The God of Broken People
“The Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit.” (Psalm 34:18).
Out of curiosity in a Bible study, someone once asked why God chooses childless women to give birth to people of great spiritual importance.
The answer he received was that, perhaps, because such women in their desperation serve as the best reference for brokenness which is a requirement for effectiveness in the hand of God. The truth is that God is limited in the life of an unbroken person.
Though childless women are not an exclusive group that God uses for his purposes but we can’t but fail to see the hand of God among these women who at the end of their tether cried out to God. (1 Samuel 1:10-17).
The list of such women stands out in the Bible and even across generations. Such notable women include Hanna the mother of Samuel, Elizabeth the mother of John the Baptist, and Manoah’s wife referred to as Samson’s mother. This list would not be complete without mentioning Sarah the mother of Isaac, and Rebecca the mother of Esau and Jacob.
These women had something in common: they all arrived at a state in which they were not able to deal with their own problems by their own devices any longer. They had come to realize that only God could resolve the difficult equation of their problem, in other words, they had reached a state of surrender to God’s will.
However, it sometimes takes unrelenting pressure from God for most men to arrive at the altar of surrender because of the often strong resistance of men’s will.
What does it mean to be broken in the hand ‘s of God? Brokenness is a process that brings people to a place where God is all that matters, where their own ego and importance are surrendered to God, that God may have preeminence in their lives.
This process of brokenness is strewn with a painful but healing balm- with brokenness men are reshaped into a yielding clay in the loving hand of God that He may mould them into his proper image which reflects His own will in their lives.
Before this process, unbroken lives were egotistical, self-willed, hard, and unyielding to God’s will. Like Jacob they had to be smashed into pieces for God to have his way with them – this is why it’s a painful but useful experience.
In a two-way analysis, the Bible references us as a jar of clay to point out our weakness without God (Jeremiah 18:6), it also references us as clay that must be broken if God’s perfect will for our lives would come to manifestation (Romans 9:19).
So in line with these references, some have been broken by their encounter with emotional distress, referencing Hannah which brought them willingly to a place of surrender, while others have been broken by the unyielding hand of God upon their lives, referencing Jacob.
Either way, the path to brokenness is not an easy path. It is a part filled with sorrow and despair but it comes with the perfect will of God. All who walked with God on this path endured weeping for a while but their joy definitely came in the morning of their glorious encounter with God: it never fails (Psalm 30:5).
Why must we be broken?
We must be broken if our lives would yield to our eternal destiny which is bigger than our own self serving and narrow minded vision of life.
Jacob had to be broken to become Israel before he could transition from his temporal, self-serving existence into the path of his eternal destiny, where he finally embraced his higher calling and blessing.
Are you presently walking away from God’s ocean of blessing downward to your own defined pool of water by the roadside? Cry to God today to lay his merciful hand on you that he may turn you around, and guide you up to the place of your eternal destiny.
Your journey to your ocean of blessing will come easier only if you become a broken vessel in need of repair in the hand of a loving God.
Reading
Romans 9:6-24
