I was tired of listening to the same music on my computer and thought - how can I redeem my time as I sit and work on a design for some things I was making? I thought why not listen to expositions .. duh!
As I searched the podcasts to which I'm subscribed I stumbled upon one entitled, "Brokenness" and thought it was perfect. Since this is where I am currently residing, I thought it only appropriate that I hear what this preacher had to offer for my situation. I am glad I did.
What I love most about the Word is it's meat-y-ness. A good steak - that you need to chew on, but full of taste, juice, flavor and hardiness. It fills you up. And it's good food.
Anyway, here are some notes I took. Hopefully they make sense, but if you're interested in hearing more, let me know:
- Brokenness - our will bring brought under his; breaking in a specific area; surrendering a ceartin area of our life - usually self reliance or just self
- purpose is to bring every area of our life to submission of His will; removes every hindrance that keeps us from fully surrendering and fully trusting Him
- the areas of our life that keep us from doing those things are like giant targets for God - for him to come to shatter and break and remove so that our dependence and reliance is utterly for Jesus
- he wants to make sure there are no other gods in our life - nothing that will compete for our obedience and devotion and if there is, He's gonna come break it down
- 2 Corin 4:16
- remember who you were made for
- he breaks us so that we can be living and walking expressions of the life of Christ, the indwelling of the Holy Spirit
- Example of potter's wheel - potter throws clay on the wheel and then makes his piece of art, but if there is something wrong with it what does he do? He crushes it and throws it back on the wheel until it's made complete. Crushing and breaking and shaping over and over again.
- our spirit of indepedence and self is the greatest detterence to becoming what God wants us to be
- 2 options - 1) surrender or 2) hold onto my little bit and miss God's great blessing
- Exodus 2 - Moses was stripped of everything
- Purpose #1 - Spiritual Maturity - making us Christlike
- a) change - willingness to change and allow God to adjust our life
- b) growing - we need to be growing Christlike; dependence upon Jesus, allowing Holy Spirit to govern our lives
- c) brokenness - God dealing with self-life that wants to act independent of God
- broke Moses b/c the task he had for him would demand it
- prepared him for purpose of why he called him
- spiritual maturity doesn't mean having great talent, ability, prominences, prestige, popularity etc.
- we need to come to bitter end of ourselves where we have nothing else to depend upon but God
- absolute nothingness - only thing of value in our lives is God and God alone
- anything that stands in the way is like a giant target to God
- every shred of self must be laid aside
- saints are manufactured in a lifetime
I need to chew on this a bit. There are more messages in the series that I'm looking forward to reading. I had to use some of my self control to stop myself from just spending the whole afternoon swimming in bible expositions (not that this is bad at all, but I do have a job you know?)
