The Lord has been teaching me about brokenness…

I see in part and I prophesy in part but I feel to share what He has showed me so far…

I have been experiencing a stripping away of all control in my life…

I have been resistant to this work at the same time as welcoming it (if that makes sense 🙂 )…

I welcome it knowing that it will set me free but at the same time resist it because it has been so much a part of my life to this point in time…

This process has been rather “messy” and is ongoing…

I see the progress that the Lord is achieving and yet feel that I am and going up and down like a “yo-yo” at times in my experience of Him…

He has given me a peace that this “roller coaster ride” is OK with Him as it is the way in which He can continue to remove control from me…

He must expose it and to do this I must see it in full operation in me so that in the position of it being in full operation in me – without me trying to resist it in my flesh (my old self or sinful nature) – but in a position of me – in my new nature (my new self) – being surrendered  to the Lord and to His work in my life, allow the process to unfold and allow the Holy Spirit to rise up within me through the various “troughs” that He takes me through to create “a new way of living” in me, where I naturally live the way I desire to live in my new nature…

Control is so insidious…

We have been filled with control from the time when Adam and Eve partook of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil…

We are so filled with control that we don’t even realise what control is…

This is a real problem in each of our lives whether we belong to the Lord or whether we do not…

We have a desire to control our lives because we believe that we know best how to make our lives “work”…

How to bring our lives into “order”…

And how to “make something of ourselves”…

We are each on the pursuit of “self actualisation” – a very new age concept – although we don’t actually call it that we just think it’s “making life work”…

It’s just what we have to do to “get by”…

What God is calling us to is to a life of dependence on Him…

He is to provide all our needs…

We are to focus on Him…

We are not to focus on ourselves…

We are not to focus on our needs…

We are not to focus on how God will achieve the things which He has said He will achieve through us…

We are not to try and “make” God’s will “happen”…

We are in fact incapable of doing anything which pleases God or will further His Kingdom…

There is no boasting in God…

We are incapable of accomplishing anything of value to God…

We were not created to try and “show God” how “good” we were…

So many things that the Spirit of God says to me I have tried to go out and make happen…

Even when He has specifically said to me, “There is nothing that you or anyone else can do to make this happen.  I will accomplish it in My time and for My glory” (or words to that effect) and even though I’ve submitted to this to the best of my knowledge at the time, I’ve still found a few months later that I’ve actually been subconsciously trying to “make it happen”…

When we try to “make things happen” we put expectations on ourselves and also on others who we feel are involved with the “making it happen” process…

This is sin…

God hates this…

And it can not remain in our lives…

He will remove it…

This is pride and He hates it…

He will remove it and the process which He uses to remove this is brokenness…

He breaks us, He humiliates us, He lets us “fall”, He lets us “stumble” and He lets us be “abased” just like He did with King Nebuchadnezzar and He lets us experience the reality of walking in pride…

For there is no grace when we are walking in pride…

There is no overcoming power when we are walking in pride…

And we “fall” and are “picked off” when we are walking in pride…

“Pride [goeth] before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall.”

Proverbs 16:18 (KJV)

We are only safe when we are walking in humility…

What is humility?

Humility is realising that we are nothing without God…

“apart from me you can do nothing.”

John 15:5b (NIV)

We are nothing without God…

It is also realising that we are to accept what God brings into our lives, to give it to Him and surrender it to Him…

Not to automatically fight it or disagree with it or complain about it or “rise up” against it but to just raise our hands and give it to the Lord…

To allow the process of it to be worked out in our lives…

We are not to resist evil in the flesh, we can not resist evil in the flesh, it will gain a foothold…

We can only overcome evil with good and “there is no one good but God alone” as the scripture tells us…

Through the Holy Spirit taking us through our “broken” experiences where we “fail” and see that we have been walking in the flesh and not in the Spirit we become aware of the depth of the control which control has had in our lives…

We begin to see just how deeply in bondage to sin we were and why God says “we were dead in tresspasses and sins” in the scripture…

Once we see the depths of our depravity in the flesh we are humbled in that area and walk in brokenness in that area…

Not a false humility of trying to appear broken but a genuine awareness of our brokenness in that area and the power of the Holy Spirit giving us “something better” than our control in that area…

What the Lord has been showing me is that “take no thought for tomorrow” really does mean exactly what it says…

“Take no anxious thought for anything at all” would be a paraphrase that I would use to explain my present understanding of this verse…

We have all been given a measure of faith and I believe that as the Lord establishes faith in one area of our lives that He then releases an increased measure to establish faith in another area of our lives and so on and so forth which is the method He uses to help us to grow…

As He releases faith – just simply trusting Him and what He says to us – then we cease being in control…

So faith is linked to humility…

Brokenness ends with “Yes Lord”…

Not “Yes Lord, I’ll get right on to it”, not “No Lord”, not “Hold on Lord I’m just trying to think up an excuse as to why I can’t say ‘Yes Lord'” ( 🙂 ) but “Yes Lord” (this is only produced in us by the Holy Spirit, we can not produce this response ourselves)…

It is the “stand still and see the salvation of the Lord” response where we just agree with God from a quietened heart which doesn’t understand or know how God will do it and we are not experiencing any “pressure” or “drive” or “compulsion” to go out and “make it happen” or any desire to “think it through” to try and “figure it out” or put our “spin on it” in terms of our own “interpretation” of how God will do it…

We are truly broken in a specific area when we just believe what God has said and go “Yes Lord”…

He may at that point give us specific instructions as to what He wants us to do or He may not…

We may wait for a very long time as to what He wants us to do about it (maybe that “waiting” is actually a form of control also through anxiety, I think it is) or He may not actually want us to do anything about it, just agreeing with Him was all He needed…

It is a very weird place – for me anyway – because I am so used to “running ahead of God” or wanting to “take control” of every area of my life in the natural, I mean in my sinful nature…

I feel to post this because we can be discouraged when we “fall”, we can be disappointed, “where did I go wrong?” but the Lord has shown me that when we walk in pride – whether we are aware of it or whether we are not – we will “fall”, but when we are walking in His humility – in the place of brokenness – we will “stand” and this will be a process throughout the rest of our lives…

The only way we realise that control remains in us is through “falling” and the brokenness produced through this experience is priceless in the establishment of His humility in us…

Thus the enemy and the enemies attacks on our lives – which the Lord permits by the way – are actually used by the Lord as a blessing to us…

If he – the enemy – attacks us in an area where we are already walking in brokenness then his attack will have no effect on us, but if he attacks us in an area where we are still walking in pride then it will have an effect on us, we will “fall” but the Holy Spirit will use it to bring brokenness to that area so that “we are more than conquerors through Him that loved us” as the scripture says…

“All things work together for good to them that love God, to those who are called according to His purpose” as the scripture says…

I’ve really felt led to share this this evening and hope that it will be a blessing to someone who is going through this process at present and doesn’t understand what is going on…

All the best, Love in the Lord, Andrew