Lately, I have been broken. My barely alive heart has been driven through with a knife and twisted in circles again and again and again. I have gone more emotions and feelings than I knew existed. Most of you know this from either just conversations with me or from the last post I wrote. Regardless, in the matter of two days, my brokenness and weakness have turned into being my greatest source of joy, peace, and comfort.
I'd imagine most reading this post have experienced some varying degree of brokenness in life. Sometimes one comes to a point where he or she emotionally and spiritually cannot go on . . . it literally becomes impossible to do so alone. That is exactly how I felt for most of this past month and a half. A verse to the new Demon Hunter song "Fading Away" illustrates exactly how I felt throughout this nightmare:
"It’s in this wake that I find myself
Losing the will to resume this hell
When every breath is a dying wish
It’s harder to follow the point of this . . .
This broken place that I call my home
Is deep in the sorrow that I have sewn
And I can’t erase what is in my heart
I want it to finish before it starts."
I had never seriously entertained suicide, but there were definite moments in this past month and a half where my "every breath [was] a dying wish." I just prayed for God to take me home and end all my pain. Obviously, I am still here, and I am now thankful that He did not answer those despairing prayers.
Johnnie Moore just finished a series a couple weeks ago in Sunday morning Campus Church about the book of Hosea. I have never had a sermon or a series of sermons so impact my life and so directly speak to me as this one on Hosea has. I won't get too much into the details of the book, you can read that yourself, and I highly suggest that you do.
The basic premise of Hosea is that Israel as a nation goes astray from God and literally prostitutes herself to other gods. So in an attempt to woo back His wayward beloved, God appoints the prophet Hosea to deliver a message. It begins with listing everything Israel has done to offend God's perfect love, but goes on to fully display God's perfect love in His taking her back as His bride once again. Ultimately, God displays His love for His people in the only way He can. Since Israel wants to prostitute herself to other gods, God lets her have her way, and reap the consequences of her own decisions. God allows Israel to self destruct in order to draw her back unto Himself again. Hosea 2:6-7 entails God speaking to His chosen prophet:
"Therefore, behold, I will hedge up
Her way with thorns,
And I will build a wall against her so
That she cannot find her paths.
She will pursue her lovers, but she
Will not overtake them;
And she will seek them, but will not
Find them.
Then she will say, 'I will go back to
My first husband,
For it was better for me then than
now!'"
Verses 14 and 15:a go on to further explain:
"Therefore, behold, I will allure her,
Bring her into the wilderness
And speak kindly to her.
Then I will give her her vineyards
From there,
And the valley of Achor as a door of hope."
God is saying that He will lead His wayward people into the desert in order to offer them hope - even hope from the valley of Achor! The valley of Achor was the place where adulterers were led to be stoned to death by their people. It was a place of no hope for the sinful. It was where they were taken to meet their end. God is saying that He will even use the valley of Achor, a place of absolutely no hope, as a very door of hope to His adulterous people. He will show them mercy and love.
God then goes on to proclaim in verses 16 and 19-20:
"'It will come about in that day,'
Declares the Lord,
'That you will call Me Ishi (my husband)
And will no longer call Me Baali (my master) . . .
I will betroth you to Me forever;
Yes, I will betroth you to Me in
Righteousness and in justice,
In lovingkindness and in compassion,
And I will betroth you to Me in
Faithfulness.
Then you will know the Lord.'"
God seeks to have such a relationship with us where we can call Him our husband. He wants that intimacy with us, and that is the true relational intimacy we were created to exist for. If we rebuke that intimacy, turning away to other lovers (anything else that we allow to take God's place in our lives), God will break us in order to save us. Hosea chapter 5:14b-15 declares:
"I, even I, will tear to pieces and go
Away,
I will carry away, and there will be
None to deliver.
I will go away and return to My place
Until they acknowledge their guilt
And seek My face;
In their affliction they will earnestly
Seek Me."
So how does this relate to my brokenness and suffering, and how does this practically apply to the life of you the reader? I fully realize now how much I had prostituted myself to other lovers. I had exalted God's creation above God Himself, and had replaced His space in my life with something else. I was also involved with some things I should not have been involved in. In order to save me from the sinful road of bad consequences I was following down, God had to take me into the wilderness. I was led through a spiritual desert. I was in the valley of Achor, but God took me there in order to provide me with a door of hope. I was taken to a place of no hope in order to arrive at an opportunity for new life. God had to break me and tear me apart, and then turn His back on me in order to grab my attention until I acknowledged my guilt. That was the missing element. And now that I know and acknowledge, for the first time in a month and a half, I have hope and joy. Not happiness, mind you, but joy, which is even more encompassing and more lasting. C.S. Lewis once wrote that pain is "God's megaphone to rouse a deaf world." The book of Hosea stands as illustration of this principle, and my life now exists as a testimony to this concept.
Sunday night I attended a 10:30 prayer vigil on the lawn in front of the little campus chapel called Glowstick. I did not really know much about it prior to going, and I really had no clue what to expect. I was invited by a co-worker, but had heard my SLD mention it before. So I went just to check it out.
Glowstick is a group of students who meet weekly to pray for brokenness of hearts for the things of God. As soon as I was told this, I knew it was where I needed to be. Firstly, we prayed for a student Robert who's grandmother was just diagnosed with cancer, who's best friend just died in a car accident, and who on top of all that is shipping to Iraq in a week for a second tour of duty. I felt so selfish after meeting this young man. Why was I of all people complaining so much. I felt like I almost did not have a right to ask for prayer after hearing that.
Anyway, the name Glowstick comes from, ironically enough, the concept of a glow stick. You need to break a glow stick in order to make it shine. Not just a little bit either, you must totally twist and turn and break that glow stick in order to get it to glow. God breaks and bends and twists our hearts, if we earnestly seek Him, so that we may know our own weakness apart from Him. It truly is when we are weak and broken that God gives us strength beyond what we ever dreamed possible to endure. He prunes us so that we can grow out into an even more beautiful vine - He breaks us so that we can brightly glow with His message of hope, love, and salvation to a dying world.
~Insense
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