The Calvary Road #2 – Brokenness
As Christ followers, revival is just the life of the Lord Jesus poured into our hearts and overflowing through us to others.
Yet for this to be a living reality, we learn that our wills must be broken to his will. Paul explained it like this: “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me” (Galatians 2:20).
Roy Hession stated: Brokenness “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 its 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.”
We die to ourselves, our selfish ways, our selfish attitudes. It is self who gets irritable and envious and resentful and critical and worried. It is self who is hard and unyielding in its attitudes to others. It is self who withdraws and hides.
As long as self is in control, God can do little with us. All the fruits of the Spirit that God wants to fill us with (Galatians 5:22-23), are the complete antithesis of the unbroken spirit within us.
Being broken is both God’s work and ours. God uses humbling circumstances, trying situations, and difficult people as his way of breaking us. Like a kernel of wheat, our hard self falls to the ground and dies (John 12:24).
And we choose to say “yes” to God. Die to ourselves. Bend our wills. Confess our sins. Make restitutions. Ask others to forgive us. Bless those who curse us.
Jesus himself was broken for us. He, being in very nature God, did not count equality with God a prize to be grasped or hung onto, but let it go for us and took upon himself the form of a servant (Philippians 2:6-7).
He had no rights of his own, no home of his own, no possessions of his own. He was willing to let people insult and mistreat him, yet he did not retaliate or defend himself. Above all, he bore our sins in his own body on the cross.
Dying to self is not a thing we do once for all. We may experience an initial dying when God first shows us these things. But then we experience a constant dying to self, so the life of Lord Jesus may be revealed constantly through us (2 Corinthians 4:10).
A Prayer for Brokenness: “Lord, bend that proud and stiff necked I. Help me to bow the head and die. Beholding him on Calvary. Who bowed his head for me.”
~ Pastor Dave
