Brokenness | Image by Ulrike Mai from Pixabay
By Charles H. Mackintosh
Aug 7 2020
There is no more fruitful field of study than that which is opened before us in the history of God’s dealings with souls. It is full of interest and abounds in instruction and profit. One major object in those dealings is to produce real brokenness and humility – to strip us of all false righteousness, empty us of all self-confidence, and teach us to lean wholly upon Christ.
All have to pass through what may be called the process of stripping and emptying. Many are brought to Christ through deep ploughing and painful exercises of heart and conscience – exercises extending over years, often over the whole lifetime. Others, on the contrary, are brought with comparatively little exercise of soul. But the stripping and emptying come afterward, and, in many cases, cause the soul to stumble on its foundation and almost to doubt its conversion.
This is very painful but very needful. The fact is, self must be learnt and judged sooner or later. If it be not learnt in communion with God, it must be learnt by bitter experience in failures and falls. God will have broken material. Let us remember this. It is a solemn and necessary truth.
The need for brokenness
These are seasonable words for all of us. One special want of the present moment is brokenness of spirit. Nine-tenths of our trouble and difficulty may be traced to this want.
It is marvellous how we get on from day to day – in the family, in the community, in the world, in our entire practical life, when self is subdued and mortified. A thousand things which else would prove more than a match for our hearts are regarded as nothing when our souls are in a truly contrite state.
We are enabled to bear reproach and insult, to overlook slights and hurts, to trample upon our preferences and prejudices, to yield to others where principle is not involved, to be ready for every good work, to exhibit a cheerful large-heartedness in all our dealings and an elasticity in all our moral movements.
How often it is otherwise with us. We exhibit a stiff, unyielding temper; we stand up for our rights; we maintain our interests; we look after our own things; we assert our own ideas. All this proves, very clearly, that self is not habitually measured and judged in the presence of God.
But we repeat – and with emphasis – God will have broken material. He loves us too well to leave us in hardness and unsubduedness; and hence it is that He sees fit to pass us through all sorts of exercises in order to bring us into a condition of soul in which He can use us for His own glory. The will must be broken; self-confidence, self-complacency, and self-importance must be cut up by the roots. God will make use of the scenes and circumstances through which we have to pass the people with whom we are associated in daily life, to discipline the heart and subdue the will. And further, He will deal with us directly Himself in order to bring about these great practical results.
Divine Glory out of severe sifting
All this comes out with great distinctness in the Book of Job. It is very evident that Job needed a severe sifting. God loved Job with a perfect love; but it was a wise and faithful love – a love that could take account of everything, and looking below the surface, could see the deep moral roots in the heart of His servant – roots which Job had never seen, and therefore, never judged.
What a mercy to have to do with such a God, to be in the hands of One who will spare no pains in order to subdue everything in us which is contrary to Himself and to bring out in us His own blessed image!
But, is there not something profoundly interesting in the fact that God can even make use of Satan as an instrument in the discipline of His people? We see this in the case of the Apostle Peter as well as in that of the patriarch Job. Peter had to be sifted, and Satan was used to do the work.
Here, too, there was a stern necessity. There was a deep root to be reached in Peter’s heart – the root of self-confidence; and his faithful Lord saw it absolutely needful to pass him through a most severe and painful process in order that this root should be exposed and judged; and Satan was therefore permitted to sift him thoroughly so that he might never again trust his own heart but walk softly all his days.
God will have broken material, whether it be in a patriarch or an apostle. All must be mellowed and subdued in order that the divine glory may shine forth with an ever-brightening glow. – Herald Of His Coming
