Brokenness

Ohhhhhhh Noooooo!  Not brokenness!
Please don’t talk about brokenness.
Let’s talk about love or God’s grace or hope or peace or heaven.

But Not brokenness. That’s one of those icky topics like the blood of Jesus.  We don’t want to read about brokenness. We don’t want to hear our preacher talk about it. We’d like to avoid it altogether if we can. . . . . .but, we can’t.

We’d like everything to be hunky dory. So when someone at church asks us how we’
re doing, we can say, “Oh, fine. Just fine. Really” Chances are we’re lying. Everyone, EVERY one has something they’re dealing with in their lives they’d rather not be dealing with. It most likely is sin. You see, we don’t have degrees of sin. We just have sin.

Some of us think our quick temper is not a sin, our selfishness is not a sin, our gossiping in the name of sharing “prayer requests” is not a sin. Some think it’s not a sin to avoid or ignore someone who has different beliefs than we have. Some of us think it’s not a sin if we resent the husband who leaves his wife for a younger woman. Some of us think it’s not a sin to criticize and judge the behavior of those outside our fellowship.

Now the works of the flesh are evident: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. Galatians 5:19-21

Some of us think if we stay away from the top seven — wrath, greed, sloth, pride, lust, envy, and gluttony, we’ll be okay. We’ll be good enough to get by.

We fail to realize that in some way we break at least one of the top seven every day.
But we don’t want to talk about it. We don’t want to admit it. We want to glaze over it. But if we’re ever going to deal with our sin, the only way is for us to be broken.

Psalm 51:17 teaches us:

“The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.”

Brokenness is a spiritual imperative.

It’s necessary if we’re going to have the kind of relationship with Jesus that He wants to have with us. Brokenness hurts. It can be humiliating, humbling, painful, agonizing. The anguish during the breaking process can seem unbearable. It may seem as if the brokenness will never end.

But if we avoid going through the breaking process we will diminish our relationship with Christ. We will continue struggling with whatever in us needs breaking.

I’m so blessed that you stopped by my blog today. Did you enjoy reading it? If you did, why not subscribe to my blog. Simply go to my home page, click on Subscribe and enter your email address. That way you’ll get an email each time I publish a new post.

The next post in this Brokenness series, “If At First You Don’t Succeed, Give Up” will appear next Tuesday.

Calvary Road, © by Roy Hession, 1950, Roy Hession Book Trust, England, was the inspiration for this blog post.