To Be Fixed, You Must Be Broken

Given July 2002

During prayer this morning, I was reminded of a vision I received in 2002 which I wrote about then.  I’d like to expand on that vision today.

Some of us were going to church early on Sunday evenings to pray and I was walking around in the prayer room praying.  I was thanking God for my status in life; for my education, training, job, and the things I’d accomplished.  I was pretty proud of what I’d done and was thanking God for His part in my life.  I was feeling pretty good.  God replies, “Yes, you’ve done pretty well for yourself but that’s not exactly the way I would have done it.”  God’s response hit me hard and I realized I had spent most of my efforts on education, employment goals, home building, and other tasks that define what the world sees as success.  I immeditely dropped to my knees before God and repented saying,”Father, I’m sorry for building my life the way I thought it should be.  I now fully surrender to you and ask you to break me and re-make me the way you intended even before I was born.” “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you,before you were born I set you apart; ” (Jeremiah 1:5).

When I asked to be broken before God, in my spirit I saw myself being instantly zapped into a pile of grey/brown dust.  God was standing beside the pile with a bottle of oil.  He pours the oil onto the pile of dust and begins forming and shaping the dust into His image.  That’s the way He wants to do it.  “The sacrifice you desire is a broken spirit. You will not reject a broken and repentant heart, O God.” (Psalms 51:17).  The vision really made an impact on me and I was reminded of this again this morning.  We may feel like we’ve done pretty good for ourselves OR we may have made a mess of our lives.  Either way, we need to give ourselves to God, submit to Him or re-submit, and let ourselves be broken down to dust so God can rebuild us and fix us into the image He has for us and has had from the beginning.  Do you want to be fixed?  Well, you’ve got to allow yourself to be totally dismantled, broken apart, and re-assembled into something brand new.