Broken hearts

Hey Mars,

     Love the support on our last blog. Shout out to Sistahs Angela and Vanessa, both are incredible single mothers. Well this week I feel the Lord is talking about broken hearts. Have we had our share? I don't believe any of us are exempted in this arena. It started very young, whether our parents or siblings were the culprits but oh when our childhood friends committed this crime, we thought it was the end of the world.
     I recall my heart being broken as a young child, but what lasted the longest was when my childhood bully turned all my friends against me. I came outside one day and nobody would speak to me, in fact when I came next to them they moved over. Then I recalled my first boyfriend, who decided he was going to see another girl an ex-girlfriend at that. I believe the outcome of that was anorexia; I was 23. I can go down the list of how many times my heart was broken but I like to focus on spiritual aspects.
    The bible mentions 4 times about broken hearts: Psalm 34:18, 51:17 and Isaiah 57:15,66:2. The word formally used is Contrite. However the concept described by this word is the key to revival in our hearts and in the church. I know we think of revival as repentance, confession of sin, prayer, bible study and commitment to the kingdom of God. None of these are incorrect but they all require something more.They require a change in our hearts known biblically as contrition. As the scriptures teach, God will "revive the heart of the contrite ones". Isa 57:15.
     The difference between a natural heart break and spiritual is that we have now evolved to a place in our spiritual awakening which requires our natural side to die; we have now come to asking God to break our hearts. I know your saying who asks someone to "break their heart"? God is...people usually break our hearts when they don't live up to "our" expectations, so now the shoes on the other foot. Are we really living up to God's expectation? He has a heart and He greives too when we sin. Some of you may really have it all together but the bible teaches that any man who says he is without sin deceives himself and is therefore a liar.
     To be contrite is to be broken, crushed into little pieces, free from rebellion or resistance. Contrition is that humble spirit that says, I am nothing and He is everything. (Hmm, that's sound familiar right Mars, remember those feelings when it pertained to the natural love of our life, at that particular time. You may not have said it but you thought it and acted like it) The problem with the natural concept of this is that it lacked a safety net to catch us because the person we in trusted with our hearts wasn't capable of nor had the slightest idea on "how" to rescue us from ourselves. However God can!
     God has made it so that in our contrition we now freely give up our hearts to sin, the very thing that literally broke our hearts. It is that inner brokenness that weeps over sin and sinners, not our selfishness. It is the absence or void of personal pride and the absolute exaltation of God and His will. Expressed by a poverty of spirit which now hungers, thirst and trembles at God's word.
     As a ceramic statue--hard and cold, we don't or can't fit into our container. We now inadvertently move to abide in Christ and refuse to be conformed to Him. While during contrition we are now crushed into a fine powder, our pride is replace by brokenness, we no longer hold our stubborn form but are broken into pieces and transformed into the shape of our container, who is Jesus Christ. Would you let Him break your heart today? Think of how vulnerable you were when your heart was broken and now remember who is breaking your heart...our rescuer, our safety net, our knight in shining armor and our Savior!

Read the words, the princess knows she has a choice
so do we, choose God not man.

Break my heart Lord,
Jerri of Mars