The Power Of Brokenness

[Jessia Adachi]

PassionMinistries was founded in 1997 by John and Meleana Harke in Hawaii. Together with their two children, Charles and Leilani they began to travel extensively throughout the United States building up the body of Christ. Passion Ministries was started to bring restoration and encouragement to the churches in America. Working together as one they have proclaimed the heart of God to thousands across the United States. Both John and Meleana speak with a powerful prophetic anointing, bringing encouragement and revelation to believers in all denominations.

Unashamed: Healing Our Brokenness and Finding Freedom from Shame by Heather Davis Nelson deals with shame; understand and heal form brokenness. Break the chains and find freedom in your life from the shame that has kept you captive for so long.

D.A Carson says that we do not lie awake at night recounting the ways we think we have brought shame to God through our actions; what keeps us anxious and sleepless are the ways we feel shame before others. He goes on to say that perhaps we obsess over these smaller shame moments because we cannot face our real shame problem: that we live ashamed to walk and talk openly with our Creator. We are Adam and Eve.

The most critical need of a believer is not more power, but more brokenness. What is brokenness? It is the process of subduing the flesh in order to imbibe the spirit of meekness. It is the crucifixion of the flesh; nailing the passion and desires of the flesh to the cross of Christ. As Apostle Paul said: "Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires" (Gal 5:24 NIV).

The essence of brokenness was beautifully encapsulated in the words of John the Baptist: "He (Christ) must become greater and greater, and I must become less and less" (John 3:30 NLT). The Lord will increase more and more in you, while self decreases to insignificance in Jesus name.

Many believers are desirous of power without submitting totally to Jesus. Like the 12 disciples of Jesus; we fight and scheme for positions of authority in the church, we want to be the greatest, we desire to be the closest to Jesus, angling to sit at his right hand and left hand, we call fire from heaven to consume those who oppose us; we are not willing to wash each others feet or serve others we think are below us. We covet the gifts of the Holy Spirit earnestly but are unwilling to pay the price - growing patiently, the fruit of the Holy Spirit. It is not more power we need, we need more brokenness. Our constant prayer should be; Dear Lord, by your mercy, destroy every spirit of pride in my life in Jesus name.

What did Jesus tell his disciples: "...he that is greatest among you shall be your servant. And whosoever shall exalt himself shall be abased; and he that shall humble himself shall be exalted" (Matt 23:11-12). Apostle Paul declared in

Phil 3:10: "That I may know him, and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings, being made conformable unto his death." To obtain the power of resurrection, you must partake of the fellowship of his suffering. Brokenness is taking our cross daily, dying to self and empowering the inner man by the help of the Holy Spirit. A true sign of humility is a person who is ready to serve, when no one is looking. O Lord! Break me, mould me, make me conformable to the likeness of your son in Jesus name. Jesus humbled himself by dying on the cross, he was broken before he was glorified and now sits at the right hand of God, with all power in his hands. God resists the proud but gives grace to the humble. Brokenness is the road to the power of God.

The most critical need of believers today is not power, but the spirit of brokenness. If we want to partake in the power of resurrection then we must first be enveloped in the fellowship of his suffering. Meekness is the price we pay for power.

Brokenness is not a feeling; it is a choice, an action of the will. Brokenness is not a popular, abstracted word we apply to excuse our inadequacies. It is not a word we should use to seek sympathy or benevolence. Brokenness is not a word to be carried as a badge of honor or humility. Those uses of the word are all self-centered and are the antithesis of true brokenness.

We should not run from being broken. Even though it is not pleasant, through brokenness God will produce a better life. Brokenness is a blessing because it puts you on the pathway to fulfill your God-designed purpose. As you awaken more and more to his presence and His working in your life, you can find hope in knowing your brokenness is not meaningless. Quite the opposite, your brokenness is worth something of infinite value. It will propel you deeper into the heart of the One who makes us whole.

I accepted my weakness and I was humbled by my powerlessness yet I rejoiced in that the power of Christ could now work through me in a much more powerful way through my brokenness rather than my own personal strength.

I met this guy a few months earlier, walking in pain and limping near my house. He had been stabbed with a knife in his torso and in his eye, and lost his vision. I prayed for him, and most of the pain left, but his eye was still not seeing the first time I prayed.

This man at the recovery house had a painful hernia. When I first prayed for him, he felt all the pain leave. The area got hot and he felt something moving and pulling inside his body. The hernia seemed smaller but was still there. For two weeks after that, he only felt a little pain once in a while, but not like before. Then I visited and prayed again. This time he felt heat and the hernia completely disappeared so he could no longer find it! He recorded his testimony four days later when I visited with the Mova-se missions group!

Actually, in the middle of writing this post, I just listened to this song and started sobbing. Some people might think of this topic of brokenness as heavy. Really, having your heart in that place of weeping before the Lord is like heaven on earth! There is nothing heavy about being broken before the Lord, although there is sometimes suffering on the way to getting to that place!

You must differentiate REGRET from BROKENNESS. Brokenness helped peter while regret killed Judas. Brokenness is the remorseful thought that births repentance which strengthen your pursuit of God. Brokenness is not pitiful look but a cry for divine help.

Your brokenness determines the health of your spiritual life. Brokenness is evident in the consistency of prayer life because you have no other place to turn to for help. Brokenness is the consciousness of the cross you have.

Brokenness is the system of restoration whenever a believer derails or is distracted is the communication of your helplessness to God. Backsliding is not the problem but can God see genuine brokenness in you? You must always pray to God to break your pride, anger, lustful tendencies, self, prayerlessness, promiscuity. Brokenness is the expression of the limitation of your human strength.

Finally, brokenness is the passion that drives you to the secret place until God extract, evacuate and eliminate tendencies and weaknesses that are weakening your Christian experience. The restlessness that makes you spend the whole night with God until you receive strength.

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It is hard to not feel broken with all the man-made crises, conflicts, disasters, and devastation happening in the world - not to mention the personal dramas that play out in our lives. Every day we are bombarded with media images of violence, pain, and horror. Fear paralyzes us and shakes us to our core. Our minds try to understand and rationalize the innumerable losses and atrocities; our broken hearts seek to find threads of connection, healing, and solutions. Clearly we are all impacted by the global crises of these times. The sense of powerlessness many of us feel alongside the desired sentiments of hope, trust and faith can be confusing, even overwhelming and often breaks us down.

What is needed to help us find our way through? How can our breakdowns lead to breakthroughs? How do we approach the challenges, pain, and difficulty that disempowers and overwhelms us and our sisters and brothers around the globe? How do we transform the world, let alone our own fears and personal sense of impotence into something meaningful, empowering, and liberating? When facing despair, it has helped me to turn to the millennia-old philosophical and spiritual traditions of India, in particular the Shakta Tantra tradition that views and understands every aspect of existence as an expression of Divine Consciousness. There are hundreds if not thousands of deities within the Shakta tradition whose iconographies, mythologies, and practices can guide us through the very paradoxical nature of our existence here on earth. Akhilandeshwari is one of those Goddesses. What does a never not broken Goddess have to teach us?

Akhilandeshwari is not a well-known Goddess. She is said to originally be a Vedic Goddess and is Herself a repository of knowledge. She brings us close to Saraswati, Goddess of Wisdom and the Arts. She is also said to be the Goddess of the agamas (canonical texts also known as tantras). Like Sharada (another emanation of Saraswati), Akhilandeshwari is dark complexioned. She has a serene smile, carries a trident and rides Her crocodile through the rivers of life. Her crocodile assists Her with Her prey and Her trident represents Her union with Shiva as well as Her wrathful powers. One devotional song in praise of this Goddess, called Akhilandeshwari written by Muthuswami Dikshithar, describes Her as a form of Parvati and the daughter of the mountain God, Himavat. She is also associated with Durga. Like Durga, She can help us move through the very challenging difficulties in life. She helps us to find the light of our essence through the cracks from the chaos.

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