Broken AND Contrite

"The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit, a broken and a contrite heart-- these, O God, You will not despise."

 Psalm 51:17

If we desire to be usable in the hands of God, we must first be broken by God.  This is a marvelous thing, how God breaks a man to heal him.  Like a horse must be broken before he can do the work of His owner, so God must break us to make us usable.  When things are shattered into tiny pieces the only thing we can do is to toss them out as rubbish and look for a replacement.  What is impossible with man is possible with God.  He can turn us rotten sinners into new creations by the transforming power of the Gospel.

When we are born, we are born broken - but not in this sacrificial sense the scripture speaks of.  Every descendant of Adam is born spiritually dead, bound with pride, and blinded by sin.  We face every manner of disappointment in life.  We can be hurt, betrayed, ignored, offended, or forgotten by those we love.  Disillusionment and depression may lay us low.  We also must face the bitter effects of our own sinful choices and find ourselves without hope in bondage.  Just like the nursery rhyme of Humpty Dumpty who had a great fall and was beyond repair, so we are in our natural condition.

God, who is rich in mercy, gave us His Law so we might see ourselves in truth as broken without remedy.  He gave us the scriptures, sent prophets and even His own Son Jesus Christ to reveal His love and message of salvation to all people.  After we catch a glimpse of God's perfection, holiness, and righteousness, we recognise how far we are from His standard.  His word clearly states the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through repentance and faith Jesus Christ.  Perhaps you have acknowledged your guilt and great need for salvation from sin, death, and hell.  How sorry you were for your faults!  How desperate you were for eternal life!  But even after people are born again through the Gospel by the power of the Holy Spirit, further breaking is required.  Being broken is not enough.  God wants our response to our brokenness to make way for contrition.  Only then does our brokenness become a sacrifice through which God is pleased.

When something in life breaks your heart, what is your response?  Do you feel angry or vengeful?  Do you resort to gossip?  Do you drown in self-pity and even resent God for allowing such a fiery trial?  When your life feels shattered to pieces, how do you cope?  When your heart is bursting with grief, are you willing to collapse into God's everlasting arms, casting your cares upon Him because He cares for you?  The meaning of "broken" in the Strong's Concordance is "to burst, break (down, off, in pieces, up), bring to the birth, crush, destroy, hurt."  "Contrite" means, "to collapse (physically or mentally)."  How our pride resists the very things that are pleasing in God's sight.  Our flesh hates to be seen as weak or frail.  We must be strong!  We need to keep up the appearance of having everything under control.  We don't want people to know we are broken, and we resist the breaking God must do before He can use us.

The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit, a broken and a contrite heart.  God is pleased when we stop fighting to fix our lives and hand over the little pieces to Him to mend and restore.  So often we approach our lives like a stubborn two-year old fighting to complete a 1000 piece puzzle without a border:  "I do it!  I do it!"  We have a way of doing things, and we cry if God should intervene.  Godly sorrow brings repentance.  When we are broken for our sin and respond with a contrite heart before God, He is pleased.  Too many times we confuse brokenness with our pride being damaged.  When your ego is bruised, that is not this brokenness of the heart that pleases God.  Jesus points to those who will be blessed and ultimately happy in Matthew 5:3-5:  "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. ⁴ Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. ⁵ Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth."  This is a beautiful description of what is meant by a broken, contrite heart and spirit.  Those who are poor in spirit, mourn, and are meek who learn to depend on God alone will be blessed.  Our contrite response reveals we are learning the lesson God intends through breaking.

God has great blessings in store for those who are broken and contrite before Him.  These are followers of Christ who have learned through suffering to rely upon God alone and lean on their own understanding.  David wrote in Psalm 51:7-13, "Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean; wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow. ⁸ Make me hear joy and gladness, that the bones You have broken may rejoice. ⁹ Hide Your face from my sins, and blot out all my iniquities. ¹⁰ Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me. ¹¹ Do not cast me away from Your presence, and do not take Your Holy Spirit from me. ¹² Restore to me the joy of Your salvation, and uphold me by Your generous Spirit. ¹³ Then I will teach transgressors Your ways, and sinners shall be converted to You."

When God breaks our bones, may we rejoice to have experienced His touch.  When we submit to the breaking, He will bind up our wounds, heal, and make us new.  And we will be stronger than before as we learn to collapse into His arms of love!