BROKENESS Part 1 of 5 REVIVAL . . . Revival is the Life of the Lord Jesus poured out into a human heart! JESUS IS ALWAYS VICTORIOUS! In Heaven they are praising Him all the time for His victory. Whatever may be our experience of failure and unproductiveness, He is never defeated! His power is boundless. And you, on your part, have only to get into a right relationship with Him. You will then see His power being demonstrated in your life and service... and His victorious life will fill you... and overflow through you to others. This is revival in its essence... "THE HIGHWAY TO HOLINESS!" BROKENNESS . . . To be BROKEN is the beginning of Revival. If we are to come into a right relationship with JESUS CHRIST, the first thing we must learn is that our wills must be broken to His will. He cannot live in us fully and reveal Himself through us until the PROUD SELF within us is BROKEN. This simply means that the hard unyielding self, which justifies itself, wants its own way, stands up for its rights, and seeks its own glory, at last bows its head to God's will. It admits that it's wrong, and gives up its own way to Jesus, surrenders its rights and discards its own glory... that the Lord Jesus might have all... and be all. In other words, it is dying to self and self attitudes. "SELF" shows up in our lives when we "TRY" to live the good Christian life... do the Christian work, get irritable, envious, resentful, critical and worried. It is self who is shy and self-conscious and reserved. As long as self is in control, God cannot fill us with the fruit of the Spirit. Being broken is both God's work and ours. He brings His pressures to bear, but we have to make the choice. Yes! The choice is yours! As God shows us our expressions of our proud hard self, that causes Him pain... we can either refuse to repent or we can bow our head in humility and say "YES LORD!" It is a continuius process and means yielding your rights... and selfish interests... and may involve confessions, and restitutions. It can be very costly. For this reason, we are not likely to be broken... except at the cross of JESUS. His willingness to be broken for us is the all-compelling motive in our being broken, too. He gave up His rights of being equal to God, and became a servant. He did not retaliate... He loved His enemies and gave selfishlessly. Only the vision of the love that was willing to be broken for us can make us willing to follow His example. Dying to self is not a thing we do once and for all. There may be an initial dying when God first shows our areas of self, but then it will always be a constant daily dying. After a while, it comes to be a part of your life... and it becomes exciting when you see the fruit of your letting go... and letting God. I get excited when I see more of JESUS in me... and less of the self. Daily dying to self means no plans, no time, no money, no pleasure of your own. It will mean a constant yielding to those around us, for our yieldedness to God is measured by our yieldedness to man. You see, the only life that PLEASES GOD and that can be victorious, is His life... never our life, no matter how hard we try. We must co-operate with God by our moral choice. WELL... ARE YOU WILLING? "I HAVE BEEN CRUCIFIED WITH CHRIST; AND IT IS NO LONGER I WHO LIVE, BUT CHRIST LIVES IN ME." --- Galatians 2:20. ". . . . Always carrying about in the body the dying of Jesus, that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our moral flesh." --- 2 Corinthians 4:10. BROKENNESS is just the beginning of revival. Revival itself is being absolutely filled to OVERFLOWING with the HOLY SPIRIT, and that is victorious living. This filling is completely God's work... it is all of grace. All we have to do is present our empty... broken self and let Him fill and keep us filled. You can look at our HEART as a cup... which we hold out to JESUS, longing that He might fill it up with the water of life. As He looks into our cup, if it is clean, He fills it to overflowing. He is always passing by so our cup (heart) can always be running over with the river of life (the constant PEACE of God ruling our hearts). People think that dying to self makes one miserable, but it is just the opposite. Refusing to die to self makes one miserable. The more we know of death with Him, the more we shall know of His life in us and so the more real peace and joy. His life, too, will be so abundant in us that it will overflow to others... giving us a real concern for the lost and desire to bless others.     BEING FILLED TO OVERFLOWING UNDER THE BLOOD . . . Only one thing prevents Jesus from filling our cups as He passes by, and this is SIN... in one of its thousand forms. Anything that springs from self is sin. Self-energy or self-complacency in service is sin. Self-pity in difficulties... self-seeking in school, business or Christian work... self-indulgence in one's spare time... sensitiveness, resentment, and self-defense when we are HURT by others... self-consciousness, reserve, worry, fear, all spring from self... and makes our CUPS UNCLEAN. **** A SPECIAL NOTE ON UNCLEAN CUPS Some may be inclined to question whether it is right to call such things as self-consciousness, reserve, and fear, sins. "Call them infirmities, disabilities, temperamental weaknesses, if you will." Some have said, "But not sins. To do so would be to get us into bondage." The reverse, however, is true. If these things are not sins, then we must put up with them for the rest of our lives; there is no deliverance. But if these and other things like them are indeed sins, then there is a fountain for sin, and we may experience cleansing and deliverance from them if we put them immediately under HIS PRECIOUS BLOOD... the moment we are conscious of them. And they are sins. Their source is UNBELIEF and an INVERTED FORM OF PRIDE, and they have hindered and hidden Him time without number. **** UNDER THE BLOOD (continued) . . . If we allow Him to show us what is in our cups and then give it to Him, He will cleanse them in the precious Blood that still flows for sin. It does not only cleanse the guilt and stain of sin, but sin itself... and we are delivered! Hallelujah! If we learn that the Blood of Jesus is there to cleanse moment by moment from the beginning of sin, then we have learned the secret of our cups (hearts) being constantly cleansed and overflowing. The moment you are conscious of that touch of envy, criticism, irritability, whatever it is... ask JESUS to cover it with His precious Blood and cleanse it away and you will find the reaction gone... your joy and peace restored... and your cup running over. And the more you TRUST the Blood of JESUS in this way, the less you will even have these reactions. But cleansing is only possible when we have first been broken before God, on the point concerned. If we are irritated by certain traits in someone, it is not enough to just take our reactions to Calvary. We must first be broken and yield to God and accept that person and his ways as His will for us. Then we can take our wrong reaction to JESUS, knowing that His Blood will cleanse away our sin. Stop mourning over it and being occupied with yourself... and praise JESUS that He is still victorious! There is one simple guide to regulate our walk with JESUS, and to make us know when sin has come in. Colossians 3:15 says, "LET THE PEACE OF GOD RULE IN YOUR HEARTS." Everything that disturbs that peace is sin... no matter how small. When that happens, stop and ask God to show you what is wrong. By faith, put the sin He shows you under the Blood of JESUS, and then peace will be restored and you will go on with your cup running over. If God does not give you His peace, you may have to say "sorry" to somebody else or still feel that it is the other person's fault. We do not lose peace with God over another person's sin... but over our own. When we are prepared to let our days be ruled by the peace of God, we will find ourselves using the Blood of JESUS to cleanse us many times a day... from the smallest things. We will find ourselves walking the way of brokenness... but JESUS will be manifested in all His loveliness and grace. Many of us have neglected our lack of peace so often that we feel that we have little need of cleansing and no occasion of being broken. It is a bad state to be in and will take a great hunger for being restored to God... to be willing to cry out and ask Him where and how to apply the Blood of JESUS. He will show you one thing to start with and as YOU OBEY... and are BROKEN... you will take your first step along... "THE HIGHWAY TO HOLINESS."   THE WAY OF FELLOWSHIP When man fell and chose to make himself, rather than God, the center of his life, the effect was not only to put man out of fellowship with God, but also out of fellowship with his fellow man. A man does not assert his independence of God to surrender it to a fellow man. A world where each man wants his own way is a world FULL of tensions, barriers, suspicions, misunderstandings and conflicts. As we get nearer to God, we get closer to one another... like the spokes of a wheel drawing to the center. In 1 John 1... the scripture tests the depth and reality of a man's fellowship with God by his fellowship with his brethern. If we have barriers between one another, there becomes a barrier between us and God that can build thick walls. We must show our new life by walking in oneness with both God and our brothers... and nothing between. **** LIGHT AND DARKNESS . . . "If we walk by the light, as He is in the light, we have fellowship one with another... and the Blood of Jesus His son cleanseth us from all sin." --- 1 John 1:7. "GOD IS LIGHT, and in Him is no darkness at all!" --- 1John 1:5. Light reveals... shows us up as we really are. Darkness hides what we are or what we've done. Sin ALWAYS involves us in being unreal, pretending, excusing ourselves and blaming others... and we can do that as much by our SILENCE as by saying or doing something. So it is impossible for us to be walking in any degree of darkness and have fellowship with God... or with our brother or sister. When we are not being real, a wall of reserve separates them from us. **** THE ONLY BASIS FOR FELLOWSHIP . . . The only basics for real fellowship with God and man is to live out in the open with both... and be willing to know and be known... the whole truth about ourselves. As we are willing, we are open to conviction and will HIDE or EXCUSE NOTHING. God will show us sin that we never saw before. Everything we confess and carry to the fountain of Blood is gone... from God's sight and our hearts, and we have fellowship with Him again. TO BE IN FELLOWSHIP With our brethern... we must be willing to give up our spiritual privacy, pocket our pride, and risk our reputations for the sake of being open and transparent. It means, too, that we will not hold any wrong feelings in our hearts about another. Claim Deliverence from God... and PUT IT RIGHT with the one concerned. NO BONDAGE . . . Walking inn the light is simply walking with JESUS! There is NO bondage about it. We don't have to tell everybody everything about ourselves but just have an ATTITUDE of OPENNESS and HONESTY. "CONFESS YOUR SINS TO ONE ANOTHER..." (James 5:16). When we do this, we see ourselves more clearly, the barriers come down and God has a chance of making us really one brethern. Love flows and there is an added joy of knowing that in such a fellowship we are "safe"... NO FEAR now that others may be thinking thoughts about us or hiding any reactions. Our walk with JESUS is first and as we get things settled with Him... then God guides us to open our hearts to others. "HOW BLESSED IS HE WHOSE TRANSGRESSION IS FORGIVEN, WHOSE SIN IS COVERED! HOW BLESSED IS THE MAN TO WHOM THE LORD DOES NOT IMPUTE INIQUITY, AND IN WHOSE SPIRIT THERE IS NO DECEIT. WHEN I KEPT SILENT ABOUT MY SIN, MY BODY WASTED AWAY THROUGH MY GROANING ALL DAY LONG. FOR DAY AND NIGHT THY HAND WAS HEAVY UPON ME. MY VITALITY WAS DRAINED AWAY AS WITH THE FEVER HEAT OF SUMMER. I ACKNOWLEDGED MY SIN TO THEE, AND MY INIQUITY I DID NOT HIDE. I SAID, 'I WILL CONFESS MY TRANSGRESSIONS TO THE LORD', AND THOU DIDST FORGIVE THE GUILT OF MY SIN." --- Psalm 32:1-5. TEAMS OF TWO FOR REVIVAL . . . . JESUS WANTS YOU to begin walking in the light with Him in a new way today! Join with one another, drop the mask, and get HONEST. Share your spiritual experience with real openness... pray for others and go out as a team with a fresh testimony. God will work wondrously through such a fellowship to save and bless others. It will spread to others... until our whole land is covered with new life... from the risen LORD JESUS! WOW!   WHAT A VISION!