Titus 2 Men And Women

Spiritual Brokenness
by Pastor David M. Atkinson
Forward by Sharon Merhalski

Forward

Recently I put text on our Daily Devotions that prompted many to write and/or telephone me. The devotion so touched my heart as I typed it and it also touched the hearts of many of our readers. I had many people ask me to write an article on brokenness….what it is and what it is not. I considered the requests for several days while always going to back to the book where I got the material for that devotion.

After church one Wednesday night I asked the author of that book, my pastor, if he would give me his permission to take, verbatim, that chapter from his book and put it on the web site. He graciously and humbly told me that I could do so and use the text in any format that I wanted to ….even deleting some of it. I assured him that I wanted it just the way that he wrote it.

When I was a very young in the Lord I had a pastor's wife that I just could not understand. She seemed strange and she talked weird. As I got to know her I had many thoughts of never wanting to be like her. I just could not like her…so I started praying for her…pour soul!!

As the weeks passed I found myself wanting to be around her more and more. The more that I prayed the more that I…loved her. And the more that I loved her the more that I found myself wanting to be around her. She, Mrs. Lu Claycomb, talked about dying to self, surrender to God's will, brokenness, a contrite heart-all of the time. And as I sat in her Sunday School class God began to deal with my heart….one neither surrendered nor broken. Thirteen years later, she was able to see the multiplied hours of prayer for me answered when God lovingly, mercifully, and graciously broke my heart to full surrender to His will….when He brought me to brokenness.

Mrs. Claycomb has been my "mom", mentor, friend, counselor, and prayer warrior for thirty years. Her poetry, which I use on this site, I understand now…where once her words seemed strange. Her love for her God I understand now…where once I thought it was weird. Her devotion to others and her love of teaching the Word of God I understand now…for I have experienced the wonder and blessing of both.

Denise reminded me this morning of something both of our dads used to say so often, "If it ain't broke don't fix it! "However, concerning a Christian God tells us we need to change that phrase, to , "If it ain't broke---ask God to fix it!" If you have read much of this web site you have read about brokenness in many "sizes and shapes" so to speak. If you have read my testimony or my book you have read how God took fourteen years and a lot of tough love to bring me to brokenness. The idea of brokenness is an enigma to far too many Christians…an almost 'forgotten' old fashioned way of God's dealing with the lives of His children. I hope and pray that this article…this chapter from The Fingerprints of Providence will define forever what God's Word teaches about the broken and contrite heart
~~Sharon Merhalski

SPIRITUAL BROKENNESS

From the book "The Fingerprints of Providence"
by Pastor David M. Atkinson

"The LORD is nigh unto them that are of a broken heart; and saveth such as be of a contrite spirit. Many are the afflictions of the righteous: but the LORD delivereth them out of them all." Psalm 34:18-19

"... both Dr. F.B. Meyer and his friend came down and came out to the station on the train and walked up to Moriah Church...While they were in the meeting Evan Roberts came in and the place was crammed up, and Evan rose now as if he was going to speak. But instead of speaking he broke down to cry, and he wept in the pulpit. So Dr. F.B. Meyer's friend gave him a poke and said, "I told you, that's just the Welsh people. "NO" said Dr. Meyer, "I have been in ministry for so many years and I knew there was something missing in my ministry and that man has it. THAT MAN HAS BEEN BROKEN BY GOD AND I HAVE NEVER BEEN BROKEN." (From a radio transcript with a Mr. Jones, an 86- year- old participant in the 1904 Welsh Revival.)

"The flowers smell sweetest after a shower; vines bear the better for bleeding; the walnut-tree is most fruitful when most beaten; saints spring and thrive most internally when they are most externally afflicted. Afflictions are the mother of virtue. Manasseh's chain was more profitable to him than his crown."
--Thomas Brooks.

"God is a jealous pruner,
For He knows-
Who, falsely tender, spares the knife
But spoils the rose."
--Joyn Oxenham

"the difficulties of life are intended to make us better-not bitter."
"As the wicked are hurt by the best things, so the godly are bettered by the worst." --William Jenkyn

"If you have won the right to know how to lose, your entire ministry will be wrapped up in making winners out of losers>'
"Broken vessels reveal their contents." --James O. Phillips

"It is God's way to set people aside after their first start that self-confidence may die down. Thus Moses was forty years on the back side of a desert. On his first start he had to run away. Paul was three years also, in a desert, after his first testimony. Not that God did not approve the first earnest testimony. We must get to know ourselves and that we have no strength. Thus we must learn, and then leaning on the Lord we can with more maturity, and more experientially, deal with souls."
--John Darby

"Had it not been for the broken wing, some might have lost themselves in the clouds, some even of these choice doves who now bear the olive branch in their mouths and show the way to the ark."
--Charles H. Spurgeon

"There was no part of…holiness, that I had so great a sense of its loveliness, as…brokenness of heart and poverty of spirit; and there was nothing that I so earnestly longed for."
---Jonathan Edwards

"In one respect at least a man is like a horse. He's not really of much practical use until he's broken...A wild horse out on the mesa may be thrilling to watch...but he never carries a rider or pulls a load. All his energy, strength, speed and beauty are WASTED...UNTIL HE IS BROKEN.

A man is that way too. He may be quite exciting and attractive when wild and untamed...but he doesn't pull a load! He needs to be BROKEN FOR HARNESS! He may hold great promise: purebred pedigree, intelligence, strength, drive...but until he is broken, all these qualities are dissipated."
--Richard Halverson

"Do you know the trouble with the average Christian? He is only broken on one side. He will do this, but he will not do that. He will go here, but he will not go there. He will sing in the choir-if he can sing the solos. He will work in the foreign field, but he refuses to work in the home field. He still wants his own way. God wants us to be broken-absolutely and unconditionally."
--Oswald J. Smith

"It is doubtful whether God can greatly use a man until He has deeply hurt him." --A.W. Tozer

"Success and suffering are vitally and organically linked. If you succeed without suffering, it is because someone else has suffered before you; if you suffer without succeeding, it is that someone else may succeed after you."
--Edward Judson

"It's the defeat more than anything else that hurts you! Defeat is always the hardest thing for you to stand, even in trifles. But don't you know that we have to be defeated in order to succeed? Most spend half our lives fighting for things that would only destroy us if we got them. A man who has never been defeated is usually a man who has been ruined."
--J.L. Allen

THE FRAGRANCE

The scent of precious ointment--how it lingered
Long after all the guests had gone away;
And Mary's hands, how sweet where she had touched it,
The alabaster box she brought that day.

It filled the empty room with love's annointing,
Reached to the neighbors on the busy street
And ministered in many deeds of kindness
To friend and stranger whom she chanced to meet.

In every task she found the fragrance with her--
The pitcher that she carried bore the scent,
The coins exchanged for food within the market--
She took the blessing everywhere she went.

The box, UNBROKEN, could have kept its treasure
And pleased the fancy of a dinner guest;
But Mary broke the box, and IN THE BREAKING
Her Lord, and all the world beside were blest.
---Rugh Gibbs Zwall

BROKENNESS-HOW IT IS BORN

Psalm 34:18, 19

The word "broken" in the authorized version is the English translation of the Hebrew work "shaw-bar" which means "to burst, break up in pieces, crush or tear."

The word "contrite" is the English translation of the Hebrew word "dak-kaw" which means "to crumble, bruise, humble or smite."

Life's most difficult and delicate task is to be broken without being bitter.

The Bible teaches that no one is born with a contrite or humble spirit. Some come to possess the contrite spirit quicker than others. Some spend a whole lifetime and never come to possess a contrite spirit.

There is a process which leads to the contrite spirit. The process which leads to the contrite spirit is the breaking process.

That is why the broken heart and the contrite spirit are, by parallel grammatical construction, virtually equated in our text, Psalm 34:8. It is significant to note that the very same words appear in Psalm 51:17 with the adjectives and nouns interchanged. The "broken heart" of Psalm 34:18 is the "contrite heart" of Psalm 51:17. The "contrite spirit" of 34:18 is the "broken spirit" of 51:17. We must conclude, then, that the terms "broken heart" and "contrite spirit" are virtually synonymous.

There is a very simple reason for this. A broken heart is the necessary preparation for a humble, contrite spirit. The contrite spirit has had the back of self or "flesh' afflicted (Psalm 34:19a) or broken. The contrite spirit sorrows regarding self and self's sins.

Psalm 119:67, 71, 75

Thomas Watson said, "The vessels of mercy are first seasoned with affliction, and then the wine of glory is poured in. Thus we see afflictions are not prejudicial, but beneficial, to the saints."

"It is good for me that I have been afflicted."

In October of 1981 while going through an emotionally painful and trying experience I was prompted to write the following lines:
A burden's a blessing
If it makes me like Jesus
A broken heart's a gift of God
If it makes me like Him.
And shadows are clouds of love
If I'm under His wings.
And tears-a new beginning-
Like a blossom in spring.

THE CONTRITE (BROKEN) SPIRIT IS BORN

Psalm 119:75b

1. It is born of God.

The contrite spirit comes from God. Let us not make the mistake of ascribing the credit for brokenness to Satan. Satan is rather the father of hard rebellion.

Who broke Jacob in Genesis 32:25? It certainly was not Satan. It was the Lord! Satan buffets us to make us hard.

God permits the buffeting in order to break us and make us tender! Psalm 119:51

2. The contrite spirit is born-not in the heart of one who is out of fellowship with God-but rather, in the heart of one who is basically right with God and therefore despised and derided by those who are not. It is only the upstream, against-the-tide Christian who ever knows brokenness.

Job is an illustration of this truth. Job 1:8 So is Joseph. Genesis 37:6, 7, 9-11; 42:6 Joseph was right in the prophecies he made as a young man. He was "right" before god, but he was not broken before god. Brokenness is God's method of adding the dimension of grace to the law-keeper's life. Brokenness has grace for its lesson and mercy for its theme. Broken people become mercy-oriented people. Psalm 51:1

Psalm 119:54, 104b

3. The broken spirit is born in the heart of one who is "horrified", outraged by sin-especially the sin of those who "profess" to know God's law but actually "forsake" its principals.

The contrite spirit is created in the heart of a person who breaks or grieves over double standards, hypocrisy, spiritual decay and erosion.

Psalm 119:54

4. the contrite spirit is born when a believer continues to sing even when it seems that he is a "pilgrim"-alone and isolated.

The contrite spirit exists in the heart of a person who can honestly say,
This world is not my home,
I'm just a-passing through,
My treasures are laid up
Somewhere beyond the blue.
The angels beckon me
From heaven's open door,
And I can't feel at home in this world anymore.
---Albert E. Brumley, arr.

Psalm 119:55

5. The contrite spirit born in the heart of the believer who "remembers" or focuses upon the person ("name") of God in the blackest of nights.

Samuel Rutherford said, "Well's them who are under crosses, and Christ says to them, "Half Mine."

The "what time I am afraid, I will trust in Thee" spirit always gives birth to the contrite spirit. Psalm 56:3

Note carefully where one's focus should be during the time of isolation. The focus should be on God-His
Statutes, His customs, His decrees, His ordinances and methods! The isolated one will only deepen his own discouragement by focusing on himself.

Psalm 119:49, 50, 85, 89

6. The contrite or broken spirit is born by focusing and resting upon the Word of God when affliction comes.

Psalm 119:56, 60, 61b, 63, 72, 77, 78c

7. The contrite spirit is created in the heart of one who is committed to principled, obedient living-one who lives by precept, not by convenience.

Young Joseph possessed a broken spirit. He determined to live by principle or precept regardless of the cost. He refused and rejected the advances of Potiphar's wife saying "Thou art his wife: how then can I do this great wickedness and sin against god." Genesis 39:9

Psalm 119:61

8. The broken spirit is born in the heart of the believer who is "robbed."

One may be "robbed" of:
a.) The esteem and good-will of others
b.) Reputation; for example, Joseph in prison
c.) Cherished relationships and friendships; for example, Joseph "sold" away from everyone he loved.

God will often touch that which we hold dearest in order to break us.

Samuel Rutherford was the deeply sensitive and intense pastor of a church in Anworth in Great Britain during the time when free spirited men of God were "dissenting" against unscriptural practices of the high church. The high church officials became angry over the truths Rutherford preached-and they knew just how to hurt him. They banished him from his parish and people. They "robbed" Rutherford, and their robbery broke his spirit.

In 1637 in Aberdeen, Scotland, during the period of his forced exile from his beloved church in Anworth, Rutherford wrote the words:

"He (God) knoweth all that is done to me, how that when I had but one joy and no more, and one green flower that I esteemed to be my garland, He came in one hour and dried up my flower at the root, and took away mine only eye and my only crown and garland."

The significant truth is this: Rutherford recognized the hand of God in the robbery of men. He recognized that God was allowing his spirit to be broken.

Psalm 119:78a, 78b, 86b

9. The broken spirit is born in the heart of one who becomes the object of unjustified, "perverse" (crooked) dealings. Matthew 5:10-12; I Peter 2:19-21.

We have observed HOW THE BROKEN SPIRIT IS BORN. Now let us look at another aspect of The Broken Spirit.

One of the saintly Puritans of many generations ago prayed, "Lord, give me perpetual broken-heartedness."

Now why would a man pray that kind of a prayer? Why would anyone open himself up to constant brokenness? I was talking over the counter with a business woman on one occasion. It seems that there is just no end to her family problems. As she stood there in the depths of lonely frustration, she exclaimed in exasperation, "Oh God, I am just so tired of hurting all the time!"

One thing is absolutely certain. It would take a man or woman totally yielded to the purpose of glorifying God to ask God for perpetual brokenness. It would take a person who has had an enlightening taste of what The Broken Spirit can accomplish. And this is what we are going to consider next.

Brokenness-What It Does
Psalm 119:64a, 76a; Luke 17:10

1. The Broken Spirit makes a believer mercy-conscious.

It makes a Christian aware of God's great grace.

The unbroken spirit is an ungrateful spirit-a spirit not conscious of mercy or grace. Willian Jenkyn, the Scottish covenanter said, "Such is grace that it shines… most glorious (appears most wonderful) when
(the circumstances are ) most clouded."

He who has been through the most appreciates grace the most. See Luke 7:37-48 "To whom little is forgiven, the same loveth little."

Brokenness of spirit makes a Christian mercy-conscious. Brokenness of spirit makes a believer grateful for grace!

Psalm 119:64b, 66a ("Teach me"), 17b

2. The contrite Spirit makes the believer teachable.

Thomas Brooks said, "God's house of correction is His school of instruction."

Stephen Chamock said, "We often learn more of God under the rod that strikes us, than under the staff that comforts us."

Hebrews 12:10 promises us that god "chastens us for our own profit, that we might be partakers of his holiness."

Psalm 119:66b, 80a

3. The Broken Spirit gives the believer "good judgment" or good discernment regarding sin and the issues of life.

The Broken Spirit is wise because it does not have to defend itself. The Broken Spirit is free to make good decisions because it is no longer married to subjectivity. The breaking process frees the spirit to look at life objectively-through the eyes of God.

Psalm 119:72, 103

4. The Contrite Spirit establishes right priorities and orders or organizes the life of a believer correctly.

John Bunyan wrote the immortal Pilgrim's Progress. Remember that previously we saw that a person with a broken spirit feels like a pilgrim. Well, John Bunyan was a tinker whose broken spirit longed for the celestial city. Bunyan, like Abraham, "looked for a city which hath foundations whose builder and maker is God." Hebrews 11:10.

The earthly, or terrestrial, could not satisfy the priorities of the thirsty Bunyan. He once asked, "Do not even such things as are most bitter to the flesh, tend to awaken Christians…to a sight of the emptiness of this world, and the fadingness of the best it yields?"

Bunyan's broken or contrite spirit rightly established eternal priorities for him. Like the Psalmist, Bunyan could say, "The law of [God's] mouth is better unto me than thousands of gold and silver."

The Broken Spirit is finally able to make wise comparisons between the good, the better and the best and between the short-term and the long-term.

He has been weaned and no longer puts his roots down too deeply on earth of pins his expectations on temporal things or relationships. His priorities rise out of a value system which is based upon what is eternally better and what is eternally sweeter.

The Broken Spirit is able to say what an emaciated cancer patient in South Carolina whispered just a few weeks before he passed away. "Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal; for where your treasure is, there will your heart be also." Matthew 6:19-21

Show me a man's priorities, and I will tell you whether or not the spirit of self and the world has ever been broken in that man!

The Broken Spirit rightly orders a man's priorities.

Psalm 119:105

5. The Contrite Spirit sheds a previously unseen light upon the meaning of life.

BROKENNESS-HOW GOD VIEWS IT

Isaiah 66:1, 2; Psalm 119:65a

1. God views spiritual brokenness as the result of His own "well"-doing.

H.G. Spafford who lost all of his daughters in a shipwreck wrote:

Whatever my lot
Thou hast taught me to say;
It is well. It is well with my soul.

In Genesis 50:20 Joseph remarked upon how God views difficulty and brokenness saying, "ye thought evil against me; but God meant it for good.."

God knows the selfishness of the human heart. God knows that spiritual brokenness is what the heart needs. He knows that "the only good heart is a broken heart." Jeremiah 17:9 So, God searches our heart, tries it and purifies its motivations with brokenness. Jeremiah 17:10

Psalm 51:17b The broken, contrite heart is the only kind of heart that God does not despise. Do not fight or buck the broken heart.

The story is told of a donkey who once fell down while crossing a river with a back-load of salt. When the donkey fell down in the water, some of the salt dissolved, and his load was lighter. After that the donkey thought he had learned how to out-smart his master. He would deliberately fall down in the river hoping to lighten his load.

However, the donkey tried this trick on his master once too often. One day he deliberately fell down into the river with a load of wool upon his back. To his surprise he discovered that his load wa not lighter,
But much heavier.

God sees spiritual brokenness as a good, healthy thing for us. Do not fight it or try to out-smart god. You never can.

BROKENNESS-WHAT WE CAN DO WITHOUT IT

Nothing. Nothing worthwhile. Nothing of value to God.

The unbroken, proud spirit is despised by God. Proverbs 6:17. God actually hates the proud look. The self-reliant spirit can never please God. Psalm 51:19

"Be clothed with humility: for God resisteth the proud, and giveth grace to the humble. Humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God [God's hand is at work in your life as it was in Joseph's], that he may exalt you in due time." I Peter 5:5,6

Jesus said, "For without Me, you can do nothing." John 15:5

Paul said, "I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me." Galatians 2:20

BROKENNESS-WHAT THE DIFFERENCE IS BETWEEN THE SUPERFICIAL AND THE LASTING

In his book, A Pot of Oil, George D. Watson describes the difference between what he calls "through gentleness" and "mere mental or superficial gentleness." Much of what George Watson writes about gentleness can be applied to the subject of brokenness. Is not brokenness a virtual twin to gentleness?

It consists of mentally putting one's self on the altar, and then mentally saying that the altar sanctifies the gift, and then…concluding that one is therefore sanctified: and such an one goes forth with a gay, flippant theological prattle about the deep things of God: but the natural heartstrings have not been snapped, and the Adamic flint has not been ground to powder, and the bosom has not throbbed with the lonely, surging sighs of Gethsemane, and the beautiful self-constructed air castles have been crushed to pieces…

"We must not only lie in the tomb when we are sanctified, but that death must be carried out in the little hidden details of life. This involves a vast amount of quiet suffering, the silent bearing of a thousand pains, and the speechless enduring of secret crosses, told only to God with private midnight tears. But if we want to be filled with a (broken) spirit we must be filled with death to self…there is a vast and tedious stretch of weary and painful progress in having the mind of Jesus…"

Now how is Watson describing the difference between that brokenness which is genuine and lasting and that "brokenness" which is only superficial?

He is saying that the hurt which is only a temporary bruising will soon be seen to be only a brief blip on the cardiogram of a generally unaltered attitude and lifestyle.

The tenderness does not last. The bruise does not last.

The limp of the genuinely broken Jacob follows him for the rest of his life!

Like a bird that trails a broken wing,
I have come home to Thee;
Home from a flight oand freedom
That was never meant for me.

And I, who have known far spaces,
And the fierce heat of the sun,
Ask only the shelter of Thy wings,
Now that the day is done.

--Pastor David M. Atkinson

For more material from Pastor Atkinson, click here.

(This book is self-published and is available from the book store at:
Dyer Baptist Church at Plum Creek
738 - 213th Street
Dyer, Indiana 46311 )

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