Now, when I say "brokenness", I do not mean the hopeless, yawning, devastating kind that leaves you with a sucking void in the pit of your stomach, alone and without a reason to look forward to dawn--I have seen many people experience the devastating effects of this, and I can tell you with all the authority I can muster that this kind is NOT from God.
I believe there are two kinds of brokenness--one that God hates, and one that God requires. God hates the kind I've just described--the brokenness brought about by the fall. But God cannot use us unless we have the other kind of brokenness, produced by the Holy Spirit at work in your and my life--the kind that brings with it a humble, usable, submissive attitude.
When a horse is young it has to be "broken" in order for it to become ridable. Basically, it has to be tamed, to get used to a bit in its mouth and a saddle on its back. How true it is that when God "breaks" us, He's only getting us used to obeying Him! Many times, I come out of a situation broken because I didn't obey sooner--and all the more ready to submit earlier next time. My friend Hannah could tell you how long it takes for a horse to be broken--but with humans, it takes our whole life, and then some. (Forgive me if you're one of those people who has completely submitted yourself to God every moment of your life--my email address is redheadblacksheep@gmail.com --please email me your secret!)
If God doesn't wear our wills down in that gentle way of His, we remain stubborn, self-centered brats used to getting our way, pursuing our own desires instead of His--and that is the very definition of someone who is unusable for His Kingdom.
I was recently watching an interview on TV, and heard a quote by Eugene O'Neill that struck me: "Man is born broken. He lives by mending. The grace of God is the glue." We are born broken in the hopeless, devastating way. But as my friend Christian says, God does not intend for us to remain broken in that way. He didn't create things to be broken; when we look at a smashed vase, our instinct is to fix it--we know it's not naturally supposed to be that way, because God has programmed into our DNA that things aren't meant to be broken. Yet, there's a paradox, because we live in a fallen, broken world.
The resolution of the paradox can be found only in Christ, who came to fix our shattered lives, to lovingly piece the shards of our hearts back together again. He takes us into His gentle, loving hands, and makes us whole again, bringing us into unity with His will. It is when we start reverting back to our original brokenness that we were born with (the kind that Satan loves to use, the kind that whispers in our ears, "You're nothing, and you'll never be anything, so why should it matter? Go paint the town, live it up--He doesn't need you, and you don't need Him...") that God must take us and break us His way again.
I could write pages on this, but I'm not going to bore you; Instead, I'll end with this: I've heard that in the times of Christ, if a shepherd had a lamb that kept wandering off, the shepherd would break the lamb's leg. As the lamb was healing, the shepherd would carry it around on his shoulders everywhere he went--he would eat, sleep, and live with it. After the lamb's leg healed, though it had the ability to, it would never again leave the side of the shepherd, because it had grown so used to just being with him.
Now, if the shepherd had been impatient with the lamb, he could have just tied it to a stake close by or tossed it into a pen where it couldn't wander off, and left it there. I'm sure living 24/7 with a smelly little sheep around your neck is no easy task--but if the shepherd cares enough for the lamb to actually take the time and inconvenience to live with it while its leg mends, he is a good shepherd indeed.
Oh that we might be like that little lamb, following the Shepherd, Who cares enough for us to break us and mend us once more...
"Oh to grace how great a debtor, daily I'm constrained to be; Let Thy Goodness, like a fetter, bind my wand'ring heart to Thee; Prone to wander, Lord I fear it, prone to leave the God I love; here's my heart, O! Take and seal it, seal it for Thy courts above!"
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