Influencers Weekly Devotional

Go With ME

Embracing our Sacred Responsibility with Christ

From Broken-ness

"I am still confident of this: I will see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. Wait for the Lord; be strong and take heart and wait for the Lord." - Psalms 27:13-14. (NIV)

I attended a great church service because the congregation was small enough to allow open sharing by the people. The subject was broken-ness. I listened to many of the members share how they were being broken, or how they are helping another sister or brother in Christ process broken-ness in their life. I heard different reasons for the broken-ness that the people used: cancer, loss of loved ones, and loss of jobs were some of them. One shared how addictions led her to broken-ness and how the people in Celebrate Recovery were helping her through it. I think it was good for the congregation to hear what was going on in lives sitting near them, for many times we are oblivious to someone who is suffering. It was a great time for all of us. But I had wished that there was more time to share. I especially desired to share one other thing. But time did not allow it. If it had, I would have shared something that I did not hear. I would have shared that broken-ness is a temporary time in a Believers life, and it will create changes that will remain. The affects of broken-ness will live on after our time of broken-ness, and this process will lead to godliness. This is the reason why broken-ness is permitted by God in His child's life, and why we need it. But I think we need to understand what broken-ness means, rather than just looking at it as a difficult time in our life, or else we will not see the hand of God in it. "No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it. " Hebrews 12:11 In the above scripture, we see the complete process of broken-ness revealed. We read that there is a time of discipline, and it can sometime be very painful. But we also see this painful time lead to a change. It leads to righteousness and peace. This is good to know, for oftentimes we hear people speak of broken-ness as if it never ends or as something we have to endure for the rest of our life. Many times, as was the case in the church service I mentioned, we hang out in the process of broken-ness rather than celebrating the affects of it. I wish that for every person crying out in pain because they are being broken, we would have equal voices that cry out in celebration because of it. This needs to be declared, as well, for it is then that people who are watching understand that broken-ness will lead to completeness, and it is through this completeness, that God creates a true Influencer for His purposes. Several years ago I heard someone pray, asking God to break him. When I heard it I said to myself, "That guy must be crazy! Why would anyone ask God to break him? Does he understand what he would be facing?" But what I didn't understand at the time was that this man really did understand what he would be facing, both with the process and with the completeness in Christ he desired, and it was this desired completeness that caused him to cry out for broken-ness. It takes a lot of courage ask God to break us, but it requires an even greater amount of trust in God to do it. We must trust that He knows our limits, that He has a plan for our life, and that after our broken-ness, He will fill in that which was missing in our life. If we can gain this kind of trust in Him, we can then cry out to Him and ask for broken-ness, knowing that it will lead to good, even though the process may be very difficult. Any man of God, who wants to be complete as God's man, will go through a time that will break him. It will happen. It is within this time that we learn what abandonment of ourselves and absolute trust in God is all about. But God's breaking is different from the breaking the world and the devil bring to us. The world and the devil want to break us and keep us broken. God breaks us, so we can be healed of our wounds of the past and become a man after His own heart. He has a plan as He reconstructs us forms us into the man we long to be, deep down. When I was a child growing up, my hero was a movie cowboy named Roy Rogers. Some of you might remember him? If not, trust me, he was the man the children my age wanted to most be like. Roy had a horse named Trigger. He was a beautiful, golden Palomino and would do anything Roy wanted. As Roy grew older, he shared that he never got Trigger out of his mind, even after he died, and that the horse was the smartest animal he had ever been around. He said that once Trigger was broken, he became Roy's greatest delight to ride and work with. It has now become significant to me that Trigger was not always the beautiful, obedient horse that loved having Roy on his back. He was once a wild stallion that wanted his own way and fought against his master. But after he was broken, he grew to love his master and delight in the oneness of rider and horse that came from his being broken. Isn't it that way for us? Isn't the broken-ness God allows in our life ultimately to help us become one with Him? Doesn't that make us want to step up and say, "Lord, bring it on. I want to be the man that emerges from being broken, and if that is what it takes, I'm ready for it." The Valley of Broken-ness is the beginning stage of becoming complete. Do not fear it. Allow God to have His way with you. Trust Him, and you will become a voice that we need to hear, a voice that celebrates what has happened to your life because of broken-ness. Trust Him in the process, for it is only temporary. Never forget. It is a temporary process that will have a lifelong benefit. Rocky TO DOWNLOAD A COPY OF THIS DEVOTIONAL, CLICK HERE