Gateway Church's Podcast
The Prayer of the Broken
Now, if you have your Bibles, if you'll take those and turn, if you will, please, to Matthew 6. I'm only going to read one brief verse. When I got the invitation to come and speak, and then the theme, one prayer, that each of the speakers in this series is to relate to that theme, one prayer, that we should choose one prayer that we want to teach on. That was very challenging. In the first place, as a guest speaker, you seldom are required to write a new sermon. As a traveling minister, you just need three good sermons and a fast car. But I really was motivated by the series title. And so, when you come to a church like Gateway with an international audience by multimedia and all that, you want to preach a big sermon. You want to lower the guns to deck level and load with a grape shot. But I don't have that today. This is a simple little pastoral message on a certain prayer, on one prayer. And this weekend here at Gateway is the first time I've ever preached it. I want to preach today on the prayer of the broken. And I believe that it is in Matthew chapter 6 and verse 10. We've already sung it as Tim led us, but let me read it to you yet again. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done in earth as it is in heaven. Now please just make a note of the preposition, because it often gets read in a sloppy way. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done in earth, not on earth, not on the earth. Thy will be done in earth as it is in heaven. Now let's pray. Heavenly Father, in the next few moments, I pray that you will sweep aside every barrier to divine communication, every carefully constructed mechanism of self-defense that we have hurled up against the penetrating power of your spirit. Brush it aside and rush in over the threshold of our souls, enter in by your might into the inner person of every listener. In the mighty name of Jesus, the strong Son of God, amen. Amen and amen. I'm a lifetime student of the discipline of communication. I've devoted myself to the study of communication in preaching, in writing, in linguistics, in multimedia, television, radio. I've devoted myself to studying how communication works and what it means and how to do it better. Now I know what some of you are thinking right now. If he's devoted himself lifetime to the study of communication, seems like he'd be better at it. But you don't know how bad I might have been. What I do know is this. If you take the entire discipline of communication and boil it down until its quintessence arises to the top like cream, what you have is four simple truths. The essence of communication is the right message to the right party in the right way at the right time. Now you get any of those variables wrong, it can go really wrong, really fast. I heard about a married couple that actually happened to be born on the same day, so they shared a birthday. Then they got married on their joint 23rd birthday. On their 40th wedding anniversary, that would have been their 63rd birthday together and their 40th wedding anniversary, they went for a second honeymoon to the South Pacific. They're walking on the golden sands of a South Pacific island and a bottle washed up in the surf. The woman picked it up and pulled out the cork and now came a huge genie. The genie said it's your 63rd birthday, it's your 40th wedding anniversary. I'll grant you each one free wish. The woman never hesitated. She said, "I know exactly what I want." She said, "I want a diamond ring bigger than Elizabeth Taylor's." The genie said, "Your wish is my command." And poof, just like that, on her finger, a rock. I mean bigger than the star of India gleaming in the South Pacific sunshine. The husband now inspired and said, "I want my wish." And he said, "Your wish is my command. You have but to speak and it shall come to pass." The man said, "I want a wife who's 30 years younger than I am." And poof, just like that, he was 93. You can think that you're transmitting clearly. But the message that you transmit may not be at all the ones that's received may not have the effect that you were hoping for. So therefore, when it comes to the issue of prayer, particularly the prayer of the broken, the first thing I need to deal with is that that sounds uninviting to the contemporary spirit-filled audience. There is something about us that just gets our back up over the very word brokenness. It seems inconsistent with the modern cultural emphasis on wholeness and healing. There's hardly any place in the world where there's a greater emphasis on wholeness than at the university where I serve as president. Or Robert's University is about wholeness for the whole person in healing. Beyond that, it also rankles a bit in the broader spirit-filled community. We talk so much about faith and healing and wholeness that talking about brokenness kind of gives us a pause. Is this even a subject we ought to be dealing with? The second thing is, when we talk about prayer and communication and we say, "Oh God, break me. Bring me to brokenness." We must remember somebody set it already during the time of worship. I think maybe Jack Abraham set it on his video. God doesn't answer prayers because we're good. He answers prayers because he's good. But let me extrapolate that out just a wee bit. He answers prayers correctly because he's good. He's not a legalistic and petty God. You say, "Oh God, lead me into a place of such spiritual brokenness that I depend on you entirely." And God says, "Oh, that's what I was waiting for. All the things in the hammer, you into oblivion." No, God is a good God and our prayer to him to come to a place of brokenness is a good prayer. There is some risk. There is some risk. Weightlifters and bodybuilders have this phrase. They use, "No pain, no gain." I would just change it in this way. No risk, no return. There is some risk, but the risk is comprehendable, is sustainable in the light of the absolute goodness of God. There is really no risk because when we say, "God, bring me to the place of brokenness that we can trust in the goodness of God." Now, having said all that, the issue is still, "That's not the prayer. I'm not dealing this morning with the prayer for brokenness. I'm dealing with the prayer of the broken." So first of all, what is brokenness? We begin by saying what it's not. Brokenness is not woundedness. Though woundedness can lead to brokenness, but often it doesn't because we tend in our carnality to clutch our wounds to our breast and scream, "Mind, mind, mind." We wallow in self-pity, we hide them from others, we really enjoy the experience of being wounded and we don't want to get healed from our wounds. Why is it that some people receive a wound that seems like to us, that we don't judge each other's wounds? And they are ruined emotionally and every other way. Someone else receives a wound that we think, "How can they possibly live over this?" And they rise to some level of such redeemed glory that we almost covet their wound. Why is that? It's because for some, woundedness becomes an end in itself and for others, they pass through the experience of woundedness and on into brokenness. Secondly, brokenness is not the same as being shattered. Shattered lives, devastated lives that fall to hopelessness and despair can lead on. They can lead, shatteredness can lead to brokenness, but as I said about woundedness, usually it doesn't. What it often reads to is hatred and even revenge. It may result in brokenness, but often it doesn't. True brokenness then is the key to wholeness. I am convinced that until we pass through the experience of brokenness, and I'll talk about some of the ways, but until we pass through the experience of brokenness in one way or another, some level, some higher altitudes of brokenness are completely inaccessible to us. Brokenness is the hope of recovery from our shattered lives, and brokenness leads on to wholeness. True brokenness is to be simply ripped free of our own prideful self-dependence. Here we are on the 4th of July, and we talk about independence day, but our independence was to be from our colonial masters in Great Britain. It was not to be independent of God. Now we're almost trying to pry the nation out from underneath God. If we become independent of God, we lose the brokenness in which we were born. This nation was born in brokenness. When our troops and our general and our founding president knelt in the snow with bloody footprints at Valley Forge, he was broken. When George Washington saw his troops deserting in the night and cholera sweeping through the camp at Valley Forge, he was broken. His prayer was not, "We can do this because we're going to be the United States of America." His prayer was, "We will only be able to do this if you're a good hand of graces upon us." Brokenness is the key to victory. It's not the key to defeat, it's the great paradox of the Christian faith. The opposite of brokenness is not wholeness. The opposite of brokenness is independence from the will of God. We know this passage of Scripture from the Beatitudes. Blessed are the poor in spirit. But John Wesley paraphrased it this way. He said, "Blessed are those who know their need of God." This nation, we as individuals, our own nuclear family units, must remember our constant need of God. It is brokenness that says, "I cannot depend upon my wealth or my knowledge or my position." We as a nation can't depend upon our economic strength or our nuclear weaponry. We must depend upon God. It's only a truly broken spirit that causes a man or a nation or a culture to kneel before God out of deep need. Utter dependence upon God absolutes surrender to his will and his word is the result of brokenness. Brokenness is not demeaning, beaten, resignation to the will of God. You can hear people say that, "Well, I've tried everything else and I'm ruined. I'm broken, I'm beaten down, I guess I may as well surrender to God." But that's not what God is after. It's not simply a resignation that I can't do it on my own. It is the joyful surrender to the fruit of brokenness which is his righteousness at work in our lives. Remember the story that Jesus told of the two men who came to church. The one came right up front, lifted his hands, prayed out loud so that everybody would see him. "Oh God, I thank you, and I'm not as sinful as all the rest of these people. Thank you, God, that you've made me a righteous man. I thank you that I'm better than all these people. Thank you, God, that I haven't done all these terrible things." The other guy came in and sat in the back row, came late because he felt embarrassed to be among all the good people at church. And when he came time for prayer, he hung his head and said, "Lord, I can't even think of a reason why you ought to hear my prayer. And I'm embarrassed to even be in this church because I've sinned. Please forgive me." And Jesus said that man went home justified. It is in that brokenness that we find his righteousness and not ours. Now, how do we come to brokenness? That's probably the part of this that sounds the most risky or the most scary. We can come to it through events. We can pass through the avenues of pain at such a place where we come face to face with our own insufficiency. Where our declaration of independence from God has destroyed us. We can, however, come to brokenness through a deep prayer. We don't have to pass through some horrific event. We don't have to come face to face with some horrible moment. We can come there through prayer. We can come and say, "God, lead me into spiritual brokenness." I don't want to have to go through some horrific humiliation. I don't want to have to come face to face with scandal or despair or brokenness or bankruptcy. Can I get there through prayer? Can I get there through surrender? So there's more than one way to come to brokenness. But the issue is we must come to brokenness. The signs of an unbroken life are actually quite clear and on the surface. Forgiveness says, "I'm not broken enough to forgive because I'm not in touch with my own need for forgiveness." Pride, anger, judgmentalism, a critical spirit. We're picking everybody else's life because we're not broken. We can see the unbrokenness in our carnality. When we come to the place where we think a bad hair day is at the level of nuclear holocaust, then we know that in that moment we are not broken. That diva spirit is at work within us. When a teenager sulks for two weeks because he didn't get to go where he wanted, when he wanted, with whom he wanted, how he wanted on a Saturday night, he's unbroken. When his dad sulks for two weeks because his teenager is sulking, the dad is unbroken. When we argue over things that are inconsequential, marriages that argue over where to eat supper for Pete's sake, it's a spirit of unbrokenness. We must be broken of our haughtiness. We must be broken of our self-righteousness. We must be broken of our prideful self-importance. How could this have happened to me? It's an unbroken heart. Now, I want to say to you again, the prayer of the broken is not help me. Be on me out. Get me out of this. That's a prayer that we may pray, and it's a perfectly valid prayer, a perfectly authentic prayer, but it's a prayer that we may pray while we're going through the breaking experience. But it is not the prayer of the broken. Listen to the prayers of the broken. When David went through the public humiliation of his affair with Bathsheba and his murder of Uriah the Hittite, and the baby that he and Bathsheba created that died as a result of this whole situation, when David went through that, his prayer of public confession in Psalm 51 is dramatic and powerful, the prayer of the broken. There's no mention in Psalm 51 of Bathsheba. He never says, "Oh God, if this woman had kept her clothes on, we wouldn't be in this mess." He says, "Against thee and thee only have I sinned and done this which is evil in thy sight." The second thing is, he doesn't just say, "Be on me out." He says, "Change me, creating me a clean heart, restoring me a right spirit, oh God." David says, "Let me come out of this breaking experience better than when I went into it." And then there is the hope for the future. David says, "Then use me in the future." Brokenness does not destroy our hope of usefulness in the future. It enhances it. We may actually lead better with a limp than we do walking solidly on both feet. Look at the prayer of Paul the Apostle on the road to Damascus as he went there with anger and self-righteousness and a religious spirit to go to Damascus and bring the Christians in chains. God struck him blind, knocked him off his high horse while he wallowed in the dirt. God spoke to him and said, "Go into straight street in Damascus and wait till you hear from me." It's interesting, isn't it, that Paul claims not to know who's speaking to him, but when he says, "Saul, Saul, why persecute his thou me?" And Paul, who Saul of Tarsus who became Paul the Apostle, says, "Who art thou, Lord?" I'm thinking he had a clue, but he lies three days blind and in deep, deep remorse until Ananias walks in and says, "Brother Saul, receive thy sight and be filled with the Holy Spirit because why the Lord has revealed to Saul what great things he must suffer." So Paul the Apostle arose from the darkness, blindness, bondage, and self-righteous anger of Saul of Tarsus. His brokenness. Sometimes Saul, Paul the Apostle was not as sensitive to this process as he ought to have been in the lives of others. Look at John Mark who went with Paul and Barnabas on their first mission trip. John Mark, how many of you have ever been on a short-term mission trip? Will you raise your hand? How many of those of you who just raised your hand, you realized in the first five hours that one of the people on the team was a lightweight? That's a terrifying experience. John Mark got homesick. He got tired of this. He said, "I don't like this. I miss my mommy," whatever it was. He jumped a plane and went home. He left the mission trip. When it came time for the second trip, Barnabas says, "Let's take John Mark with us." Paul the Apostle who was a 14 karat caleric would never give an inch stamped in the middle of his forehead. He said, "Are you crazy? He went home the last time. I'm not taking him again." And there became such breaking between them that Barnabas took John Mark and went off on a mission trip, and Paul took Silas and went, and they went on two different mission trips. But years later, in the end of one of his epistles, Paul the Apostle says, "Send John Mark to me. I find him useful." If I had been Barnabas, I would have written Paul a letter and said, "Sure, you find him useful now. I rebuilt him when you wouldn't work with him." But the point is that John Mark, out of the breaking experience of failure in ministry, was restored to become the writer of a gospel and an effective minister of the gospel that whose name we still memorialize, not because of his failure on a mission trip, but because of his usefulness to God, failure in ministry can even bring us to brokenness. Failure morally can bring us to brokenness, woundedness in relationships can bring us to brokenness, and personal failure can bring us to brokenness. Look at Simon Peter. What did Simon Peter do that Judas Iscariot did not do? Hardly anything. Judas Iscariot betrayed Jesus for money. Simon Peter betrayed him for craven gutless cowardice. I'm not sure which one's worse. Judas Iscariot betrayed him once. Simon Peter betrayed him three times in the same night. My suspicion is he repented between each one. He betrayed Jesus. Are you with Jesus? Never heard of him. Jesus who? I think then he stepped aside and said, "Okay, I'll fail to that time. I'll never do it again. I'll never let him ask me one more time. You ever heard of Jesus?" No, I didn't ring a bell. Three times, having been told that he would, but out of the woundedness and brokenness of that restored to relationship with Christ, his faith became the cornerstone upon which the church is built. I believe that when we search back through scripture and the lives of the saints, it is brokenness that brings us to a place of authenticity, of genuine spirituality. But when we come to brokenness, we're still not at the question. What is the prayer of the broken? Having come through that, breaking experience, whether at a spiritual level, whether through prayer, whether through spiritual discipline, but at some point or another to say, "Like George Washington, I kneel with bloody footprints in the snow of my own personal valley forge." And I say, "God, I cannot win this war without you." We were talking about it in the green room earlier. It's fine to sign the Declaration of Independence on July 4th. We're free of Great Britain. We're a free nation. Are you? How come those red coats are burning your barn? How come they're in your town? The battle, the struggle, comes after? We declare, "Oh God, I'm broken before you." God says, "Are you? How come those red coats are burning your barn?" We've got a battle ahead. But when we come through it, when we come to that place where we are broken before God, what is the prayer of the broken? Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done. We come to the place where we say, "I'm sick of the kingdoms that I build. Even the best kingdoms I build. Even the biggest kingdoms I build. I'm sick of them. There's warmest last week's manner. I'm wounded by my own will. I despise it. I hate it. I want your kingdom and I want your will." Listen, the reason I ask you to make no to the preposition in this prayer is that people almost never notice it. We tend to say, "Thy kingdom come that will be done on earth, on the globe, on the earth as it is up in heaven." But that is not what it says. Thy kingdom come that will be done in earth. We are made of earth. I believe that it is the prayer of God. May your kingship be established inside this earthen vessel, which is me. And therefore, may your will be done in me and through me, as is done in the spiritual domain in the angels. Look, let me try to make clear to you all I've been trying to say this morning. We live here in the southwest, you here in Texas, and I in some unknown and unnamed land across the Red River. But we know something about horses here. When you see a cutting horse, powerful, graceful, able to do that work with the slightest nudge of its owner's knees, you don't say to yourself, "Oh, look at that poor, pathetic, broken creature." You say, "Wow, that's impressive." Because a saddled, broken horse is not a beaten down, swayback, fleebit nag. To break a horse doesn't mean to shatter it. Doesn't mean to get it ready for the glue factory. A broken horse is a horse that is majestic and powerful and responsive and obedient and yielded, but is impressive. When you see a horse in dressage and you see that beautiful gate and tail and mane braided, then you say to yourself, "This is an animal that is worthy of being adorned." You don't put a silver saddle and expensive bridle and wonderful livery on a broken down old nag that's finished. You invest adornment on a beautiful horse that has been broken to the Master's will. What is the whole thing here? God, bring me to the place of brokenness. However it has to be done. Be merciful, God. Be gentle with me. But bring me to that place where your will not mine, your kingdom not mine in this life, and all that I do and all that I believe. Break me of my pride and my haughtiness and my carnality. May I be what you want me to be. That's the prayer of the broken. Look up here. May God bless this great country. God bless the Republic. God bless Gateway Church. And God bless you.