A Lifestyle of Brokenness

Brokenness is not a feeling. It is not an emotion. It is a choice that I make. It is an act of my will. And brokenness is not primarily a one-time experience or a crisis experience in my life, though there may be those.

Brokenness is rather a continuous on-going lifestyle. It's a lifestyle of agreeing with God about the true condition of my heart and my life as He alone can see it. It's a life style of unconditional, absolute surrender of my will to God. Even as the horse that has been broken. It's surrendered and sensitive to the direction and the wishes of its rider. It's a life style of saying, "Yes, Lord, not my will, but yours be done."

Brokenness is the shattering of my self-will so that the life, the spirit, the fragrance, the life of Jesus may be released through me. Brokenness is the lifestyle of responding in humility and obedience to the conviction of God's Spirit and the conviction of His Word. And as His conviction is continuous, so my brokenness must be continual.

Brokenness is a lifestyle that takes me in two directions. It's a lifestyle vertically of living, so to speak, with the roof off in my relationship toward God, as I walk in the light in transparent honesty and humility before Him. But it's a lifestyle that requires also that I live with the walls down, in my relationships toward others.

~ Nancy Leigh DeMoss

The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit: a broken and a contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise.

~ Psalm 51:17