My (Jack) comments

The following UK article I found while surfing the net. I have put it on
here because I think it discusses a most important truth about which
there is little good written material. I can not vouch for the site. I have
merely scanned it and am not impressed with some of what I found.
The writer of most of the material goes by the name John; beyond
that I can’t say much.

What I am moved by is the two or three threads of deep truth that
this article contains. It is well worth the read. In fact, I personally
think it contains truth that I need to spend time meditating on and
praying about.

I know very little about this challenging, heart-wrenching truth.  The
essence of this piece is at a root level of intimacy with God. Let me
know what you think as you read this. Jack

To arrive at this place of intimate relationship with him will not be done in our own strength, but only by discovering what it is to depend upon the reality that it is "God Who is all the while effectually at work in you, energizing and creating in you the power and desire, both to will and to work for his good pleasure and satisfaction and delight."

Our natural tendency is to try to seek to know God through our religious life: the encouragement of other believers (whom we generally, often mistakenly, assume are more spiritual that ourselves!), weekly sermons, daily devotionals, "worship" meetings, rituals, systems, legalistic observances and other falsities.

We do this when, all along, the only requirement of God for completing the journey we are considering is broken-ness. This narrow path to life simply requires of it’s travelers a broken, humble spirit and a contrite heart. God will abide and dwell with such a person. However, if we conspicuously lack such broken-ness, we find we are unable to hear and discern God’s heartbeat.

            "For thus says the High and Holy One Who inhabits eternity,
             whose name is Holy: ‘I dwell in the high and holy place, With
             him who has a contrite and humble spirit, to revive the spirit
             of the humble, and to revive the heart of the contrite ones."

The apostle Paul sometimes refers to this as being "circumcised of heart," a phrase he borrows directly from Moses.

It is, then, one thing to know that God’s will for our lives is intimacy with him… an intimacy that enables us to cry, ‘Abba! Father’ … an intimacy that yields, with heartfelt and even pain-filled trust, to a loving Creator and Father. Yet it is another thing, another degree of intimacy altogether, that truly begins to share in and understand the devastation and desolation of God’s heart, in the face of sin and the corruption of his creation – including, all too often, those called to be his servants. Servants who, rather than pursuing the intimacy of holiness and the service of obedience, choose instead the baseness of natural things, the convenience of worldly schemes and methods, the idolatry of money, the love of "the things in the world."

Before we can consistently experience deep intimacy with God, we must recognize how these things work – all too easily – to tempt us away from our devotion to Christ and we must truly come to ‘see’ our own utter helplessness and the complete inadequacy of own humanity, with respect to the holy obedience and service he seeks from us. Such a seeing comes only with broken-ness. A broken-ness characterized by inner recognition of our complete incapacity to redeem ourselves, in any measure; to save ourselves from wickedness and iniquity, to any extent; to deliver ourselves, in any way at all, from the consequences and power of sin – other than by receiving the grace of God through our Lord Jesus Christ, mediated through the power of his indwelling Spirit. Such revelation and realization is not learnt in a series of theological seminars or during a Sunday sermon. It is learnt only in the inner sanctum of a heart that is indwelt by God himself.

Israel’s greatest king, David finally and extraordinarily grasped the unique value and preciousness of broken-ness in the eyes of God, after he sinned grievously against God, committing the twin evils of adultery and murder – in respect of one of his most loyal and devoted officers. Exposed and convicted afterwards by God’s piercing revelation through the prophet, Nathaniel, David recognized, faced and confessed his sin to the Lord. King David is testified in Scripture as one who "served the purpose of God in his generation," but most poignantly of all, as a man "after God’s own heart." His being ‘after God’s heart’ was witnessed most extraordinarily in the broken-ness which he manifested after his sin was exposed: he did not deny it, nor use his kingly authority to excuse it, but, after recognizing and confessing it, he cast himself utterly upon the mercy of God, crying out to him with words which have brought comfort and encouragement to generations of sinners who have followed in his footsteps:

David – a man who knew the intensity of the Jewish sacrificial system which demanded the daily slaughter of unblemished lambs to effectively remove the sins of men – nevertheless summed up the extraordinary revelation he had received with these eternal words:

In such ways as this, through the exposure of sin and sinfulness, through the discipline of God’s dealings and the piercing vulnerability of his revelation, brokenness comes into our lives and intimacy with God becomes possible.

The experience of such genuine, painful, godly broken-ness waits, however, upon humility, as God requires us to humble ourselves, to ask him to break us and the destructive force of sin within us, in all of it’s subtle guises and strangleholds. In response to our request, he does what we could never do – he breaks our strength, separating the natural, fleshly, carnal, corrupted, soulish ‘life’ from the true spiritual "zoë" of the Holy Spirit within us, gradually bringing us to the restful place of humble dependence, wherein we can consistently receive the grace that leads to intimacy and childlike obedience.