I Got Nothin' Left...(of my own)

The bows of the warriors are broken, but those who stumbled are armed with strength - 1 Samuel 2:4

There is an oxymoron throughout the Bible. It says that brokenness is strength. Virtually every great name or significant life eschewed in the scriptures was an individual who was first beaten down. The lessons of leadership often were not learning how to lead in small things and then bigger and bigger things. The lessons of leadership were often, prison, beatings, running, poverty, servanthood, slavery and mocking.

How can this be? The Strength of Brokenness. How can brokenness be strength? This week in my life would be a lousy one to ask me the question so I write this in faith.

If you read the Bible at all you realize a methodology that is in action. God takes our sin and our weakness and turns it into strength. If Satan and his minions (the demons) are attempting to destroy our lives God will often let the destruction go and go and go.

There does however seem to be a dividing line past which they can't act and, if we are His people; a man or woman who has committed our life to Jesus Christ beyond which our brokenness is received.

In order to use men and women to their fullest extent, the Lord has to break His servants so that they might have a new kind of strength that is not human in origin. It is strength in spirit that is born only through brokenness. This is the place where we discover our birthright DNA and His rulership in our life is not just available (after all it was always there) but it is a point at which we most readily receive it.

Saul was a self righteous Pharisee heading off on a mission to beat down Christians when he was broken on the Damascus road. Peter was broken after Jesus was taken prisoner just before He would also go to the cross. The Old Testament Jewish saint Jacob was broken at a place called Peniel. King David was broken many times. One of the last of which (apparently most of us are more stubborn over our sinful desires than we care to admit) after his many sins relating to nothing more than simple lust over a woman named Bathsheba. (This begs the question when you can have anything, how far will you go to have what you shouldn't have? Ask Adam and Eve when you get to heaven.)

The list could go on of those the Lord had to break in different ways before they could be used in the Kingdom. And before he could pour out abundance to or through them. It also apparently includes me; over and over again.

What should become obvious to us through this constant snapping and cracking and popping of our spiritual framework? Here's one...when we are broken, we should see the frailty of human strength and come to grips with the reality that we can do nothing in our own strength. I've experienced this part. What follows, as memory serves, is that new supernatural/eternal strength emerges that God uses mightily.

Oh ya...there is that whole thing about God resists the proud but gives grace to the humble.

As type this I am broken once again. Here is what I am telling myself right now, "Do not fear brokenness, for it may be the missing ingredient to a life that emerges with a new kind of strength and experience not known before."

Pray for a broken and contrite heart that God can bless. Pray that you get the lesson quickly.

I remain...(it's all I have left)

InHISgrip,
~J~