I've recently finished reading a book called "The Release of the Spirit". Its not about crazy, wild things we've all heard of. Its a book about the ways of the Spirit, the ways of God and His purposes in the world. How His work in us is a work of brokenness.
Few of us, even as believers, come to understand the ways of God. We've been at it for two thousand years, but so little progress. We should be growing in the understanding of the Nature of God with every generation. Instead, history shows that we tend to camp out on some good doctrine rather than moving with the wind of the Spirit. I've decided to sequester myself from any outside messages other than those of my pastor and friends. In this time I've been pressing in for more knowledge of God...knowledge that will satisfy me, that will answer my questions.
This word of brokenness has in it a freedom that no other message has brought. A precious sister in Christ has recently shared her own brokenness- seeing her own prodigal nature and the abundant grace of God toward her. She is in a unique position to understand God's nature that most of us never see.
In brokenness there is something in us of the nature of God that touches God. Remember the spirit He put within when we first believed? Remember being made into a new creature? One that had never existed before- free, free, free? -There's something of the same stuff as God in us who have received Christ into our hearts. He washed away our sins and made us new. He put a new spirit in us- one of the same stuff as Him. But its only in brokenness that the selfish and boastful, the wasteful and ugly outer man is silenced, and lets the spirit within us touch God, respond to God, hear from the heart of God and know His purposes and His will. Maybe that's why we know so little about God's true nature. We're so in the way.
I have to confess that it grieves me to hear people misrepresent God. Let me say right now that God does not have a 2 by 4 to hit you upside the head. Why do we sacrifice true knowledge of His gentle grace for that stupid illustration. Its because we're not broken enough to talk about the gentle nature of God and the mountainous power of that. That's somehow reserved for sermon illustrations. When will we learn to speak the language of disciples who have been disarmed by his purity, his knowledge of us, his true nature? It's not a theology to write in a book or cliches to repeat on the radio. Its a breath of the spirit to be caught.
