Brokenness - Part 1

Ps. 51:16-17 For You do not desire sacrifice, or else I would give it;
You do not delight in burnt offering.

The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit,
A broken and a contrite heart—
These, O God, You will not despise.

The Lord is looking for brokenness in His people. We might think of this as a negative thing, but it is not. While I don’t believe for one moment that the Lord is the author of suffering in our lives, I do believe that He uses every situation we go through to bring brokenness and more of the likeness of Christ to us.

We can think of brokenness in the same way a horse is broken. It just means that the power and personality of the horse is harnessed and yielded to the master. When the Lord brings us to brokenness, He is subduing the “self” parts of us and drawing us to a place of being yielded and soft before Him.

David wrote Psalm 51 after his sins of adultery and murder. God used David’s genuine repentance to break his heart and give him the final credentials for leadership and service. I have already written about the specifics of David’s repentant heart HERE, but it is important to note that his repentance lead to the brokenness we find in Psalm 51 and ultimately the worship that filled David from the core.

The Hebrew word for “broken” in David’s psalm is shabar, and it means to break in

pieces, rend violently, wreck, crush, maimed, crippled, crushed, shattered, broken…but also, it means to bring to the birth. In other words, when we are broken as David was broken, it is not the end of us, but the beginning – something of God is birthed in us.

We tend to think of brokenness as the end – something is destroyed and rendered unusable, but in God’s economy, true brokenness is the beginning of Godliness.

The world wants greatness. God wants brokenness. In God, brokenness is the first step to greatness.

The 4 Things That Lead To Brokenness

We are often broken over the things we love the most. I have found 4 things that the Lord uses over and over again to weave brokenness into the hearts of His servants:

1. The Presence of God - (Moses)

Moses journeyed from being a prince in Egypt to becoming the meekest of men. Moses had many encounters with the manifest presence, and it was in the presence of God that Moses’ heart was broken.  His presence breaks our heart when we are confronted with His awesome greatness. The sight of God involves the sight of self. When we see Him, we see ourselves, and a moment of honesty is forced upon us. Our encounter with God’s presence is not simply to give us an “experience” of God, but to build into us the character of God.

Job also had something to say about this:

Job 23:15-16 Therefore am I troubled at his presence: when I consider, I am afraid of him. For God makes my heart soft, and the Almighty troubles me

Once again, the presence of God changed Job's heart. He was already a good man - now God increased him through brokenness.

Part 2: HERE
Part 3: HERE
Part 4: HERE