BROKEN BY HIM, FOR THEM

(Guest post by: Abby Fisher)

I’ve been staring at the flashing line on my computer that seems to ask “So, what are you going to write?” for some time now. I don’t quite know how to pull together all the ideas floating around in my head, but here I go trying anyway. 

I guess the main thing I want to ask is, if Jesus did not shy away from suffering and brokenness, why should we?

Just about two weeks ago, I was sitting in a church service on a Friday evening when one of the ladies on the worship team said something that struck me to the core. In reference to loved ones who need to know Jesus she said, “we’ve got to get broken for them.” 

We’ve got to get broken for them.

I immediately thought of people in my own life who are lost, walking around without the hope of Jesus.

Then, the Lord convicted me that I hadn’t been truly broken for the lost in a long time, especially the ones closest to me. 

If I’m being honest, I was tired of being broken for people who always seemed to slam the door right back in my face. Instead of taking up my cross, I’d dropped mine to the ground and said I’d had enough.

However, that is not what Jesus has called us to. “Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple” (Luke 14:27).

To reject the cross, reject brokenness, is to be broken off from Jesus. There’s nothing worse than that.

That Friday in service, I knew God had called me up to the altar, to go be broken for those people who are lost. However, in an effort to self-protect, I stayed in my seat. After the service, I leaned over to my dear friend and told her I thought about my unsaved loved ones and that I probably should’ve gone up to the altar. Her reply, “I thought of them too, and if you were going up there, so was I.”

You see, brokenness has a way of bringing us closer to Jesus and others. Just look at the scene in the upper room. On the timeline of Passion Week today, Thursday, is the very night this meal takes place. Jesus and the disciples are all gathered around a table. “And he took bread, gave thanks, broke it, gave it to them, and said, ‘This is my body, given for you’” (Luke 22:19). 

Before Jesus can share the bread, it must first be broken. If you want to share in Jesus’ abundant life, you must also be broken.

Eventually, the Lord calls me up to the altar again on the following Sunday, and this time I go. I realized when I got up there, now that I was a little closer, I could lay my burdens in His hands, those hands that took the bread and broke it. In the breaking, that’s where Jesus is close because that is what He did, break. 

His body was broken for us. His body was broken so that we might be made worthy to share in eternal life with God. Why would we not get broken for Him? Why would we not get broken for the lost when God’s heart is broken over and over that sheep of His have not yet come home? 

Let your heart be broken open to Jesus, through the pain. Let Him break down every instinct to self-protect. Go to the garden of your own Gethsemane, get on your knees, stay awake, and pray. No matter what trial is to come, Jesus is awake with you through the night, the brokenness. He won’t leave you.