Broken Bounty

"Then He ordered the crowds to sit down on the grass, and taking the five loaves and the two fish, He looked up to heaven and said a blessing. Then He broke the loaves and gave them to the disciples, and the disciples gave them to the crowds. And they all ate and were satisfied. And they took up twelve baskets full of the broken pieces left over. And those who ate were about five thousand men, besides women and children.”—Matthew 14:19-21

The Christian life means experiencing brokenness. A Christian is one who has been broken in the hands of Christ. We must be broken before God can use us to bring in great bounty. Brokenness in the hands of Christ precedes great blessing. When Christ breaks us, He does so as the Divine Surgeon. The Divine Surgeon cuts not to hurt, but to heal and give hope. He must cut us deeply because the cancer of our pride and our self-sufficiency must be exposed and cut out. We cannot do it ourselves; only the hand of the Savior can cut us so that our souls might be healed. We must be broken before we can be healed, much like a deformed bone that must be broken and then reset. Our Lord cannot use us in the state we are naturally in, and it’s not that He can’t, but that He won’t. He won’t allow us to exalt ourselves above Him, and all that we do in life—anything that is not for His glory, but for the exaltation of our own pride and goodness—must be identified for what it is—cancerous pride and sin. It was pride that led Satan to the first sin (Isaiah 14:13-14; Ezekiel 28:15-18). And it was pride that brought about the fall of Adam and Eve. Pride, like a pregnant woman, carries all sins in its womb.

Christ desires us to come to Him humbly, broken of self, fully aware of our condition before Him, in need of mercy and forgiveness, like the tax collector who would not come close to God in prayer, but stayed at a distance beating his breast and crying out, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner!”—Luke 18:13. We cry out for His mercy and grace, knowing that we have nothing to offer God but a broken and contrite heart that He will not despise (see Psalm 51:17).

We must be broken, and once we have been broken in the Master’s hand, He will then take us and use us to bring great blessing to many men and women. So, if you are being broken in the Master’s hand right now, don’t despise it or rebel against it. Submit to the Master’s hand knowing that it is in His hand that we are lovingly broken, and will be used fruitfully, sometimes when we least expect it, for His glory and purposes so that He might be made known to this lost and perishing world. Amen.