Brokenness

• What is brokenness and does God want us broken?

• If there is brokenness, does God want to heal it?

• Why is there so little brokenness today, especially in a nation that is so wayward?

“The Lord is near to those who have a broken heart, and saves such as have a contrite spirit.” (Psalm 34:18)

“The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit, a broken and a contrite heart—

These, O God, You will not despise.” (Psalm 51:17)

“The Lord builds up Jerusalem; He gathers together the outcasts of Israel. He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds.” (Psalm 147:2-3)

There are three types of brokenheartedness. It is important that we understand the first type:

BROKENNESS OVER TRAGEDY

A heart broken through relationship or by the circumstances of life. Something that is not really of their own design. They haven’t really done anything to make it happen. These things just happen and it breaks their heart.

“Now therefore, when I come to your servant my father, and the lad is not with us, since his life is bound up in the lad’s life.” (Genesis 44:30)

I have always been intrigued by this scripture in Genesis. In this part of Joseph’s story, his brothers had taken Benjamin, the youngest, with them as a ransom to get the food they needed. They told Joseph that if they go back to their father without Benjamin, it would kill him (because this man had a broken heart). Can you imagine when many years prior, they had told their father that his son had been eaten by a wild animal, and they presented Joseph’s coat of many colors to him now stained red? What treachery, that they would let their father suffer that long. Can you imagine? For seventeen years, he thought his son was dead. This is a broken heart; Jacob didn’t do anything to make this happen. Sometimes we can seek and search out our own hearts, like when the disciples asked Jesus who sinned concerning the blind man. “Master, who did sin, this man, or his parents, that he was born blind? Jesus answered, Neither hath this man sinned, nor his parents: but that the works of God should be made manifest in him.” (John 9:2-3) Everything in Jesus’ hands can be turned to the glory of the Father. For the lad’s life is bound up in his life. Benjamin was so bound up in his father’s life that they were afraid their father wouldn’t even make it.

“I am troubled, I am bowed down greatly; I go mourning all the day long. For my loins are full of inflammation, and there is no soundness in my flesh. I am feeble and severely broken; I groan because of the turmoil of my heart.” (Psalm 38:6-8)

“Reproach has broken my heart, and I am full of heaviness; I looked for someone to take pity, but there was none; and for comforters, but I found none.” (Psalm 69:20)

David is crying out in a broken heart because the king he had wanted to serve so faithfully was trying to attack him, his heart was broken in the times of his running, trying to understand what his God was doing. Tragic circumstances can bring brokenness: parent’s hearts broken by their children, children’s hearts broken by their parents or even when looking at the nation in prayer, your heart can become broken. God doesn’t want us to go through life in this kind of brokenness. We can take comfort in the scriptures we read earlier- He reaches down in love and wants to heal our hearts.

“He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds.” (Psalm 147:3)

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me, because He has anointed Me to preach the gospel to the poor; He has sent Me to heal the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed. (Luke 4:18)

Here in Luke, Jesus is reading from Isaiah 61. Jesus came to heal the broken hearted. All around us in our community and in this nation, hearts are broken. That is why we have so much activity,  so much in fact that no one stops anymore. People don’t even know what it’s like to contemplate anymore. I am not a very patient man, in fact it got me into a lot of trouble when I was in school, I did however learn some patience through all of my traveling. I remember sitting in a plastic chair in an airport, trapped in Rome for eight hours. I had to learn to be calm, to contemplate, to watch people. Without the Lord, you would lose your marbles. When I would go walking in the hills in England, I would look at the other walkers and often think to myself, I have the Lord with me but what can they be thinking of? In England, everything was so hidden, people pushed their worries under the surface; they dared not think. On the other hand, here in America, the minute something happens, rather then contemplate, the phone comes out. People can’t even sit at a table in a restaurant and visit. People have nothing to talk about. Husbands and wives can completely ignore one another. That is why we have an opioid epidemic, because people are hurting. Think about it. If you have a nation with an opioid epidemic, then you have broken hearts that have to be covered up. If someone is having a painful medical procedure give the patient drugs to help with the pain, but when you have someone with a broken heart, drugs cannot help, they are not the answer. Yet this is exactly what we are doing. It is an epidemic, and it’s scary. When people ask, “Do I have to give up my drugs to know Christ? Do I have to give up my drinking to know Christ? Do I have to give up this or that to find Christ?” My response is, “No. Don’t give up anything. You obviously need all that. But pray and seek God and you will find the One that can heal you and you won’t need it anymore. I’ve known Christians on medication for depression, I’m not going to tell them what medicine to take or not take, but I know this: “Christ is enough!” And I’ve seen them get off all that stuff.  

Christ is enough. We are all in such a hurry. We’ve destroyed a whole nation of little boys, just because they are little boys. We can’t figure out what’s wrong with the boys that won’t sit still when the little girls just sit and color. Girls mature at different paces than boys.  God knows what He is doing but in our minds life has to go on. Little boys have to sit and learn all day long, then go play soccer, then they finally come home and are placed in front of the TV. Nobody has time for them. Mommas don’t have time for them. Children get up at 6:00 a.m. get dropped off at daycare, they’re brought home at 3:30 pm where mom and dad aren’t around. The latchkey kids play video games till their eyeballs fall out. The way we manage all this craziness is to give them drugs to keep them calm and focused. We have given a whole generation of kids, drugs. I read an interview with Kurt Cobain, who tragically took his own life, and is now an iconic figure to musicians. To paraphrase, he said he had been given drugs as a little boy to calm him down, so he knew, by the time he was eighteen, drugs were the answer.

We are hiding these broken hearts. Let’s be very clear, the first type of broken heart is caused by a tragedy in life and is not necessarily anybody’s fault. It doesn’t always help when someone loses a loved one or tragedy strikes and they are told, “God has a plan.” Often what is needed is to be quiet and just hurt with them and know that God will heal the heart. That is why we reproduced the song “Grandpa, me and you.” As I said in the short video before the song plays, this song just poured out of me twenty years ago because it was healing to my heart. I then wanted to redo it recently as a testimony that God has healed me. God will heal the broken heart. It’s what He promises to do. Thank God, He can heal the lame; He can heal the blind; He can heal the sick. The broken hearted: only God can heal, and I am telling you this nation is filled with people who have broken hearts.

BROKENNESS OVER SIN

A person’s heart is broken over their own sin.

There was a time when the Holy Spirit would fall and people would pray for hours; He would come and open the door to people’s hearts. Churches prayed, “God, rain Your Holy Spirit down.” There is blessing with that; there is filling with that. He will fill the house, but this means He has access to everything in the house. We are so closed hearted today; it’s shocking. He wants our hearts open. There is a brokenness that comes with sin and with repentance. Tragedy doesn’t break your heart. Circumstance doesn’t break your heart. It’s not the love of God breaking your heart necessarily, although that comes after repentance, but your heart is broken because of sin. This is what David wrote in Psalm 51, true words coming from a heart that has been open to God, and these words have been recorded and opened up to man through the centuries for everyone to read.

“The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit, a broken and a contrite heart — these, O God, You will not despise.” (Psalm 51:17)

Before his God, David was now broken because he loved his God. This is not a quick-fix repentance. This is not, “Oh, I’ve sinned and God knows and He’ll forgive me.” Then we continue on as though nothing ever happened. This is a man who loves God and yet he uses treachery to get his way. He fell into sin. I don’t believe David was a man consumed with lust, but rather he became weary: “at the time when kings go forth to battle…David tarried still at Jerusalem.” David chose to stay home, if he had gone off to war he would have never been on that rooftop. His heart had grown hard and callous enough for him to tarry and not go off to war. This heart was seemingly untouched when he tried to get Bathsheba’s husband, Uriah, to go home in order to deceive the husband that the child was his. Uriah’s faithfulness to him, refusing to go home from battle, doesn’t even touch David. Nothing touches David until the Word of God pierces him and says Thou art the man and immediately his heart is exposed and broken. Do we think we’re past this brokenness, confession and repentance in our Christianity today? Are we above the kind of gospel where people will come to the front of the church and fall on their knees weeping? Past the kind of gospel where people confess their sins, “I was a drunkard, but I am a drunkard no more, or I was a liar, but I am a liar no more.”? Why do we not see this? Because we don’t have the faith to really see the conviction of the Holy Spirit pierce the sinner’s heart any more. We don’t even have the time. In most modern services, the music lasts exactly 20 minutes and the message lasts 35 minutes. If the Holy Spirit were to break out, nobody would know what to do. This is what we have to believe God for.

“The sacrifice of God,” why is David saying this? “God I have failed you, I sinned. Now what can I bring you to pay for this?” Do you see the depths of this man’s heart? Do you see the depths he has fallen to? Do you also see the depths of grace that he is then stunned by? We have to shake ourselves and wake ourselves up to this, unfortunately this is a road people just don’t want to go down. The church has even been given soul dope to such a point we don’t press in. “I was going to pray but I don’t really need to, or I was going to make it to that meeting but I don’t really need to be there.” We do not see the depths of our sin. David, understood. “What am I going to bring God? What am I going to pay for this? How to do I repay God? How do I fix this?” He came to this conclusion: here is the sacrifice I can bring — a broken spirit, a broken and contrite heart. A heart that’s been crushed.

So we ask the question, “Does God want us to have a broken heart?” In David’s case sin had come into this heart and it had brought rebellion with it. God wanted David’s heart to be broken  because there is something He can accomplish through, but He doesn’t want us to live in that brokenness. “A broken and contrite heart, these O God, you will not despise.” (Psalm 51:17) This is a broken heartedness that is missing today. One that says, “I have nothing to say. I make no excuse. I do not blame others or justify myself. This is what I did wrong.” Why are we so afraid to admit these things. How many times have you seen in the Psalms where David says that God looks to those who trust in His mercy and have hope in Him. If you really take a look through the Psalms, you will see this word “mercy” is all over the place, because David understood mercy. You cannot have mercy without justice, that’s why Nathan told David the story of the man who stole the sheep, David was angry and said he deserved to die but let him repay four times. Even in David’s fallen state he understood God’s mercy. So when Nathan said, “Thou art the man!” God didn’t required David’s life at this point; God could have. David didn’t get what he deserved and neither do we.

We have seen two types of brokenness. The first is when tragedy comes. We live in a world that is broken. Satan doesn’t like us. Circumstances come and your heart is broken. You cry out, “Why God?” Know this, your God wants to heal your broken heart. Every child broken from divorce, every woman with a wayward husband, every husband whose wife doesn’t love him, every person who’s lost a loved one, every one whose dreams have been shattered on the shores of the circumstances of life — God wants to heal that broken heart. We need to proclaim that truth, just as Jesus did. The church has been anointed to heal the sick, recover the sight of the blind, preach the gospel to the poor, heal the broken hearted and bind up those who have been bruised. Often people say the church should be a hospital but we (the church in America) have become a dispensary for soul dope and there is not real operations going on. People have been healed superficially and that is not what God wants. God wants to truly heal.

BROKENNESS BEFORE ALMIGHTY GOD

A brokenness that can only happen before the sovereignty and majesty of God Almighty.

… I saw also the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up, and his train filled the temple. Above it stood the seraphims: each one had six wings; with two he covered his face, and with two he covered his feet, and with two he did fly. And one cried unto another, and said, Holy, holy, holy, is the LORD of hosts: the whole earth is full of his glory. And the posts of the door moved at the voice of him that cried, and the house was filled with smoke. Then said I, Woe is me! for I am undone; because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips: for mine eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts. (Isaiah 6:1-5)

This third type of brokenness is very different. It is when you find yourself before the sovereignty of God and you are undone in His presence. This chapter in Isaiah begins with “In the year that King Uzziah died,” at this time, they were in difficult circumstances, the king was dead, it seemed as if the hope of Israel and its restoration, would not come. Maybe this prophet had put his faith in men? Isaiah realizes he is a man of unclean lips. He was undone by the majesty and glory of God. Imagine it, he is not only in His presence, he does not just have a tingling or a feeling that God is near but his spiritual eyes are open and he is currently seeing the Lord on a high throne. The angels are flying from one place to another, he is in the middle of a spiritual vision and because of this, he was broken.

It would trouble me as a young man to hear preachers say that they had a heavenly vision, then immediately travel, selling their book where they can. I thought to the Lord, “God if a man has seen you and had his eyes opened, the first thing that happens is not book selling — it’s silence.” In II Corinthians 12:2, Paul said “I knew a man in Christ above fourteen years ago, (whether in the body, I cannot tell; or whether out of the body, I cannot tell: God knoweth;) such a one caught up to the third heaven. How that he was caught up into paradise, and heard unspeakable words, which it is not lawful for a man to utter.” He was compelled into saying that he had been caught up to the heavens. He was forced into it and yet he still didn’t write a book. He only took a quarter of a chapter to mention it, and he didn’t even talk about the things he saw. “I’m undone;” this is a brokenness that we don’t understand today. The man is broken, not by circumstance, not because of sin, although he admits he’s a man of unclean lips, he is broken because he knows His God. He sees who he is compared to and it breaks him. Immediately, the angel takes a coal, touches his lips and he is forgiven and healed. You see, the other two brokenesses connect with this. We talk about God. We teach about God. We sing about God. We preach about God. We youtube about God. But we don’t meet God! We don’t meet Him. All because we don’t understand brokenheartedness. We try to fix everything when a person has a broken heart. We tell them, “Everything is okay, we can accept you at this church.” Instead of saying, “Find your God.” Think about that sister whose heart has been broken. If she gets in the presence of her God, she will have a different kind of brokenness and yes she will be okay. That father whose children have broken his heart, if he gets before God, he is going to be okay.

What about our brother Job? Job, was caught up in a sovereign whirlwind, “The Lord said to Satan, ‘Have you considered My servant Job? For there is no one like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man, fearing God and turning away from evil.’” God was not just saying that Job was a great guy. God was letting Satan know, I have a man on the earth. This has been God’s heart from the very beginning. God created the earth and He yearns to have a people on this earth who are going to love Him for who He is not just what He can do for them.

Even when Job’s wife comes and says, “‘Do you still cling to your integrity [and your faith and trust in God, without blaming Him]? Curse God and die!’ But he said to her, ‘You speak as one of the [spiritually] foolish women speaks [ignorant and oblivious to God’s will]. Shall we indeed accept [only] good from God and not [also] accept adversity and disaster?’” (Job 2:9-10).The book of Job is known as the book of suffering and many times people view the book in a way to just understand suffering for God. But you are missing everything in the book of Job if it is just a story to quote to someone who is suffering. This is definitely a story that reflects on the first type of brokenheartedness. There is tragedy here; this man has lost his children, his home, and his income and he had eleven children, so he could not have been a very young man. So everything he has lived for, all his dreams, all the things he thought would ever happen in his life — are gone. His heart is broken and yet God doesn’t seem to come down right away and heal this broken heart, because God is after something much much deeper. In Job 38, God finally gets a chance to speak. The three friends have spoken, the fourth friend has spoken a little more rightly, but now God is going to speak. Oh how we need God to speak. Amen! We get council, which is good. We listen to the preacher, which is good. We search the scriptures, which is good. But at some point, God has got to speak.

Then the LORD answered Job out of the whirlwind and said, “Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge? “Now gird up your loins like a man, and I will ask you, and you instruct Me! “Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? Tell Me, if you have understanding, who set its measurements? Since you know. Or who stretched the line on it? “On what were its bases sunk?  Or who laid its cornerstone, when the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy? “Or who enclosed the sea with doors when, bursting forth, it went out from the womb; when I made a cloud its garment and thick darkness its swaddling band, and I placed boundaries on it and set a bolt and doors, and I said, ‘Thus far you shall come, but no farther;… (Job 38:1-11)

The Lord goes on for quite a while. There is a suffering that goes deeper than all the pain from the boils on his skin. It’s the suffering of having believed in His loving God, believed in everything His God has said to him. Job believed to the point of living what he believed. He said, “I have made a covenant with my eyes; why then should I look upon a young woman?” (Job 31:1). He had made a covenant with his heart, he was a righteous man and yet nothing turned out the way he thought it would. God doesn’t come down, stroke his head and say, “Poor boy.” God comes and says, “Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge?” God asks Job question after question. Were you there when I made the stars in the heavens and all the angels began to shout? Were you there when I laid the foundations? Were you there when I did all these things? Where were you?

This man had to stand before eleven graves. Parents are not supposed to bury their children. My wife and I have buried one child; I can tell you, it was heart wrenching. I can’t imagine burying eleven. Everything that he’s ever worked for has been destroyed. All his livelihood is gone and on top of that his whole body is covered in boils. But he stands for this — my redeemer lives. He will not back away from the fact that his God is a righteous and loving God. I want you to see this picture: here is a man who has experienced tragedy: physical pain and financial loss; things that would crush us. In his pain, he begins to complain and vent all his “Why Lord’s.”

There is a time when God’s sovereignty shows up and you’re quiet. This happened to Isaiah. In the year King Uzziah died, everything changed for Isaiah. But instead of finding Isaiah complaining, or sitting in front of his television watching some preacher, or listening to some message, or going and trying to get council from everybody he can meet, Isaiah finds himself in the presence of God and everything is answered. A puritan writer said it best, “God does not solve problems, He loses them in His vastness.” Have you ever been in a place where you have to have an answer? “Lord why has this happened?” Then you find yourself seeking God, you’re not seeking an answer. You don’t want religious marijuana from some eloquent message. You press in until you get ahold of God, He shows up and in Him everything is answered. It’s like you’re standing outside the door and you’ve got to get in there, you have to ask Him all these questions. The door opens and the shining glory of God is beaming out. You go in and you fall before the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords. You fall before the God who made the stars in the heavens and you don’t ask for anything. All your problems are gone in the presence of God.

Then the LORD said to Job, “Will the faultfinder contend with the Almighty? Let him who reproves God answer it.” Then Job answered the LORD and said, “Behold, I am insignificant; what can I reply to You? I lay my hand on my mouth. “Once I have spoken, and I will not answer; Even twice, and I will add nothing more.” Then the LORD answered Job out of the storm and said, “Now gird up your loins like a man; I will ask you, and you instruct Me. “Will you really annul My judgment? Will you condemn Me that you may be justified? “Or do you have an arm like God, And can you thunder with a voice like His? (Job 40:2-9)

Then Job answered the LORD and said, “I know that You can do all things, And that no purpose of Yours can be thwarted. ‘Who is this that hides counsel without knowledge?’ “Therefore I have declared that which I did not understand, Things too wonderful for me, which I did not know.” ‘Hear, now, and I will speak; I will ask You, and You instruct me.’ “I have heard of You by the hearing of the ear; But now my eye sees You; Therefore I retract, And I repent in dust and ashes.” (Job 42:1-6)

Job has come to a brokenness before the majesty of God. He justified himself but not in a ugly way and God was not angry at him. God was opening something up to Job that is so beautiful; He was letting Job know that there was more going on than he could see. God had His purposes and Job saw that. Job doesn’t ask God to heal his body, to restore his fortunes, to touch his poor broken hearted wife, to give him more children. Job says, “I lay my hand on my mouth.” (Job 40:4) Have you ever been before the majesty of God like this? It makes it difficult to compromise. I’ve seen a whole congregation— in silence. People afraid to move because God was there. We make the mistake trying to produce the right setting: the perfect lighting, the singing just so, the preacher dressed just right. We miss the real presence of God. Job says, “I know that You can do all things, …” Do you understand that statement? Job was expressing that God can do whatever He wants. He realizes he is insignificant: “The grass withers, the flower fades, …” (Isaiah 40:8) That’s us. We are insignificant, and yet, “… the word of our God stands forever.” (Isaiah 40:8) Where does the word of God live? In you and I! We are insignificant when we complain to God. “What’s going on with my bank account? What’s going on with my children? What’s going on, I’m in pain? What’s going on, nothing’s happening right for me?” Listen, there is a plan going on here and you are insignificant. Still, His love pours out to us in the person of Jesus. This is God’s love for Job. God is not going to explain Himself. Job most likely went to glory without ever knowing that God had made a battle ground out of his soul.

“I have heard of You by the hearing of the ear; But now my eye sees You; Therefore I retract, and I repent in dust and ashes.” (Job 42:5-6)

This is a real problem in our Christianity today: everybody hears about God, many know much scripture, many have even been to bible school, but they’ve never seen God. There is not a “seeing.” Job says, “now my eye sees You.” It doesn’t mean he saw a vision like Isaiah had done, but he saw God and he understood.

Many years ago, God called me to leave my business. There were ministries that wanted me on their staff. I was going to do great things for God, I thought things would go my way. I didn’t know God was going to take me into the wilderness. So I decided to close my business down; it took me nine months. My wife, Mary, was pregnant so we went from two incomes to one, then to almost nothing but I continued to preach on the streets. I bought a tent and set it up with 400 chairs at Delmar Stadium. First night, a Friday night, maybe 100 people came. Which was great, but I was thinking that every chair would be filled. I preached that night but was convinced it sounded terrible. I was so discouraged. People said it was good, but I was wondering where God was. I went home and laid on the couch, clothes and all. I couldn’t shake the discouragement. I began to complain: “Thank you God so much. I’ve started to close my business down. I’ve told the banker I’m finished. I’ve told my partners and investors it was all over. I burned that bridge and now, tonight, I can’t even preach. So now the bridge is burned at both ends. Thank you Lord. I have nothing,” then I fell asleep. I woke up the next morning, my bible was laying on the floor, I pick it up and read, “Who is this that darkens My door? Who is this that brings anything about God? Gird yourself like a man; I want to ask you a few questions, boy?” (Job 38:1-2 paraphrased) It was as if God was speaking right to me. I went straight from the couch to the floor, trembling. It was the Word of God; it was real. It wasn’t something that was taken apart by a million preachers and put on the internet. It was the unadulterated word of God, speaking right to my heart. By the time I got up, my response was, “Yes, sir. I’m going right back out there and even if no one comes, I’m still going to preach. I’ll preach to the chairs and those chairs better be ready. Whatever you want God.” I had been put right. I went that night and not very many people were there. Then it started raining, and water started leaking through the slits in our beat up old tent. I was unmoved by it. About that time, a van pulled up with a bunch of kids from a youth group. Then a big bus pulls up and unloads more kids. After we worshipped, I shared my testimony and preached. I’m not sure anyone even understood what I said because I talked so fast. But at the end, I said, “God wants your soul.” Many kids rushed to the front and fell down on their knees in the mud and rain, repenting. What a move we had that night. I had gone into the meeting that night with the attitude that if no one comes, I’m okay. This is what happened to Job, not that my struggle was anywhere near to what his was. But what happened to Job was that he saw God. There was a brokenness. A brokenness that doesn’t keep you from going on with life, it is a brokenness that opens things up.

So, back to the question, “If God is a healer, does He want you broken?”

• If your heart has been broken in tragedy, does God want your heart broken like that?

No, He wants to heal it.

• Does God want your heart broken through repentance?

He would rather you not sin, if you do let your heart be broken over it your God will heal you.

• When you have seemingly unanswerable questions like, “What is going on God, I love you, I haven’t sinned like David and yet nothing is going right?”

It is often is the righteous who find themselves in these places. God wants a testimony.

• Or questions like “Why me Lord? Have you seen brother Levi? This other guy, he’s living in the world; he drinks; he carouses, he shows up on Sunday and that’s all.”

No, this man is not going to have the struggles Job had. God wants a testimony.

“Will you condemn Me that you may be justified?” (Job 40:8)

• Why is this happening, I’m walking with You, I’m following You?

It’s the “seeing” Him. It’s the blessing in seeing who He is.

“I know that You can do all things, And that no purpose of Yours can be thwarted. (Job 42:2)

• Who won this battle, God or the devil?

Our God won.

“Therefore I have declared that which I did not understand, Things too wonderful for me, which I did not know.” ‘Hear, now, and I will speak; I will ask You, and You instruct me.’ “I have heard of You by the hearing of the ear; But now my eye sees You; Therefore I retract, And I repent in dust and ashes.” It came about after the LORD had spoken these words to Job, that the LORD said to Eliphaz the Temanite, “My wrath is kindled against you and against your two friends, because you have not spoken of Me what is right as My servant Job has.” (Job 42:2-7)

See, Job spoke what was right. He knew His God was a God of love. So they make a sacrifice and God accepts them.

“The LORD restored the fortunes of Job when he prayed for his friends, and the LORD increased all that Job had twofold. Then all his brothers and all his sisters and all who had known him before came to him, and they ate bread with him in his house; and they consoled him and comforted him for all the adversities that the LORD had brought on him. And each one gave him one piece of money, and each a ring of gold.The LORD blessed the latter days of Job more than his beginning; and he had 14,000 sheep and 6,000 camels and 1,000 yoke of oxen and 1,000 female donkeys. He had seven sons and three daughters. He named the first Jemimah, and the second Keziah, and the third Keren-happuch. In all the land no women were found so fair as Job’s daughters; and their father gave them inheritance among their brothers. After this, Job lived 140 years, and saw his sons and his grandsons, four generations. And Job died, an old man and full of days.” (Job 42:10-15)

Three Types of Brokenness

Over Tragedy – God is a healer and He wants to heal.

• We don’t sit with those who have broken hearts and ask, “Who sinned? You? Your husband? Your parents? Your wife?” We just need to say, “God wants to bind up your broken heart.”

• There was no test of her faith, when the woman was weeping over her only son lying dead in the funeral procession in Luke 7:11-17.

Jesus just went over and healed him, because God likes to do that.

Over Sin – We need to see the real tragedy over sin.

God wants restoration.

Over Seeing who God is

• When we no longer have the questions of “Why me, God?”

• When you look at others and see prosperity or happy relationships, instead of beating yourself up over your own selfishness or reading a book on selfishness,.press in with God. Selfishness disappears when you see God. All of Job’s selfishness left.

• Job did not ask God to heal his body, restore his fortune, or touch his wife. He just said, “You’re God.” It wasn’t a fatalistic knowing.

• Then what did God do?

God restored everything because God won. Satan can’t beat the brokenness of God when it has a heart that says: “My God lives.”

• When someone stands at a grave site and says, “My God lives.”

• When someone looks at their bank account having lost everything and says, “My God lives.”

• When someone’s heart is broken in a relationship and says, “My God lives.”

• When tragedy is all around – when we see the world in the flames of demonic grip, when we don’t understand what’s going on around us and still say, “My God lives.”

• When you get up off the floor and say, “I’m going to do exactly what God said regardless of what I see, what I hear, what I feel or what I think.”

Then God knows he has a man or a woman on the earth.

Does God want us broken? God wants brokenness, but brokenness unto Him.