Our devotion this week, Dangerous Prayers, comes from the YouVersion Bible App. It was provided by Life.Church. For more information, please visit: https://www.life.church/
Asking To Be Broken
Asking to be broken is actually an ironic proposal. It’s sort of like an elephant asking to be large and gray. Look for a moment at your relationships, your thoughts, your decisions, your ability to meet all your own needs, and you’ll realize you’re already broken. When we pray the “break me” prayer, what we’re really praying is for the Holy Spirit to break us of our pride and help us to realize how broken we already are.
Most of us Christians don’t have too hard of a time with the idea of a savior. We’ve sinned and fallen short. We need Christ to come and give us full life here and an eternal life in Heaven. However, we tend to struggle with making Jesus our Lord. What is a Lord? Someone who has full rule. We tend to want the peace of salvation without the commitment of servitude. Yet, to fully accept Jesus’ life-saving, sacrificial gift, we have to fully give our lives back to Him. We can’t pick savior and skip Lord. We’re entirely lost without both.
The brokenness that many of us need is the realization that we’re horrible at being our own masters. It’s not much different from the way a new horse needs to be broken of its own desires. As we look for ways God is breaking down our pride and self-rule today, let’s remember He was first broken for us. The reason He is a such a trustworthy Lord is because He is our savior. We can trust Him to break us because He made us, and He knows how to remake us.
Pray: Holy Spirit, show me how I’m trying to rule my own life. Show me how broken I really am. I want to see how deeply I need Jesus as both my savior and my Lord. Then, will You give me the strength to turn my life completely over to You? Amen.
Read Romans 10:9-10.
9 If you declare with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. 10 For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you profess your faith and are saved.
Read Romans 3:23-26.
23 for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, 24 and all are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus. 25 God presented Christ as a sacrifice of atonement, through the shedding of his blood—to be received by faith. He did this to demonstrate his righteousness, because in his forbearance he had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished— 26 he did it to demonstrate his righteousness at the present time, so as to be just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus.
Read Psalm 51:17.
17 My sacrifice, O God, is a broken spirit;
a broken and contrite heart
you, God, will not despise.
Read 2 Corinthians 4:7-12.
7 But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us. 8 We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; 9 persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed. 10 We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body. 11 For we who are alive are always being given over to death for Jesus’ sake, so that his life may also be revealed in our mortal body. 12 So then, death is at work in us, but life is at work in you.
