God's word shows us great men of God who cried and cried a lot.

Joseph was a man of brokenness but he also became a man of great character because of it.

Life is hard. Bad things happen to good people; but why? Because it is out of our brokenness that we will move toward the living God.

God promises beauty for ashes.

We are broken by life's circumstances of pain but God's plan is that we let Him use it and then skillfully put us back together again.

I've read that God needs to break us before He can bless us and we can see that's true when we read the bible.

 

The sinful woman that we spoke of earlier who broke the alabaster jar of perfume but receives so much more when she receives the forgiveness from God.

 

And in one of the strangest stories in the bible Genesis 32 when Jacob wrestles with God and God breaks his hip but then gives to him the new name of Israel.

 

There is something special about brokenness. God's word says that we should be thankful for it because out of it we will be blessed. We should regret the hurts and pains that we've gone through and also those pains that we've caused others.

There is amazing blessings in store for those who truly are broken for Him.

Look to our ultimate example: Jesus who's own body was broken for us but out of His pain we receive eternal life. We are blessed from His brokenness!

I see brokenness as a pain we feel from the pain that we've caused the God who created us, but it's also a coming to grips with the knowledge that we are a sinful bunch who needs a savior's saving.

One of my favorite scriptures in the bible is Isaiah 6:5 when Isaiah goes into the presence of the Lord in the temple and comes face to face with himself.

 He says, my destruction is sealed for I am a sinful man and a member of a sinful race. Yet, I have seen the King, the Lord Almighty.

He was broken right then.

Have you been broken? Have you cried out of and for your brokenness?

Jesus was sent to comfort the brokenhearted. He was sent to tell those who mourn that the time of the Lord's favor has come.

He's here for you if you want Him.