To Be Brokenhearted.

We are called to live in reflection of Christ.

He, who was completely broken. 

He, who went to great lengths to SAVE. 

From Heaven to Earth. From life to death. Back again. 

He, who held nothing back. 

He, who became COMPLETELY broken. 

Completely poured out. 

I tried to hold on to wholeness before. But God showed me that I could not be whole and still be wholly used by Him. There are only two sorts of hearts. 

Hard hearts or broken ones. 

Unusable or Pliable. 

And serving God always holds a promise of A BROKEN HEART. 

But allowing our hearts to harden holds a promise of straying. 

I laid in bed and wept last night for the brokenness and pain in the marriages around me. 

This pain that comes from hearts hardened to those whom vows have been said to. I see infidelity, insecurity, wandering in the wilderness looking for...what?

And lying in my own marriage bed, which has been redeemed from sexual sin, restored to covenant intimacy,  I wept. 

Brokenhearted. 

This is new to me. This compassion and hurt comes from a new obedience. To reflect Him that I might be empowered by Him. 

I wonder how a person can go so astray from righteousness. How can a marriage bed become so defiled? How can any man experience the power of God then choose sin instead?

The answer: a hard heart. 

The Israelites witnessed the plagues. The Passover. The parting of the Red Sea. 

They have been promised a land but were BLINDED, AFRAID and ultimately HARDENED by the giants occupying it. 

A hard heart leads to rebellion. 

A hard heart leads to life wasted in the wilderness. 

A hard heart landed Jonah in a whale's belly and ended his story on a bitter hillside. 

A hard heart blinded the Pharisee to the Messiah, standing flesh and blood in front of them. 

Hard hearts prevail in the proclaimed church today. 

Hard hearts boldly condemn homosexuals in the name of our broken, loving Savior then turn around and proclaim racist hate about presidents and protestors. 

A hard heart is a virus. 

A plague. 

It is the stronghold of pride. 

Of self righteousness. 

of selfishness. 

It is the opposite of Jesus. 

Hebrews 3:8 "Today, if you hear His voice, do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion."

Hebrews 2:1 "Therefore, WE MUST PAY MUCH CLOSER ATTENTION to what we have HEARD, lest we drift away from it."

This is not a once on fix. 

This is a daily death. Our very nature is to be hard-hearted. 

Ephesians 4:18

Proverbs 28: 13-14

Matthew 13:14-15

Exodus 9:12

Mark 8:17

Hardened hearts! Hardened hearts! Hardened hearts!

We, even in a life-well of a church, are also in danger of complacency. Even if we can see sin and demons coming from a mile away, we are still in danger of a creeping, spreading virus of

 a hardened heart. 

If we desire the greatest of the gifts:

to prophesy, to lay hands, witness healing, perform signs and wonders- we must first seek Him to examine our hearts. We must cry out, moan and groan in our spirits for revival, REPENT. 

And daily partake in the brokenness of Jesus, allowing our own hearts to BREAK at the state of mankind. 

And in our own restored places, in our marriage beds and healed bodies, in our fertility and in our broken addictions, we must realize that the only wholeness God ever gives us is for the purpose of a stable ALTER to cry out from. To cry out in pain for the lost and shattered world we minister too. 

He gives us His wholeness so that we can have the stability to be broken. 

He gave us His son to show us that sacrificial brokenness is His design. 

There are two choices.

Hard hearts or broken ones. 

But there is only one that leads to repentance and revival. 

And the other leads to calamity, destruction, death and 

the neglect of salvation. 

He pours His gifts and power through His spirit unto us in such great measure only when we allow ourselves to be broken so that it might seep from our cracks and seams onto our thirsty world. 

Christianity is a corpse. Hardened by the rigor mortis of pride, of doctrine, of tradition. 

Of Pharisaical RELIGION. 

Bound in the chains they themselves hold with the unrelenting death grip of dead men who refuse to be made live again. 

We, the remnant, are the only hope for revival. For the life breath of our God and His Spirit to be breathed back into His Bride, we must BURN and BREAK with complete abandon. 

We must not hold onto any wholeness, any reserve. For when we allow even one small place of self-righteousness to remain in us, someone remains chained to that corpse. 

We cannot knowingly allow anything of the world to prevail in our life. There is no room and no time to harbor sin and choose bondage. Because this remnant will move on. 

You will miss your call. 

You will drift away. 

And it may be in a slow drift, but one day you stand the risk of raising your head and finding yourself a bedfellow to death. 

And that life has moved on to those who would receive her. 

Which brings us to the final point. 

This is not a solitary call. 

Hebrews 3:12-13- "Take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God. But exhort one another everyday, as long as it is still today, that none of you may be HARDENED by the deceitfulness of sin. 

If our brothers are falling while we revel in the Holy Spirit, something is wrong. 

If marriages are failing around us while we tout of our own restoration, we don't deserve the wholeness we have been granted. 

There will always be free will. We will never have a perfect record. But we MUST exhort one another every. single. day. 

Without procrastination. 

Because we are running out of time. 

We must fan the flames in each other and in ourselves. 

We must BURN and BREAK and CRY OUT from our restoration for repentance and revival. 

We must pay much closer attention to that which we have heard. 

Then we WILL see a corpse revived. 

We WILL see the church return to her first love. 

We WILL get the revival we cry out for. 

When we cry out with broken hearts.