Until We Are Broken, Our Lives Will Be Self-Centered

Right at the onset of my wilderness with God, He made it a point to break my will to His. Because I knew very well what the brokenness process was about and the difference between someone who is broken and the one who is not, I could not understand why God broke me so early in the process.  In addition, I was able to see with my spiritual eyes, several well known authors, pastors, even Christian Scholars who were not really broken in their walk with God. But they were so eloquent in their speeches. They knew so much about God and the history of all that was written in the Bible that one would never dare think they were not broken yet, unless the Spirit showed you. I needed answers so I decided to ask God, if it’s that important for my will to be broken until it becomes yours, then why is it so many Christians are so deep in their ministry before being broken by you?

The reader digest version of what God taught me is that according to His process, it is ideal that we are broken very early in our walk with Him, because it was easier to follow Him. But, if it cannot be done, because of our willingness to let Him do things in us, He proceeds with doing various things in our lives until this person is ready to accept the full process of brokenness which usually takes at least two years. (Anyone who has gone through the process knows about the length of it) God went a few steps further in showing many things about this issue. Such as, sometimes He takes matters into His hands if they are not getting it. He also taught me about how He restrains us once there is a tiny will in us. In any case, the one thing that remains so vivid in my heart is when He taught me, how those who force Him to change the process around, lose rewards in terms of the depth of how they experience Him right here on earth while we walk with Him. This does not mean that this Christian would not experience God, but it certainly means that they experience less of Him.

Do you know why this part of the teaching is so important and so vivid in my heart? Because my heart was getting conceited and God had to warn me to watch myself. As He warned me, I then learned, this “experiencing God thing” is also His grace at work, not of anything that I did  that made me better than someone else.

Here is the post by Ransomed Heart

Until We Are Broken, Our Lives Will Be Self-Centered

True strength does not come out of bravado. Until we are broken, our life will be self-centered, self-reliant; our strength will be our own. So long as you think you are really something in and of yourself, what will you need God for? I don't trust a man who hasn't suffered; I don't let a man get close to me who hasn't faced his wound. Think of the posers you know—are they the kind of man you would call at 2:00 A.M., when life is collapsing around you? Not me. I don't want clichés; I want deep, soulful truth, and that only comes when a man has walked the road I've been talking about. As Frederick Buechner says,

To do for yourself the best that you have it in you to do—to grit your teeth and clench your fists in order to survive the world at its harshest and worst—is, by that very act, to be unable to let something be done for you and in you that is more wonderful still. The trouble with steeling yourself against the harshness of reality is that the same steel that secures your life against being destroyed secures your life also against being opened up and transformed. (The Sacred Journey)

Only when we enter our wound will we discover our true glory. As Robert Bly says, "Where a man's wound is, that is where his genius will be." There are two reasons for this. First, the wound was given in the place of your true strength, as an effort to take you out. Until you go there you are still posing, offering something more shallow and insubstantial. And therefore, second, it is out of your brokenness that you discover what you have to offer the community. The false self is never wholly false. Those gifts we've been using are often quite true about us, but we've used them to hide behind. We thought that the power of our life was in the golden bat, but the power is in us. When we begin to offer not merely our gifts but our true selves, that is when we become powerful.