Brokenness: The Process

SPEAKER 01 : 0:00

Welcome to the In Touch Podcast with Charles Stanley for Thursday, October 23rd. As a believer, what’s most important to you? Let’s continue the series to see what happens if anything other than Jesus is at the top of our priority list. Here’s a lesson on the process of brokenness.

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Brokenness is God’s method of dealing with that self-life within all of us, which is that desire to act independently of God. And His ultimate objective is to bring every aspect of our life into total submission to His will so that God’s ultimate purpose for creating us would be accomplished. Oftentimes, we object to the way God does that. Now, I want you to listen very carefully. There are only four points to this message. The first one is extremely important that you understand what we mean by God targeting our area of brokenness. So, what He does… He, through brokenness, brings our physical body, our soul, our mind, our will, our emotion, our conscience, our consciousness in the submission to the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit who is there residing within us for the purpose of guiding and controlling our life. But it’s a struggle not for most of us, but for all of us. And so what is this process? That is, how does God go about breaking an individual? So I want you to jot down four things, and the first one is this. God targets the area of our life in which we need to be broken. This is the process. God targets the area in our life in which we need to be broken. All of us have strengths and all of us have weaknesses. All of us. And so you would think, well, what we’re to do, we’re to live by our strengths and work on our weaknesses. But the truth is that in our strengths, we probably are the most vulnerable because that’s where we let our guard down. And our weaknesses, we’re the most conscious of our weaknesses because we think I’m so weak here. We probably are more guarded there. But I want you to understand how God operates when we say that he targets the area in which we need to be broken. Here’s the way he does it. He looks at our life and sees what’s the most valuable to us? What is the most precious to us? What’s the last thing in the world we want to give up? And God puts his finger and begins to break us in that thing that we depend upon, that which we cherish the most, that which we hold on to in order to deal with something over here that probably most of us don’t want to deal with. So when we say that God targets an area in our life, that’s what we’re talking about. Now, Peter’s life is a beautiful example of God identifying and targeting the area he has to deal with. So what I want you to do is I want you to follow me through. some events in the life of peter and i want you to see if you can detect what it is that if you’re listening if you just take your bible and read these verses with us and see if you can identify what Jesus saw as the greatest hindrance in Peter’s life and the way Jesus broke Peter in order to deal with this hindrance. So let’s begin with the 14th chapter of Matthew. And you recall in this chapter, Jesus had left his apostles, went up in the mountain to pray. They’re out on the ship. And the storm comes up, and so they are in desperate condition, scared to death. And so here comes Jesus walking on the water. And they cried out for fear, and he said, Now take courage inside and do not be afraid. Verse 28, Peter, now he’s the only one. Peter answered him and said, Lord, if it’s you, command me to come to you on the water. Lord, if you ask me, I’ll come walking on the water. Now, remember this, that Peter had never seen anybody walk on water, nor had any of the other apostles ever seen anybody walk on water, except that day when they saw Jesus. So here he says, he says, Lord, if that’s you, you tell me and I’ll walk on the water to you. So I want you to turn to Matthew chapter 16. Matthew chapter 16 is the beginning of a turning point in the ministry of Jesus when He says to His apostles, “‘I’m going to have to suffer and die and rise again.'” Verse 21 of Matthew 16. “‘From that time Jesus Christ began to show His disciples that He must go to Jerusalem, suffer many things from the elders and the chief priests and scribes, and be killed and be raised up on the third day.'” And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. Can you imagine somebody rebuking God? He began to rebuke the Lord Jesus and he said to him, God forbid it, Lord, this shall never happen to you. And Jesus turned and said to Peter, get behind me, Satan. You’re a stumbling block to me. You’re not setting your mind on God’s interest but on man’s. Now if you’ll notice, of course there are other experiences in the life of Peter, but everywhere you see Peter, what happens? He’s out front, impulsively, doing what? What is it that is so paramount in Peter’s life? What is it in his life that he saw as a hindrance that he must deal with in order for Peter to become the man he became? And you’ll recall he became the preacher at Pentecost. He was the foundation and the strength of that early church. And what is it that Jesus saw in this man whom he called the rock that he had to shatter? He had to deal with a great hindrance in his life. What was it? pride. I’ll never leave you. Oh, I know that James and John, all the rest of them, they count on me, the old rock. When everybody else has left you, I’ll be here. You’re not going to wash my feet. They’re not going to kill you. Call on me. I’ll walk on the water. Oh, prideful Peter. Let me ask you something. Is there a hindrance in your life that the Holy Spirit has identified that’s just as pronounced in your life as it is in Peter’s life? Now, Jesus had to deal with that. And the truth is, either now or in the past, there are areas of our life just as pronounced, just as much a hindrance to us and God’s work in our life as pride and egotism and arrogance oftentimes was in the life of the apostle Peter. And so what we find as we go through these passages and you look at his life, what we find is the Lord Jesus Christ beginning to break Peter down. in order to deal with his pride. So I want you to watch the process. So the first step in the process is God targets the area in our life that he must deal with. It may be a habit. It may be an attitude. It may be a relationship. It may be our covetous, greedy grasp of something we do not want to give up. We do not want to surrender. But the Holy Spirit is the one who’s to identify that in your life. Second step in the process… And that is that God arranges the circumstances in which we are to be broken. God arranges the circumstances in which we are to be broken. Now let me say two things about that. First of all, sometimes He puts it all together in order for us to be broken. Sometimes God allows us and sees us moving in a direction in which we will get ourselves in a position. By our own actions and our own moves, He will allow us to get ourselves in a position whereby the Spirit of God begins to break us. So either way, God is behind the process. Now, imagine what Peter was thinking about sinking Then also imagine what he must have thought the rest of his apostle friends were thinking. There he goes again. And how embarrassed he must have been because, you see, if Peter was up to his old regular self-centered self, he was probably thinking, watch me, fellas. And out on the water he began, and now he had to come back, brought by the Lord Jesus Christ, sinking down. Imagine how humiliating that must have been. You see what Jesus did? Jesus took advantage of every opportunity to chisel away, chip away, and prune away every ounce of dependence Peter had upon himself. Now, here’s what I want you to see. God zeroes in and targets that which hinders us. The outward expression of this is pride. Count on me. I can handle it. I want to be first. Everybody else may be wrong, but I’m going to be right. You can see his pride and how the Lord Jesus is working in him. Now, let me ask you a question. Is there something going on in your circumstance today that you don’t like? You’re thinking, God, what are you up to? Could it be that he’s targeted some area of hindrance in your life and you’re in the process of having targeted it? God is in the process of setting up circumstances in your life to absolutely remove everything that you can grasp, hold on to, depend upon, rely upon, except other than the Lord Jesus Christ himself. That’s part of the process. He doesn’t want us relying on anything else but him. Third thing I want you to jot down in the passage is this. God chooses the tools with which to break us. Now, we don’t like them. Now, let me say two or three things about the tools. Number one, they’re beyond our control. We don’t do the choosing. God does the choosing. The second thing I want you to remember is this, that you cannot be broken privately. That is, all secluded in a capsule because somebody around you, it’s going to spill on somebody. Whether it’s your wife or your children or your parents or your friends or whoever it may be. And you know the worst tool God ever uses in anybody’s life? Our enemies. He uses our enemies to break us. That’s the tool. And sometimes he’ll use a tool that is so precious and dear to you, you don’t know how to respond to that. You know what God does? He just keeps on increasing the pressure. He’s got his eye on the goal, dealing with the hindrance. And all the time we’re over here thinking, God, why is this happening to me? Why don’t you straighten this out? God has an answer for all that. He knows he’s dealing with whatever’s hindering us in our life. Then the last thing I want you to jot down, that is God controls the pressure. in the process of being broken. Remember that it’s not God’s purpose to break your spirit, because that would be devastating. God breaks the stubborn will in order that my will may be subdued to the Spirit of God who is within me, and now what I am keyed in on is, Lord, what would you have me to do? So He breaks our stubborn will to bring it in submission to His Spirit who is within us. Not our spirit, but our will, He’s the process of breaking. My resistance to the breaking process will prolong it. Or my willingness to yield early will shorten it. So I do have something to do with the breaking process. But you see, sometimes we’re just stubborn. We’re willful, just like the Apostle Peter. Somehow I’m going to be able to handle this. Peter had a very difficult time giving up control. But you know what? Every one of us do. Amen? We don’t want to give up control. Somehow we want to have a little bit of the final say. But you see, brokenness is for the purpose of bringing us to the point when we don’t have any more say. Lord Jesus, what would you have me to do in this? Lord Jesus, what would you have me to do in this? Lord Jesus, what would you have me to do in this? And my friend, at any point in your life and mine, When we are confronted with a decision or a situation or a circumstance and our conversation with God begins on any other line of thought, mark it down. He’s targeted some area that he’s going to deal with until you can begin to say, Lord, what do you want in my life? And you see, if there are none of those things back there, then there’s no conflict between us and God. And so the question is, Lord, what do you want? If I, by stubbornness and self-will and selfishness, decide that I am not going to give up my right here, all I’m doing is forcing God to bring on more pain and more hurt and more suffering until I’m willing to give up. Now, there are those who can hang in there, resisting God, refuse to deal with it, and after a period of time, you know what God does? He sets them on the shelf. You see, what God’s doing by breaking us is loving us. He sees the potential. Now, we said Peter’s biggest problem was pride. God broke him. When did He break him? Luke chapter 22. Look at this. Here’s when I believe Peter was ultimately broken. Out there by the fire, he denied to a young woman that he knew Christ. He denied to two different men he knew him. And then here’s what I want you to notice. When he looked into the eyes of the Lord Jesus Christ, after all of his three years of boasting and pride and arrogance, when he said, I don’t know him for the third time. And Jesus didn’t say anything. He just turned and looked at Peter. The Bible says he broke down in overwhelming brokenness, guilt, shame, sorrow. The Bible says he wept bitterly. Peter’s broken and shattered and splintered and there’s nothing left. His Savior, His best friend is going to the cross and die. The apostles are all scattered. And He has failed to support the man who said He was God and the man whom He testified as being God. And He’s failed Him. Shattered, splintered, broken. Here He is. Now, it is this man who in the early church has great faith and God begins to work through his life in a magnificent way. It is this same man after he’s broken. Turn to 1 Peter, his epistle, 1 Peter chapter 5. It is this man now having been broken, shattered, splintered, now in a usable condition. Listen to the epistle that he wrote years later. Verse 5 of chapter 5. You, younger man, likewise, be subject to your elders, and all of you clothe yourselves with humility toward one another. For God is opposed to the proud. Now, brother, he could write that with a great conviction. God is opposed to the proud, but gives grace to the humble. And then he says, humble yourselves, therefore, into the mighty hand of God, that he may exalt you at the proper time. Is that not what happened to the apostle Peter? After three years of Christ Jesus working on him, breaking him, the process going on, finally broken and shattered, what happens? In his broken, shattered condition, at the right time, Jesus, the resurrected Lord, having sent the Holy Spirit into the Apostle Peter’s life, now he transforms him. And on the day of Pentecost, he is exalted as the spokesman of the Apostles. He’s exalted as the rock. He is that tremendous leader that God starts and sets out in that New Testament church. But that proud, arrogant, egotistical Peter had to be shattered and broken and the pieces then put back together in their proper place so that all of this determination and persistence and strength could now be having been saddle-busted, could now be corralled and now be directed toward the Lord’s work. I want you to listen to something that you may have heard before, but it just fits this particular message. And I want to say to the women, most of these things are written, we’ll say a man this and a man that, but God intends for it to include men and women as well. Listen to this. When God wants to drill a man… and thrill a man, and skill a man, to play the noblest part, when he yearns with all of his heart to create so great and bold a man that all the world shall be amazed, watch his methods, watch his ways, how he ruthlessly perfects whom he royally elects, how he hammers him and hurts him and with mighty blows converts him into trial shapes of clay, which only God understands. While his tortured heart is crying and he lifts beseeching hands, how he bends but never breaks when his good he undertakes. how he uses whom he chooses, and with every purpose fuses him, by every act induces him to try his splendor out, God knows what he’s about. Sometime we think, God, what are you about? God knows what he’s about. Breaking that which we hold dear. that I may deal with that which hinders me, that having dealt with it, you and I may become what God so beautifully and perfectly designed for our life. And it’s following the humiliation of brokenness that God exalts us at the proper time.

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Thank you for listening to Brokenness, The Process. For more inspirational messages like this one, visit our online 24-7 station. And if you’d like to know more about Charles Stanley or InTouch Ministries, stop by InTouch.org. This podcast is a presentation of InTouch Ministries, Atlanta, Georgia.