Perpetually Broken

I’ve had this post saved in draft since September last year, but I never really felt right about posting it. A couple days ago it came back around when I got the opportunity to talk to one of my discipleship partners about it. So, I started feeling like it was time to finish and post it, then we talked about it in Life Group last night and that confirmed it. So, here it is…

Over the last year and a half I’ve really began to understand just how important brokenness is. Christ's is a ministry of suffering, there is no way around that. If we choose to share in Christ's glory, Romans 8:17 says we must, not should, share in His [Christ's] suffering. Brokenness doesn't necessarily involve suffering as we understand it. But brokenness is the key to so much in God's Kingdom. God desires us to come to Him with a broken spirit. Psalm 51:17 says, “The sacrifice you desire is a broken spirit. You will not reject a broken and repentant heart, O God.” I've come to understand, through experience, that brokenness is where God teaches you. I've said it in a blog before, while God is present both on the mountain and in the valley, His purpose is in the valley (this is a spin off of something that my friend Thomas – his blog HERE – and I have talked about in the past). God uses the valleys, or the wilderness, to purify us, to teach us, to grow us and move us toward the promise He holds for us. While brokenness is vital to growing in Christ and becoming the person that God desires us to be, it's importance isn't the point of this post.

As I walked in and out of my various seasons of brokenness, I began to realize that God seemed to talk to me and direct my steps more as I was walking through the valleys. Not that He didn't when things were good, but there was, what seemed like, continuous interaction throughout the actual suffering. Once the season of brokenness lifted, there seemed to be a decrease in the amount of communication between God and I. I now realize that God became more silent to allow me to implement the stuff He had taught me. In doing so I was able to realize His purpose in that suffering and it helped me grow in faith and holiness. However, at that time I began to actually long for the days of suffering because I desired to hear from God. I began to look for opportunities that could be considered brokenness or suffering. Many times I would look at a circumstance that was less than desirable and call it suffering and brokenness. I was trying to live this life of brokenness that was fully based on my outside circumstance. In essence I believed that if I remained perpetually broken, then my connection to God would be more constant. I was fabricating this false brokenness hoping that it was the kind of brokenness God wanted, but in reality I spent more time trying to be “broken” than actually trying to seek Him more and use what He had taught me though that season.

God doesn't require the type of suffering or brokenness that comes from outside circumstances. Of course as Psalm 119:71 points out, that suffering is good for us and He does use it to teach us, lead us and even discipline us, but I don't know that He is looking for circumstances to define the brokenness that He desires. He desires our hearts to break for the things that break His, He desires our spirits to constantly long for more of Him. David is a beautiful example of what brokenness before God should look like. Even though he was a king and could have, and did, literally anything he desired, his spirit was always in agony because he desired to be closer to God, to know Him more. Through the Psalms David praises God, but he is constantly tormented by the thought of God abandoning him. He wanted God that bad and the thought of losing Him caused David to live in this constant state of suffering and brokenness.

Early Christian monks used to fabricate suffering in the form of physical punishment to their bodies, such as whipping themselves or banging their heads against wooden boards. They used this self inflicted suffering as proof of their piety. I think we often still do that, only we've traded in the whips and wooden boards for late bills and jobs we hate, but endure. That is not to say that God is not or will not use that suffering to teach us, but (and I know I have) we can often use that stuff as our evidence of suffering. Unfortunately, when used this way, instead of driving us toward God, as suffering for the sake of the cross should, these things cause God to decrease and us to increase as the focus of concern. This is backwards and only serve to drive a wedge between us and God's presence.

I also figured out that brokenness and suffering are not mutually exclusive. You can be high on the mountain and still have a heart that is constantly broken by the desire to know God more, to be with Him more and to want what He wants. I thirst for God and to thirst for God is one thing, but to desire to always thirst for Him is a whole other level of brokenness that I've not achieved and can't imagine what it would even be like. The bottom line is this: God does desire us to come to Him broken, but He doesn't want it to be fabricated out of the circumstances of life. He desires it to be a genuine suffering for the sake of Christ and a brokenness caused by a deep longing to be close to Him always. It's a longing that doesn't cripple you (because the truth is...you can't completely achieve that fullness here on earth), but drives you ever toward Him at a furious pace.

Broken,
Bruce

Desire - Part 2

In Part 1, I spoke about knowing where the desire we have come from.  Are they born out of your wants or are they there because God placed them there?  If you are trying to fill the desires for the stuff you want apart from God, then you’ll be disappointed because what we desire is worthless.  God longs to replace our desires with something real and perfect.  So what more can be said? 

It’s easy to say that I want my desires to be consumed with and fulfilled by God, but actually doing so fully and completely isn’t as easy.  Sometimes, and I know this is true for me, we pick and choose what desires we want God to effect and hold onto the ones that we don’t think He will “get right”.  We somehow convince ourselves that God is not capable of handling the stuff that is really important.  We’re afraid that if we give every desire to God, He may not fulfill that desire the way we want and then it won’t be perfect, because if anyone knows perfect, we do…right?

I think this is a bigger issue than surrendering every desire completely to God.  I think it has more to do with complacency in our walk with and refusal to take the steps toward growing in Christ.  Our first desire should be Christ.  He is the perfect fulfillment of every desire.  If He is truly our first desire, all the other desires can be put into perspective behind Christ and more easily given to God.  A.W. Tozer addresses this, by saying, “The stiff and wooden quality about our religious lives is a result of our lack of Holy desire… Acute desire must be present or there will be no manifestation of Christ to His people.  He waits to be wanted.  Too bad that with many of us He waits so long, so very long, in vain.”

Tozer said we should have an “Acute” holy desire for Christ.  That means that our desire for Christ should be of “critical importance and consequence”.  Our desire for Christ is so vital that without it Christ in His people will not be obvious or plain to others.  Without people plainly seeing and experiencing Christ through His people, why are we here?  Our desire for Christ is essential to showing others Christ, which is what He’s called us to.  Then all of our desires will be from Him and fulfilled by Him.

Desiring Christ,

Bruce

Desire - Part 1

Lately God has challenged me to evaluate where my desires originate from. For me it's a few specific things, but through that challenge God has revealed that it doesn't matter what the desire is for, but where it is born out of. Specifically, God gave me this question, "Are my desires born out of my wants or out of something that He placed inside me?"

So I spent days praying on it, meditating on what His word says and really struggling with answering that question.  Then a few days ago, as is usual for God, He answered the question He asked, for me. Turns out it was rhetorical and He already knew the answer. For the record, this is always the case. God doesn't ask us questions because He doesn't know; He asks to get us to seek the answer through seeking Him and to draw us out into the open. (That last part is compliments of Thomas, who by the way recently joined the real world of blogging - check out his blog HERE. He still does myspace, but this is a huge step.)

The specific answer to my part of the issue is inconsequential, but the bigger answer was revelational (I know not a real word), for me anyway.  The words that God kept pushing me to reconsider are found in Psalm 37.  In Psalm 37:4 David says:

"Take delight in the LORD, and he will give you your heart's desires."

I always thought that meant if I found satisfaction in God, He would give me what I wanted. I was kind of a lot, way off. What God revealed is this: When I get to a point where EVERY desire I have, no matter what it is, is consumed with God and fulfilled in Him, then He will give me the desires He has in His heart for me, to me and those will be the desires of my heart. Then and only then will He fulfill the desires of my heart. I know it sounds a little confusing and I tried to make it not, but that's what He said to me and it really does make sense if you read it 187 times.

The thing is this, we look at the desires in our heart and they look perfect to us. They look like gold and diamonds, but all the while they're pyrite and glass. They look like the real thing and we can talk ourselves into believing they are, but they're actually worthless. God looks at our desires and longs to replace them with something real, something perfect. It may not always be the material things you want, that new car or home, but what He does give is so fulfilling, none of that other stuff matters. In his book, The Pursuit of God, A.W. Tozer says it so simply. He says, "The man who has God for his treasure has all things in one." For the man that has his desires given to and consumed by God, he already has EVERYTHING.