I don’t like feeling broken inside! It’s a very uncomfortable feeling that I would rather avoid then embrace. However, lately brokenness is the emotional state of my heart and as much as I would love to avoid it, God is calling me to passionately embrace it.
Why am I so broken? I feel like God has striped the blinders from my eyes and I am painfully seeing things around me from His vantage point. Just how lost in darkness the world around me really is. The apathy of many in the body of Christ to sin in general, to the truth of God’s Word and the fundamentals of our faith which has allowed dysfunction to infiltrated the lives of many believers making our witness null and void. I believe He is allowing this brokenness to stir up a spirit of conviction in my heart. First for a repentance that leads to change within my own life and secondly to wage war against the bondage of dysfunction that has become a yoke to the body of Christ. To war, not with a spirit of fear, but with courage and a sound mind. To assertively confront anything that is in opposition to God and His Word with a spirit of love and gentleness. Yet with a boldness that does not shy away from accountability, vulnerability and transparency in my own life and within the body of Christ I serve.
Is your heart broken as well? Does the lost around you burden your heart to the breaking point? Has the apathy toward sin ignited a passion in you to stand in boldness and face the mirror of your own life and confront sin head on first in yourself and then in others with a spirit of love and gentleness? I’m not talking about being critical, judgmental, or condemning of others either. A heart that is truly broken over sin has no pride, no room for criticism or judgment.
Galatians 5:24 – 6:1
“Now those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If we live by the Spirit, let us also walk by the Spirit. Let us not be boastful, challenging one another, envying one another. Brethren, even if a man is caught in any trespass, you who are spiritual, restore such a one in a spirit of gentleness; each one looking to yourself, let you too be tempted.”
Lord, from Your vantage point, “no one does good not even one.” Being broken or undone is a state of humility that our flesh is resistant to and wants to run from. Help us Lord, to embrace our wretchedness with one another. Confess our sins to one another. Encourage and build up one another with Your Word. Then in love we will be willing and able to hold one another accountable to walking in the Spirit so the lost world around us WILL SEE YOU!
I couldn’t agree more. I am quick to see my own faults in others and open the door to a condemning spirit. I believe Jesus had the answer for that–
Joh 13:34 “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another, even as I have loved you, that you also love one another.
Joh 15:12 “This is My commandment, that you love one another, just as I have loved you.
Joh 15:17 “This I command you, that you love one another.
I also believe God has been trying to get us to get along since the beginning. Ex 20:12-17; Deut 5:16-21; Lev 19:18
The Father knows that if we can’t love one another, we will never truly love Him. “If someone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for the one who does not love his brother whom he has seen, cannot love God whom he has not seen. 1Jn 4:20
Yet, knowing that Jesus has commanded me to love my brother, is not the same as me actually loving, not only those of the faith, but loving the lost. So how do I do that? Jesus said, love as I have loved you! I don’t think we can in our own strength. We have to ask for His eyes and His heart. When we ask for His eyes to see and His heart to feel for those around us…He gives it to us, ‘exceeding abundantly’. It is a blessing, but it is also very painful. When it burdens our hearts we have to be encouraged by the words of the first disciples— “Consider it all joy, my brethren, when you encounter various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance.” James 1
“Therefore I am well content with weaknesses, with insults, with distresses, with persecutions, with difficulties, for Christ’s sake; for when I am weak, then I am strong.” 2 Cor 12
In Rev 1:3 we are promised “Blessed is he who reads and those who hear the words of the prophecy, and heed the things which are written in it; for the time is near.” I believe that blessing is that He gives us His heart, for the lost, for those of the faith that are trapped in dysfunction, for the apathy of those in the church that only want their ears tickled! We need to ask for His heart…”Delight yourself in the LORD; And He will give you the desires of your heart.” Ps 37:4