Brokeness: No Way Around It.

God uses Broken things.

It takes broken soil to produce a crop, broken clouds to produce rain, broken grain to give bread and broken bread to give strength.

It was a broken perfume box that gave off a fragrance one day in the life of Jesus.

It was a broken apostle Peter, weeping bitterly, who returns to greater power and effectiveness than he ever could have imagined.

Brokenness is the surrender of our heart, mind and body to Christ.

Brokenness is what we allow God to make of us.

God uses broken things:

1. Brokenness Brings Wholeness

Dwight Moody said that one of the happiest men he ever knew was a man Dundee, Scotland, who had fallen and broken his back when a boy of fifteen. He had lain on his bed for forth years and could not be moved without a good deal of pain. Probably not a day had passed in all those years without acute suffering. But day after day the grace of God had been granted him, and when Mr. Moody was in his room it seemed as if he was as near heaven as he could get on earth. When Mr. Moody saw him, he thought he must be beyond the reach of the tempter, and he asked him, “Doesn’t Satan ever tempt you to doubt God and to think that He is an unfair Master?” “Oh yes,” he replied, “ he does try to tempt me. I lie here and seem my old classmates driving along, and Satan says, ‘if God is so good why has he kept you here all these years? You might have been a rich man. Then I see a man, who was young when I was, walk by in perfect health, and Satan, whispers, ‘if God loved you, couldn’t He have kept you from breaking your back?’” “ And what do you do when you are tempted to feel like that?” Ah I just take him to the cross and I show him Christ, and I point out the wounds in His hands and feet and side, and say, ‘Doesn’t He love me?’ The fact was that this bedridden man had found a way to be full of the grace of God.

He was made whole.

His life was full even though his circumstances left much to be desired.

It is not unusual for people who go through great times of brokenness and suffering to find that they are closer to God than they have been in years.

2. Brokenness Empowers

In Discipleship Journal Navigator staff member Skip Gray writes:

When Joseph Ton was a pastor in Romania he was arrested by the secret police for publishing a sermon calling for the churches to refuse to submit to the communists government’s demand for control over their ministries. When an official told him he must renounce his sermon he replied, “No sir, I won’t do that”

The official, surprised that anyone would respond so forcefully to the secret police, said, “Aren’t you aware that I can use force against you?”

“Sir, let me explain that to you,” Ton said. “You see, your supreme weapon is killing. My supreme weapon is dying . . . You know that my sermons are spread all over the country on tapes. When you kill me, I only sprinkle them with my blood. They will speak 10 times louder after that, because everybody will say, ‘That preacher meant it because he sealed it with his blood.’ So go on, sir, kill me. When you kill me, I win the supreme victory.” The secret police released him, knowing his martyrdom would be far more of a problem than his sermon.