What is True Brokenness?

Series: Brokenness: The Heart God Revives

Leslie Basham: You can live broken before God today.

Nancy Leigh DeMoss: You see, brokenness is not a feeling. It is not an emotion. It is a choice that I make. It is an act of my will. It's a lifestyle of agreeing with God about the true condition of my heart and my life as He alone can see it.

Leslie Basham: This is Revive Our Hearts with Nancy Leigh DeMoss for Wednesday, July 20th. Bob Lepine, the co-host of FamilyLife Today, is our guest. Here's Bob and Nancy.

Bob Lepine: As we've already heard this week, the month of July marks an anniversary, a ten-year anniversary, of what was a significant message that, Nancy, you shared with the staff of Campus Crusade for Christ in the summer of 1995--a message on the subject of brokenness. It's appropriate for all of us from time to time to look back on spiritual markers and to reflect on the goodness of God in times past.

Nancy Leigh DeMoss: Yes it is, and Scripture tells us that those markers are important in our on-going spiritual pilgrimage. Isaiah 64, for example, says, "You meet with those, Lord, who remember you in your ways" (verse 5).

Bob: Let's listen to an excerpt from the message on the subject, Brokenness: The Heart God Revives.

Recording of Nancy Leigh DeMoss in 1995 – Campus Crusade: During these days we've been encouraged, stirred by the wonderful reports of what God is doing--the stirrings that God has been sending on many college campuses. I felt directed by the Lord, I believe, to touch this morning on one of the most crucial ingredients of experiencing that visitation of the Spirit of God, not only this week but in an ongoing way in the days ahead.

So we ask the question: What kind of heart does God revive? And what does it take in my heart to experience ongoing, continual revival? Listen if you would to these Scriptures, and I think the answer will be plain. "For thus saith the High and Lofty One, that inhabiteth eternity whose name is holy, 'I dwell in the high and holy place with him also that is of a contrite and humble spirit. To revive the heart of the humble and to revive the spirit of the contrite ones'" (Isaiah 57:15).

"The Lord is nigh unto them that are of a broken heart and saveth such as be of a contrite spirit" (Psalm 34:18). "You do not take delight in sacrifice or I would bring it. You do not take pleasure in burnt offerings. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit. Broken and a contrite heart, oh God, you will not despise" (Psalms 51:15-17). "And then the Lord says, 'To this man will I look, even to him that is poor and of a contrite spirit and trembleth at my word'" (Isaiah 66:2).

Then we hear the words of the Lord Jesus, "Blessed, (to be envied, happy) are those who are poor in spirit, (those who are bankrupt, those who are poverty-stricken, those who are destitute, those who have no resources of their own) for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. And blessed, (happy, to be envied) are those mourn. For they (those who mourn over their sin, those who grieve over that which grieves the heart of God) they will experience the comfort that only God can give" (Matthew 5:3-4).

As we hear those verses and think of many others like them in the Scripture, what is the kind of heart that God revives? The heart that God revives is the broken, the contrite, the humble heart. We are tempted to think of revival as primarily a time of joy and blessing and fullness and abundance and excitement and enthusiasm and wonder and overflowing abundance. And so at the right time, it will be. We want a painless revival. We want, so to speak, a laughing revival.

But the ways of God are: that the way up is down. We are reminded by one of the leaders in Borneo in 1973 that revivals do not begin happily with everyone having a good time. They start with a broken and a contrite heart. You see, we will never meet God in revival until we have first met Him in brokenness.

The epistle of James reminds us and calls us to "draw near to God and He will draw near to you" (James 4:8). But there is a process. First, "cleanse your hands, oh sinners. Purify your hearts, you double-minded. Be afflicted and mourn, weep. Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to heaviness. First, humble yourself in the sight of the Lord, and then He will lift you up" (James 4:8-10).

Now, there are some who don't care much for this thought of brokenness. We tend to think of brokenness, for example, as being sad and gloomy and downcast, never smiling, never laughing. For some the word brokenness congers up images of deeply emotional experiences and the shedding of many tears.

But I want to say this morning that there may be many tears without brokenness. As there may be in some cases genuine brokenness apart from the shedding of tears. You see, brokenness is not a feeling. It is not an emotion. It is a choice that I make. It is an act of my will. And brokenness is not primarily a one-time experience or a crisis experience in my life, though there may be those.

Brokenness is rather a continuous, ongoing lifestyle. It's a lifestyle of agreeing with God about the true condition of my heart and my life as He alone can see it. It's a lifestyle of unconditional, absolute surrender of my will to God. Even as the horse that has been broken is surrendered and sensitive to the direction and the wishes of its rider. It's a lifestyle of saying, "Yes, Lord. Not my will but Yours be done."

Brokenness is shattering of my self-will so that the life, the spirit, the fragrance, the life of Jesus may be released through me. Brokenness is a lifestyle of responding in humility and obedience to the conviction of God's Spirit and the conviction of His Word. As His conviction is continuous, so my brokenness must be continual.

Brokenness is a lifestyle that takes me in two directions. It's a lifestyle vertically of living, so to speak, with the roof off in my relationship toward God as I walk in the light in transparent honesty and humility before Him. But it's a lifestyle that requires also that I live with the walls down in my relationships toward others.

There are wonderful illustrations in the Scripture of broken people. Frequently those illustrations are set in contrast to the lives of those who were not broken. Think, for example, of two Old Testament kings who sat on the same throne. One committed egregious sins against the heart of God. He committed adultery. He lied. He committed murder to cover up his sin, and then lived for an extended period of time in covering up his treacherous, traitorous sin against God and against His nation. Yet in the Scripture we are told that Kind David was a man after God's own heart.

Then we think of the king who preceded him whose sin, by comparison as we would measure it, does not begin to be as great as that of King David. All that Saul was guilty of, from the seeing of the eye, was incomplete obedience. And yet in response to his sin, he lost his kingdom; his family was destroyed.

Why the difference? Both men were confronted by prophets over their sin. And both men said verbally, "I have sinned." But you see when King Saul confessed his sin, his confession was in the context of blaming the people, defending himself, making excuses, rationalizing, justifying himself. He revealed the true condition of his heart when in the same breath as saying, "I have sinned," he said, "Please don't tell the people." He covered up.

Whereas King David, when confronted with his sin fell on his face before God in confession, and the evidence of that broken and contrite heart was that he penned for all the world to see those psalms of contrition that we have in our Scriptures today. You see a broken person doesn't care who knows. God was not as concerned about the nature of the sin itself as He was about the heart attitude and response of these men when confronted with their sin.

Then the gospel of Luke gives us three wonderful illustrations of the contrast between a broken person and a proud, unbroken person. Do you remember the parable that Jesus told? The Scripture tells us that He told this parable to those who were confident of their own righteousness and looked down on everyone else.

He told about two men who came into the temple to pray. Remember this in Luke chapter 18? The one was a Pharisee. As he stood to pray the Scripture says, "He prayed to himself." And his prayer consisted of looking around at all the adulterers and the thieves and the murders that he knew and then this lowly tax collector by his side and saying, "Oh God, I thank you that I compare favorably to all these other sinners that I know."

There by his side was a lowly, despised tax collector, who could not even lift his eyes to heaven. But in the presence of the holiness of God smote his breast and said, "Oh God, the only thing I can ask You for is to have mercy for I am a sinner." You see, he refused to justify himself, rather he justified God. (Luke 18:9-14).

Bob Lepine: That is part one of a message given a decade ago this month on the subject of Brokenness: The Heart God Revives. Nancy, as I was listening again to that message, you made the point that broken men and women don't care who finds out about their sin.

Nancy Leigh DeMoss: There's such a freedom when we come to that point. Nothing to protect, nothing to cover, no one to blame; just the freedom of saying, "It's me, oh Lord, standing in the need of prayer."

Bob Lepine: I know that many of your listeners who have not heard this message in its entirety or have not read your book on the subject of brokenness are going to want to get a copy of it. In just a minute we will let them know how they can do that.

There's also a list that you share in this message where you contrast the proud heart and the broken heart. My wife has that list on a bookmark in her Bible and any of our listeners this month who would like to get a copy of that bookmark can contact us and let us know. We'll be happy to send it to them.

We're looking forward this week to hearing the rest of this message on the subject of Brokenness: The Heart God Revives.

Leslie Basham: Thanks Bob. To get a free copy of that bookmark, you can call us at 1-800-569-595, or visit ReviveOurHearts.com. That's also the number to call to order the book, Brokenness: The Heart God Revives.

Tomorrow we'll hear about a young man who looked like he had it all together, but he wasn't broken before God. His brother was a mess but had a humble heart. Hear more tomorrow on Revive Our Hearts.

Revive Our Hearts with Nancy Leigh DeMoss is an outreach of Life Action Ministries.

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