Fasting

January 11, 2015

What happens when you bring your brokenness to God?


Do you ever try to accomplish God’s plans through your own strength and ability? Most of us struggle with the idea that it’s our own strength that draws God’s attention, when our strength is actually the very last thing God notices. God responds to brokenness because brokenness makes room for Him to release His strength through our weakness in order to accomplish His plans.

Remember the story of God speaking to Moses from a burning bush? Forty years before that event, Moses fled Egypt a broken and confused man. His pride and zeal had led him to murder an Egyptian who was beating a Hebrew. By the next day, Moses’ own people had turned against him and the ruler of Egypt wanted to kill him. Moses escaped into the desert and began a new life. He married, started a family and began herding sheep. He buried himself in his new identity, right down to the shepherd’s rod that was always in his hand. That rod was more than a tool – it symbolized what he did and who he was.

When God stopped Moses at the burning bush, Moses was a broken man, but God wanted to use him to deliver His people from bondage. Moses questioned how God could possibly use him with his limitations, brokenness and horrible past. So God told Moses to throw down the rod that he held in his hand. When he dropped that stick, he released the symbol of his own identity and his own strength. God miraculously turned the dead stick into a snake, showing that He can use anything to serve His purposes! Moses, a broken man, was filled with the power and presence of God and people were freed from bondage.

Are people still in bondage today? Does God want to use us to bring them to freedom? Yes! The real question is: Will you interrupt your routine enough to become broken before the Lord so He can use you for His purposes? The brokenness that comes with fasting starts when we throw everything that we identify as strength down at the feet of Jesus. When you come to God in brokenness and weakness, God can use you to accomplish far more than you could ever accomplish in your own strength.

Remember what God told Paul in 2 Corinthians 12:9 (MSG): “My grace is enough; it’s all you need. My strength comes into its own in your weakness.” It’s God’s strength, not our strength, that brings increase. As you pray and fast, acknowledge your own weakness. Give your brokenness to God, and watch His strength manifest itself through your weakness.

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