In his amazing devotional, My Utmost for His Highest, Oswald Chambers writes, “If we are ever going to be made into wine, we will have to be crushed – you cannot drink grapes. Grapes become wine only when they have been squeezed.”
More often than not, brokenness is the tool that the Lord uses to make us wine. Broken homes, broken relationships, broken bodies, broken hopes, broken hearts. This is the stuff of life on earth that the Lord uses to break us for His glory.
In scripture, nearly all of the notable people we meet were broken, squeezed, crushed or pressed in some way before their significance in the Lord was realized. We meet people that faced great trials, afflictions, betrayals, persecution, abuse and other kinds of brokenness before and during their service to God. Even our Lord was broken and His brokenness was used to save us from an eternity in hell.
Given what Scripture says about the useful brokenness of God's chosen people - why would we ever expect a God-seeking life lived free of it? And for that matter, why would we want it? Friend, the Lord is all about brokenness. He will use it to destroy our desires, our wills, our expectations and our self-reliance so that we can submit to His will, humbly serve Him and further His kingdom.
It's not so much whether or not we will experience brokenness, but how we will respond to it. Building on Oswald Chambers' wine metaphor, we have two possible responses – we can either allow ourselves to be the grapes in God's almighty hand getting squeezed until we are turned into a sweet, fragrant wine useful to quench the lips of the thirsting world around us or we can resist His squeeze and remain whole fruit that will spoil and rot away to mushy uselessness.
So, what of your brokenness? Are you hurting and wondering why a loving God would allow such pain? Friend, know that it doesn't have to be in vain that we suffer. The journey forward is all about becoming One with the Father, the Spirit and the Son. That's what it's all about. Believe that He will use whatever brokenness it takes to get us there. It's up to us to respond to Him with a willing spirit, even when it's painful to do so.
Let us not struggle to remain whole fruit. Oh, that the cry of our souls would be to welcome whatever brokenness it takes for the Lord to crush us, squeeze us and press us into His very own divine, thirst-quenching wine.
Thursday, April 17, 2008
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2 comments:
"Let us not struggle to remain whole fruit." What a great way to put this. I appreciate your wisdom here. Thank you for stopping by my blog. :-)
Great thoughts! He will not only use brokenness to get us where he wants us, but he will take our brokenness and use it to reach others. That is what he is doing in my life now and it is incredible.
Mercy Me's "Bring the Rain" says it--"and I know there'll be days when this life brings me pain, but if that's what it takes to praise you, Jesus bring the rain..."
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