Brokenness Study #2 - the Purpose — Charles Stanley

Brokenness and Submission to God's Will

Brokenness is God's way of dealing with the self-life, that is, that independence within us which God must deal with in order for us to become the person that God wants us to be. And by brokenness, we simply mean, not that a person could lose their zest for living, but that rather every area of that person's life would be brought into submission to the will and purposes of God.

Because it is His plan that you and I would be controlled not by our flesh, not by our five senses of the body, not by our own stubborn independent will, but rather by the presence of the Holy Spirit within us.

And so God has so arranged our life that this outer man with which we relate to our environment and the inner man, our soul, our mind, will, emotion, conscience, and consciousness may be brought into submission to the Spirit who lives within us in order that our life would be an expression of the indwelling presence of Jesus Christ.

That is God's ultimate design for all of us. Now, this is the second in our series of messages on brokenness, the way to blessing. The first one, brokenness, the principle. Today, brokenness, the purpose.

Why God Breaks Us

Why is it that God breaks us? Why is it that God shatters and chisels and sands and prunes away our life until finally we are brought into submission to Him? Why is it that God keeps on doing that when we are so rebellious sometimes and so independent in our spirit?

Well, there are two primary reasons for which God breaks us, and that's what I want us to deal with this morning, brokenness, the purpose, and I want to illustrate each of these with a biblical character today, the life of Moses.

And if you'll turn to Exodus chapter 2, I want us to read one simple passage from which we will depart and our message on brokenness, the purpose. And you'll recall that Moses has grown up now from that little boy who was found in the Nile River.

And verse 11 of chapter 2 says,. Now it came about in those days when Moses had grown up that he went out to his brethren and looked on their hard labors, and he saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew, one of his brethren.

So he looked this way and that, and when he saw there was no one around, he struck down the Egyptian and hit him in the sand. And he went out the next day, and behold, two Hebrews were fighting with each other, and he said to the offender, Why are you striking your companion?

But he said, Who made you a prince or a judge over us? Are you intending to kill me as you killed the Egyptian? Then Moses was afraid, and he said, Surely the matter has become known. When Pharaoh heard of this matter, he tried to kill Moses.

But Moses fled from the presence of Pharaoh and settled in the land of Midian, and he sat down there by a well. Now, 40 years later, chapter 3, verse 1,. Now Moses was pastoring the flock of Jethro, his father-in-law, the priest of Midian, and he led the flock to the west side of the wilderness and came to Horeb, the mountain of God, the backside of the desert.

And the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a blazing fire from the midst of a bush, and he looked, and behold, the bush was burning with fire, yet the bush was not consumed. So Moses said, I must turn aside now and see this marvelous sight while the bush is not burned up.

When the Lord saw that he turned aside to look, God called to him from the midst of the bush and said, Moses, Moses, and he said, Here I am. There are two primary reasons, two primary purposes for which God breaks us.

Spiritual Maturity Through Change and Brokenness

The first purpose is spiritual maturity. So I want you to jot that down. In fact, I'm going to give you a number of things to jot down. There are two primary purposes, so there are two primary points to this message.

One of them, spiritual maturity. God breaks us in order to mature us and to make us Christ-like. Now, in the process of maturing, there are three things that are involved. First of all, change. If you're not willing to change, you're not going to grow in your spiritual life and mature.

You can't hold on to old ways, old ideas, old thoughts, erroneous concepts about God, about the Holy Spirit, about the Christian life. You can't hold on to those and grow in your Christian life. So maturing means change, but likewise, maturing requires growing.

That is, growing toward, moving toward Christ-likeness in your spirit, moving toward a dependence upon the Lord Jesus Christ, moving toward allowing the Holy Spirit to govern and guide and guard your life, moving toward the position wherein your body and your soul are brought into submission to the Holy Spirit so that Jesus Christ can express His life through you.

And the third element in that maturity is brokenness. First of all, there must be change. Secondly, growth. And third, brokenness. That is, God dealing with the self-life within us, that is, that spirit of independence that wants to act independently of God's will, that spirit within us that desires to act independently of God's will.

All of us came into the world with it. All of us have to deal with it all of our lives. God is in the process of breaking that, and His motive is to do so, and in doing so, He's looking out for you and me.

He has something in mind that He knows the acting of an independent spirit, independent of God, is going to be a detriment to us. Now, I want us to look at this whole question of brokenness today as far as its purpose in the life of Moses, and I want us to see for just a moment a little background in Moses' life.

Remember, Joseph was sold by his brothers to a caravan. He went to Egypt. He was purchased by a certain man and became a servant, became a servant in Potiphar's household, falsely accused by his wife, placed in the prison, stayed there for some time.

God gave the butler and the baker in prison a dream. Joseph interpreted the dream. One day, he was in prison. The next day, he's the prime minister of all of Egypt and saved them from destruction because of seven years of famine.

Well, during that time and before it happened, he sent for his family, and so those 70 people came down into Egypt, and therefore, they were saved from the famine, and that was the beginning of a family in Egypt that grew into something close to 2 1⁄2 to 3 millions of people, and now, the Bible says, after Joseph died, a pharaoh rose who did not know Joseph, and therefore, they placed the Hebrew children into bondage, and therefore, they became slaves.

They were the slaves of Egyptians. So now, Moses, of course, is born during this period of slavery, and because of the increase of the Hebrews, the law went out that every male child should be destroyed.

His mother, deciding not to destroy him, allowed him to be destroyed, builds a little ark, places him in it, sends him down the Nile River, sends the daughter along to watch. Pharaoh's daughter, by the providential hand of God, her maiden finds little Moses in the basket, and then this Hebrew sister shows up on the scene, and what ultimately happened was that Moses' mother had the privilege of caring for him in his early years and bringing him up.

Now, he has grown up in the household of Pharaoh, and he sees his people being mistreated, and then one day, the Bible says he goes out and he sees one of the Hebrew children being beaten by an Egyptian, and he looks both ways.

He doesn't see anybody looking, so he kills the Egyptian, buries him in the sand. The next day, he comes out, overseeing what's going on, finds two Hebrews fighting each other. Didn't know one of them saw what he had done, and so one of them brings up the murder of the Egyptian, and so he becomes afraid.

Pharaoh finds out about it because Pharaoh is already afraid of any kind of uprising or rebellion among the Hebrews, and so he goes after Moses to kill him, and the Bible says that Moses fled over into Midian, and as the King James says, on the backside of the desert.

That's the way he arrived where we find him in that third chapter. Forty long years, Moses spends on the backside of the desert as a shepherd. Now, what is the motivation for God's breaking Moses? God chose Moses as the man through whom he would liberate the Hebrew children out of Egyptian bondage, through whom he would establish as a nation, and through whom he would ultimately send the Messiah.

Jacob's twelve sons, one of whom was Judah, the lion of the tribe of Judah, and God protected that genealogical line all the way up until the very day Jesus Christ was born. So God chose Moses for this tremendous task.

Moses Prepared by Dependence on God Alone

Now, what was the need of being broken in the life of Moses? Here's a man who is very skilled, has a tremendous background, he has tremendous credentials, he has prestige and power and prominence and position, inexhaustible resources, he has been given a position by Pharaoh, he is by God's providential hand, the son of Pharaoh's daughter, that is, he became hers, and now he's grown up in all of this palatial wealth and all the resources and all that is at his fingertips, but God has chosen him to liberate them.

So God must begin to work in this man's life, and therefore, how does he work in this man's life? He works in his life in the same way he works in your life and mine. The situation is different, the time is different, the circumstances are different, but here's the important thing, the purpose is the same.

In order to prepare Moses for the task that God had for him to accomplish, God knew that he must break Moses of his dependence upon anything and every single thing in his life so that Moses would be able to stand saying that he had absolutely nothing but God, Jehovah, and Jehovah God only upon which to depend.

For the simple reason, he knew that the task that he called him for would demand that. Now, when God breaks us, he breaks us for a purpose, and with the life of Moses, he knew that he must be broken because his purpose was to deliver his people from Egyptian bondage and to demonstrate his supernatural loving care for these people and also to dishearten all of their enemies who would watch them come out of Egyptian bondage unarmed and likewise to direct their worship and their devotion to the one true God.

Many of them had been Egyptianized. They'd begun to worship the gods of Egypt. They'd been there some 400 years. Why should they believe in Jehovah God? If there is a Jehovah God, why had he not delivered them before now?

So God had to deal with Moses in such a fashion that God and God alone would be glorified in the work he called him to do and it would be done in a fashion that only God could take the credit for it. So what does he do?

He begins to work on Moses. Here's what I want you to see. On this particular day when Moses goes out, he's already committed to seeing his people released from bondage, thinking about it, dreaming about it, planning on it.

How would he do it? How could he bring this to pass? Seeing his parents and his grandparents and his great-grandparents before him, hearing how they had suffered under the slavery of Egyptian bondage.

And so on this particular day, he decides what he'll do. He'll start with killing them one at a time. And so he slays an Egyptian. God allows him to do it and then God allows him to have fear and to flee and to be driven out of the palace and over into a desert place on the backside of the desert.

Here's what I want you to see. God began the process of preparing Moses for the purpose for which he called him. And the purpose, first of all, was to spiritually mature him. And in God's eyes, spiritual maturity is not having great ability, great talent, great prominence, great prestige, great popularity, great power, great influence, great wealth.

That is not spiritual maturity. Spiritual maturity is coming to the bitter end of ourselves where we have nothing but God to depend upon. So what did he do? Driving him over to the backside of the desert, Moses lost his family.

He lost his dwelling place, the palace. He lost his people separated from him. He lost his privilege. He lost his prominence. He lost his prestige. He lost his power. He lost his pride. He lost everything.

God stripped Moses of everything he had. Here he was before, dressed in the finest of clothing, riding in the finest of chariots, the finest of servants. And now he's over on the backside of the desert, tending sheep.

So I want you to notice how God changed Moses' circumstances. He changed him, for example. He changed his vocation from a superintendent to a shepherd. He changed his dwelling place from a palace to a tent.

His home from this big city over into the desert. He changed his attitude from haughtiness and self-confidence to humility. God changed everything about him. He changed his focus from self-centeredness to God.

He changed his methods from his own ways to God's ways. He changed the outcome from failure to success. Everything about him he changed. And my friend, as gifted and as talented and as skilled and as resourceful as Moses was, from God's viewpoint, all of that, listen to me carefully, all of that stood in the way of God using this man.

Now my friend, the world's idea is you choose the most skillful, the most prominent, the most prestigious, the most powerful, the most this, the most that, the most the other. God's way is choosing the weakest, those who have absolutely nothing, and those who have come to the absolute end of themselves when they have nothing to rely upon but Jehovah God and God alone.

On the back side of the desert, he lost it all. On the back side of the desert, he was a nobody. On the back side of the desert, he was simply a shepherd. Oh, he'd been somebody great, but no longer. You say, do you mean to tell me that that's what God has to do to everybody?

Now, first of all, you're not Pharaoh's son, so don't worry about that. But God does utilize the same principle. And God's purpose in your life and my life is not to make us famous. It is not to make us prominent.

It's not to make us prestigious. It's not to make us wealthy. His purpose in our life is not any of that. His purpose in your life and my life is to bring us to the position of absolute nothingness whereby we recognize all we have of any value is God and God alone.

Now, God may give you the position of being wealthy. He may give you a position of prominence in your business or whatever it might be. He may give you all of these things. But any time any one of those stands in the way of your totally and absolutely depending upon God and your goal of Jesus Christ being expressed through your life, you can mark it down.

He draws a bull's eye on that area of your dependence and he zeroes in on it because he knows any dependence upon anything is going to hinder God's purpose for your life. Now, I want to show you how that happens in the life of Moses.

The Forty Years of Moses' Breaking

You know, of course, the story of what God called him to do and I want to show you in a few moments how involved that was. God knew that if Moses under any condition attempted to pull this off, that is liberating two and a half million people.

Now, if you'll think about that, that would be like metropolitan Atlanta and a little beyond that, everybody living together in one place and somebody saying, I'm going to liberate all of these people.

Now, I want to show you in a moment how difficult this was, but God knew that he had to absolutely strip Moses of any self-dependence, any of his personal plans, any of his personal ambition, any of his personal ideas about how to liberate God's people until he had nothing left.

You say, well, why did it take him 40 years to do it? My friend, God will break and keep on breaking until all resentment has been broken out of our life, all hostility, all anger, and you see, growing up in this family and watching his people mistreated, be mistreated as they were, I'm sure that Moses must have had some anger and hostility and self-determination.

I'm going to free my people. I'm going to get it done. I will see that it happens. God had to absolutely shatter all of that until he was a man who had dependence upon nothing except God and God alone.

Helplessly and hopelessly, he faced an uncertain future knowing that the cries of his people over in Egypt were still going up and God somehow was not answering their prayers. God had to shred him of everything.

Forty long years it took to weed out of Moses' life and break out of Moses' life, cleanse him from that anger and hostility. You see, because if he had gone back in a spirit of anger and hostility and determination and self-confidence and all that a man can measure up in himself, he would never have been able to do it.

He had to walk in the steps of God, in harmony with God, in absolute obedience to God or it would never have worked. You know why oftentimes God can't accomplish in our life what he wants to accomplish?

Too much self. We think we have it worked out. We want to do God's work our way. We want the plan to fit our schedule, our purposes, our goals, our dreams and the path that we've set out. God sets it out and our objective must be to follow him.

And so therefore he must break all threads of independence within us so that we're willing to say, Yes, Lord. Yes, Lord. Yes, Lord. Over in Midian on the backside of the desert, out there tending sheep, Moses didn't have anything but God.

Nothing but God. Now many people are threatened by that. They don't want to hear sermons about being broken and suffering and pain and all this because you see, they've been taught it's self-confidence, self-determination, set your goals, set your plans, go after them, don't move, don't budge.

I understand that. The only problem with that is this. God works his greatest work in those men and women who realize how hopeless they are apart from his supernatural intervention in their life. It's either going to be the flesh or it's going to be the spirit.

That doesn't mean that you're not to achieve in your business. It doesn't mean that you're not to build a godly family. It does not mean that you're not to do the work that God has called you to do. But we must be careful that we do not do it based on our experience and our prestige and our resources but rather on God.

You see, God's goal for your life and mine is, he said, he predestined that we would be conformed to the likeness of his Son. How did Jesus operate? Based on his relationship with the Father. He says, I only do the things I see my Father doing.

I only say the things the Father tells me to say. Jesus, Jesus was living out the divine life. And Jesus Christ living within us desires that he be able to live his life out through us and in order to do that, every shred of self must be broken and shattered.

It must be laid aside until it is God and God alone. As someone has said, a soul is converted in a moment of time but a saint, a saint it takes a lifetime. A saint is manufactured in a lifetime. A moment of conversion, sainthood, it takes a lifetime.

Most brokenness does not happen over a short period of time. God begins to chisel away at our life. He begins to prune, he begins to break. He will never break your spirit but only your will. It is not God's purpose to leave you lifeless and broken in your spirit so that you have nothing within to break your will, to revitalize your spirit so that in your spirit you have him, him only but my friend, when you have God, you've got enough.

When you have him, you have everything. And so that is his purpose for doing so. So when you look at the life of Moses, God began to mature him by doing what? Stripping him of everything so that it was God and God alone.

Isn't it amazing how a person becomes a Christian early in life and then they begin to climb and claw and gather and gain and accumulate and assimilate and arrange and amass as if this is the Christian life.

You know what the Christian life is? It's getting rid of this and getting rid of that and ridding ourselves of this and anything and everything that God puts his finger on until it's just you and him.

Supernatural Ministry and Everyday Callings

There's a second reason that God has in mind, a second purpose for brokenness. First of all, we said spiritual maturity, bringing us to the end of ourselves so it is us and God alone. Our dependence upon him, his life flowing through us, that intimate, loving relationship of utter dependence upon him.

And the second purpose for that brokenness is, remember first, spiritual maturity, secondly, supernatural ministry. You say, well, that leaves me out because I'm a homemaker. Let me ask you something, Mom.

Can you tell me any more responsibility in all of life that is more demanding than raising a godly family? You think of the wisdom and the faith and the patience and the love. You can think of all the attributes that are so absolutely necessary for a mother to raise godly children.

Think of all the sacrifice and all the time it takes and all the skill and the wisdom and the knowledge and the understanding that a woman must have to raise godly children. Don't ever belittle your responsibility as a mother.

Don't ever belittle and say, well, I don't have a ministry. Suppose Moses' mother said, I don't have a ministry. Moses' mother had a great ministry, bringing her son into the world, saving him. And then in the futile compact years she had, she ingrained within him something he never lost.

Now, if I should ask you, how many of you know the name of Moses' mother? You can look in the Bible and find out, but you know Moses' name. But Moses' mother had a godly ministry. She raised her son. And you see, the truth is that all of us that have a ministry, that doesn't mean behind the pulpit, we have different roles.

It doesn't mean one is more important than the other in God's eyes in your life. But what God wants is this. He wants your maturity to be such that whatever his purpose is in your life, he would be able to accomplish that and achieve that.

Now, he chose Moses for the purpose of liberating this family of people that now has grown to almost three million. Now, I want you to see the ministry to which he called him and how God has worked this purpose in his life.

Now, think about this for a moment. We said, first of all, the purpose is maturity, spiritual maturity. Secondly, supernatural ministry. Now, all ministry, if it's real, is supernatural because you can't carry out ministry without the intervention and the involvement of God, which is the involvement of the supernatural power of the Holy Spirit.

Anything done other than in the Spirit is not supernatural. Anything that's done outside the Holy Spirit of God is not ministry from God's point of view. So whether it's carrying on your business on the basis of spiritual principles, or raising a godly family, or preaching the gospel, or singing in the choir, or playing in the orchestra, no matter what it is, if it is done to the glory of God and by the power of the Holy Spirit, it is ministry done in the supernatural power of God.

Moses' Impossible Mission Before Pharaoh

Now, I want us to look at the ministry of this man. First of all, it was absolutely spectacular in its objective. Now, think about this for a moment. God said to Moses, there by the burning bush, I want you to go to Pharaoh and tell him to let my people go.

Now, you can imagine what he must have felt. Me, shepherd, go to Pharaoh's court, tell him that I said or you said, he won't even know who you are, tell him that you said, let his people go. Then, think about organizing two and a half million Hebrews.

Imagine getting them together. Now, think about what had to go through Moses' mind now when God said, I want you to liberate my people. Imagine organizing these two and a half million Hebrews. Imagine trying to figure out how are we going to escape?

How are they going to get out? God says, I'm going to free them. How are you going to free them? You go tell Pharaoh to let my people go. Suppose he doesn't let them go. And even if he does, there's the Red Sea to deal with.

And then there are those months and months and maybe years in the desert. Hot, burning sun of the desert. What about the supply lines? What about food? What about water? What about clothing? And besides that, how in the world am I going to keep this crowd together?

Imagine two and a half million of them, most of them would never have seen Moses. And he already knew how they could argue and fuss and fight among themselves. Imagine what he must have thought, what must have gone through his mind when God said to him, Moses, I have chosen you.

After 40 years on the backside of the desert, now Moses flat out before God, before the burning bush, take off the shoes on your feet, the ground upon which you stand is holy ground. I've got a job for you.

He said the same thing you and I would have said. You got the wrong fellow. There's no way. He told him he couldn't speak in public. He said, I can't do it, send somebody else. He told him all of these things.

And remember what he asked him to do, bring the nation of Israel or bring the family of Hebrews out of Egyptian bondage across the Red Sea, down to Sinai to be de-Egyptianized, to receive the law, teach them the law, then carry them up to the promised land, into the promised land, having learned the law, so that they would be a peculiar people, different from everyone else.

Israel's Separation and Witness to the Nations

Now haven't you wondered sometimes why God took all this time to teach them all these laws, that not to eat fish, unless they have scales, not to eat this kind of food, not to do this today and wear that, and all these things that to us up here are very ridiculous, and we say, why go into all of that?

What was God's reasoning? God intended to separate the Hebrews from all the pagan, heathen, idolatrous people around them, so that the way they dress, their customs, their sacrifices, everything made them absolutely a totally different people.

He said, you're not to marry them, you're not to fellowship with them, you're not to fight with them, you're not to worship with them, nothing. You're to be absolutely separated from all the other peoples of the world.

So God gave them their own economy, God gave them their own lifestyle, their own way of living that would totally separate them. That's why he said to them, under no condition are you to marry with the heathen, you are not to worship their gods.

He gave him the Ten Commandments and all the other laws in order to keep them a separated, peculiar people. A spectacular objective he gave to Moses. He says, this is the responsibility you have. Secondly, it was strategic in its purpose for God.

God's purpose was that through this nation, all the other nations of the earth would learn the identity of the one true God who is Jehovah, Yahweh, Adonai, all the other names the Old Testament gives us for God.

Now, what a tremendous task. And through this family and through this nation would come the Messiah. What a tremendous goal God had set for these people. This task that God had given to him was supernatural in its method.

God's Supernatural Provision for Moses

Now, I want you to think about this for a moment. How in the world would God ever pull this off? Moses could never have done it. The only way he could possibly have fulfilled the ministry God called him to was first of all to actually strip him of all self-confidence, all goals, all ideas, all plans, all strategy and leave him with nothing.

It took him 40 years to do it. So now, when God comes to Moses, what does he tell him? He says, I want you to go to Pharaoh and tell him, let my people go. He says, well, now, when I tell the Hebrews who sent me, what shall I say?

You say, you tell them, I am hath sent you. I am in the past, I am in the present, I am in the future. I am sovereign in the past, I am sovereign in the present, I am sovereign in the future. I'm all-powerful in the past, I'm all-powerful in the present, I'm all-powerful in the future.

The great I am has sent you. Now, he told him what to do, but there's some things God didn't tell him. So I want to tell you, my friend, when God calls you to a task, He's not going to give you the full story.

Can you imagine what Moses must have thought if God had said to him of the burning bush, Moses, I want you to go to Pharaoh and tell him, let my people go. I'm going to send ten plagues, I'm going to open the Red Sea, I'm going to cover you with a cloud by day and fire by night, I'm going to give you all the food you need and all the water you're going to want to drink.

If he'd have given him the whole picture, Moses would probably have thought, I must be dreaming. Open the Red Sea, fire in the heavens, all the unnatural things he could have thought about. But God gave him just enough.

He said, Moses, all you need to know is that you're to go and the only thing you need to remember is I will be with thee. Why did God strip Moses and break him? Because he wanted Moses to go to see Pharaoh with only one thing, a shepherd's staff in his hand which was a symbol of the presence of God.

That's all he had. He said, I will go with thee. And what did God do? Not only did he free those Hebrews, the Bible says God sent them plagues, plague after plague after plague, ten plagues he sent them until finally even the Pharaoh was broken and he let them go.

Then when they got, of course, to the Red Sea, you remember what happened there. Supernatural, the way God did it. He gave them a cloud by day to keep the heat of the desert sun off of them, to keep them cool.

At night, the desert is cold and so he let there be a fire in the heavens, a cloud of fire to keep them warm at night. Their shoes didn't even wear out. And God rained down food from heaven and water was there when they needed it.

Every single thing they needed, I want you to remember, Moses didn't provide any of it. Moses didn't open the Red Sea. Moses didn't convince Pharaoh. Moses didn't put the clouds up there. Moses didn't provide the food.

Moses didn't provide the water. Moses didn't do anything. You know the only thing Moses did? The only thing Moses did was to follow the commands of the Lord his God. God assumed full responsibility for all the consequences and all the needs of two and a half millions of people through the leadership of one obedient servant who had been stripped of all self-confidence, all self-reliance, so that all he had was God.

The Sacrificial and Stormy Demands of Ministry

Supernatural in its method, but I want you to notice something else about it. Sacrificial in its demands. You think about the toll this took on Moses. Moses had the responsibility of organizing this crowd and you can imagine the kind of attitudes that cropped up.

Sacrificial in its demand. Moses, you are to lead these people. You are to obey me no matter what. No matter how often they persecute you. And you remember what happened. So many times they wanted to rebel against him.

He came down from getting the Ten Commandments and what had they done? They had just come from the Red Sea. God had opened the Red Sea for them. They had seen the miracle. They were a part of the miracle.

This is something they read about. They walked through the sea. Now what? They've built themselves a golden calf and they're worshiping a golden calf. You're talking about sacrifice and demands. But likewise, it was stormy in its progress.

You think about all the heartaches and the burdens and the strife. You think about two and a half million Hebrews out there wandering in the desert and following a man they've never seen. Or they tell him his name is Moses.

Have you ever seen him? No, but he's up the head of the crowd. Well, what did he say? I don't know what he said, but somebody told me that somebody told them that someone else told them that he said we were going to the promised land.

Well, I heard there are enemies out there. Well, somebody told me that somebody else said that there... Can you imagine two and a half million people marching through the desert and the only thing they had to depend upon was one God they've never even seen?

That's all they had. And besides that, every once in a while they wanted to go back. Take us back to Egypt with the leeks and the onions and the cucumbers but they don't mention slavery. Isn't it amazing how when God begins to break us, God begins to work in our lives, we want to run back to where it's ease and comfort and pleasure, but you can't do that.

You see, God has set a purpose in your life and I want to tell you something, my friend. You can weasel out of it the best you can and determine in your heart you are not going to be broken and you, with your determination, you are going to get it done.

And one of two things is going to happen. You're either going to give up and surrender or God's going to put you on the shelf. Now, you know you can take a beautiful vase that's worth $1 ,000 or more, beautifully colored, set it on some very prominent place in your living room and you walk by and say, isn't that pretty?

Or you can take an old $5 gallon bucket, pale, and I can carry enough water to refresh a whole lot of people who are thirsty. There's some folks who'd rather be pretty and just looked at. God wants buckets, old buckets, full of God, emptied of self.

Not beautiful vases, something to look at, but in order for that to happen, you got to get broken. Got to be willing to get dirty. Got to be willing to work. Got to be willing to sacrifice. Got to be willing to go through some stormy times.