Supernatural Transformation: Change Your Heart Into God’s Heart (31 page)

Consequently, wounded people should not be placed in positions of leadership or active service until they have been healed of their pain, because little good will come out of their ministry otherwise. For example, I have seen pastors use the pulpit to verbally attack other people, divulge an individual’s private business, seek revenge, or defend their personal situations—all in God’s name. The pulpit is too holy to be used to attack and slander other people or to defend oneself. Pastors who are acting in this manner must repent and seek emotional healing. Their hearts must be transformed before they can continue ministering to God’s people.

Moreover, wounded leaders usually produce other wounded leaders, because we often pass along our attitudes to those whom we mentor. Sadly, there are currently many believers in churches who are experiencing spiritual and emotional pain and bitterness of heart because they have been led by wounded leaders who have—intentionally or unintentionally—mistreated and/or hurt them. These believers have not been properly formed, trained, or equipped in Christlikeness. And many of them may remain wounded unless someone is available to lead them to restoration.

A wounded leader often hurts those whom he is leading.

God seeks those whose hearts are broken so that He can manifest to them His love, His glory, His power, and His kingdom. Although He desires to heal the person who has a wounded heart before he continues hurting himself and others, He knows that the person with a broken heart is ready to be helped because he has reached the end of the line in terms of his own strength and ability. And God is ready and willing to provide that help:
“The L
ord
is near to those who have a broken heart, and saves such as have a contrite spirit”
(Psalm 34:18).

God seeks those whose hearts have been broken
and are ready to be healed.

The following testimony, from a man named Faiber, illustrates how God can use our deep brokenness to draw us to Him, so that we may be healed of our woundedness. “My mother was a young lady with no one to defend her,”
says Faiber,
who
was born as the result of a rape. Faiber grew up lonely, without love or a father figure. People called him “Faiber the bastard,” and he would beg his mother to find a husband so that he could have a father to love. When he was seven, his mother got married, and Faiber thought that his dream had come true. However, he hadn’t counted on the violence, drunkenness, and prostitution this man would bring into their lives.

When Faiber finished school, he decided to leave home, but he didn’t get very far, because the bad habits he picked up took over his life. Faiber lived on the streets for six months. In addition to abusing drugs and alcohol, he became involved with married women—one after another, until he lost track. The beatings he received at the hands of their husbands often landed him in jail or the hospital.

One night, a ministry took him in. For a week, this ministry fed and cared for him. At the end of the week, he was presented with two options: either return to the streets or go on a spiritual retreat. Although he didn’t want anything to do with God, he decided to make a covenant with Him; otherwise, he knew that his next—and last—step was suicide.

Faiber began a new life in Christ, and everything changed. He embarked on a career and got married. In time, he came to King Jesus Ministry, where God restored his marriage. The Lord provided better jobs for Faiber and his wife, as well as a new home. Today, they work hard to facilitate the supernatural restoration of marriages and families that are in need of God’s healing power. Faiber had to touch bottom before he surrendered his heart to God and allowed Him to transform his life—healing him, restoring him, giving him a family, and providing him with a sense of purpose.

Let Go, so that You May Receive

Perhaps God is dealing with you right now, prompting you to surrender to Him. Is it because you are running away from His call on your life? Is it in regard to your irresponsible spending habits? Is it your refusal to submit to His delegated authorities? Is it your lack of commitment to His kingdom purposes? Or could it be your anger, laziness, or fear? The Father searches our heart; He knows the areas of our life where we are rebelling against Him or where we are unaligned with His will. He reminds us of those areas so that we will yield to Him, and He can transform our heart. If we don’t surrender, we may find ourselves undergoing the process of brokenness.

The sinful nature pushes us to live a self-centered life, independent of God, in which we seek absolute control—trusting in our own intelligence, education, social status, strengths, gifts, abilities, and so forth. Our “self” rejects the idea of surrendering our life wholeheartedly to the lordship of Christ. The “old man” tries to satisfy its corrupt desires rather than die to its destructive impulses.

Yet you don’t need to hold on to anything that God wants to remove from your life, because He will never give you anything evil in exchange for it. He desires to bless you. Again, He doesn’t inflict sickness, poverty, or oppression on us. He is the Father of all good things:
“Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and comes down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow of turning”
(James 1:17). Yet, as we have seen, God does allow us to face difficult circumstances in order to bring to our attention various obstacles that prevent us from loving Him and giving Him control over our life. You will never lose out if you yield everything to the Lord. Rather, you will win God Himself—with all His attributes and blessings!

The hardest people to break are the stubborn and the prideful.

Avenues of Brokenness

When God breaks us, He often focuses on one area at a time that is unaligned with His nature and purposes. Generally speaking, He will bring to our attention something that has usurped first place in our heart over Him or that is otherwise hindering us from doing His will. It might be a negative attitude, a destructive habit, an ungodly pursuit, or an unhealthy relationship—something or someone that is harmful to us but that we won’t let go of. Let us look at three avenues through which the process of brokenness can occur.

1. The Painful Consequences of Sin

God never causes us to sin, and He doesn’t want us to sin against Him. Yet when we choose to disobey Him, we create situations and reap consequences that—sooner or later—cause us to become spiritually, emotionally, mentally, and/or physically broken. In this scenario, our brokenness is produced by our own willful disobedience. There are always consequences for disobedience—especially sustained rebellion. Due to the fallout from our sin, we come to a “breaking point” in our life. When we reach this point and make a genuine decision to repent and to return to God, He extends His love and forgiveness to us and restores our relationship with Him. It is important to cooperate with the Lord when we undergo the process of brokenness. David wrote,
“The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit, a broken and a contrite heart; these, O God, You will not despise”
(Psalm 51:17).

2. A Crisis We Are Unable to Resolve

On occasion, God will allow situations to come into our life that are outside our capacity to resolve, so that He can meet us at our breaking point with His salvation, mercy, and grace. We may experience a financial emergency, a family crisis, the loss of something valuable to us, or another predicament. After we exhaust all our resources—our knowledge, wisdom, strength, talents, and other abilities—without finding an acceptable solution, we finally have to conclude that the situation is beyond us. At such a time, we have an opportunity to submit to God, acknowledge our weakness and need, and allow Him to work out the situation as He sees fit.

3. God’s Direct Dealing with Our Heart

Sometimes, God deals directly with our heart through His Holy Spirit, bringing conviction and causing us to search ourselves to see how we have strayed from Him. At such times, He leads us to repentance and submission to His will. His ultimate goal is for us to trust in Him alone, not in any earthly power, strength, or resources. We can describe this avenue of brokenness as a sovereign act of God that leads us to recognize His lordship, power, and majesty. An excellent example of this form of brokenness is the biblical account of Jacob wrestling all night with a
“Man”
who, at daybreak, touched the socket of Jacob’s hip, causing him to limp. The
“Man”
with whom Jacob was wrestling was God Himself. (See Genesis 32:24–32.) Because of Jacob’s stubbornness, the Lord had to break him.

God uses different ways to break us for the purpose of transforming our heart. In the following testimony, a man named Emerson had to reach the point of brokenness before he finally surrendered control of his life to God. He writes, “To put it simply, while my wife had been living as a faithful Christian, my job had become my god; it was my life. Then, we both lost our jobs and found ourselves in serious financial trouble. We lost our home and our car, and we didn’t have enough money even to buy food.

“My wife and I attended church at King Jesus Ministry. Yet I was depressed, afraid, and angry, not knowing what to do, because we still couldn’t find work. One day, I heard a sermon about the mercy of Jesus and realized that during this entire time, the only thing I had really needed was Christ in my life. Another time, I was resting after having straightened the chairs in the church when Pastor Maldonado came to me and asked me how I was doing. I said I was ‘fine,’ but he insisted on knowing how I was really doing. I started to cry and told him everything that was happening. He ministered to me for forty-five minutes; that time was very valuable to me.

“Later, the church’s Department of Human Resources contacted me. Three months after that, I was offered a job downtown. However, on the day I was supposed to start, I received a phone call from the new company saying that they couldn’t hire me. My burden was so great that I couldn’t carry it on my own. I decided to give it to Jesus, so that He could work it out according to His will. One hour later, I received a call from the church asking if I was interested in working for their IT Department on a contract basis. My wife also started to work part-time in the school that is sponsored by the ministry.

“Six months later, I began working full-time as a network administrator at the ministry, and my wife was hired full-time as a teacher. The supernatural provision came. In addition, God miraculously provided several months’ worth of payments that I had owed on my car loan. The bank told me that I was up-to-date on my payments, although I knew I had not made a payment for four months. Now, God is working to help us to modify our mortgage.

“Our lives have completely changed. I used to be upset all the time, unhappy, arrogant, and antisocial. I thought I knew it all, and I neglected my family, so that my marriage was going downhill. I wasn’t spending time with my son, and I had no friends. Furthermore, I was being a poor steward of the things God had given to me. I didn’t have a future or a relationship with Jesus, and I was on a path straight to hell. Now, I have a beautiful relationship with Jesus, with my wife, and with my son. My financial situation has been restored—thanks to divine intervention and not to my natural abilities. Brokenness led me to understand that without Jesus, I can do nothing.”

When a person is broken by God, his life is in transition
to positive change.

Resisting God: The Case Study of Jonah

The story of the prophet Jonah is a good illustration of the way God may work when someone resists His will and then manifests stubbornness even during the process of being broken. Jonah eventually obeyed God, but he still had heart issues that needed to be addressed. God had told Jonah to do something very important, but he had his own opinion about the situation. He therefore ignored God’s command and “ran away,” trying to hide from the Creator of the world. Here is his story:

Now the word of the Lord came to Jonah the son of Amittai, saying, “Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and cry out against it; for their wickedness has come up before Me.” But Jonah arose to flee to Tarshish from the presence of the Lord. He went down to Joppa, and found a ship going to Tarshish; so he paid the fare, and went down into it, to go with them to Tarshish from the presence of the Lord. (
Jonah 1:1–3)

Jonah was angry with the people of Nineveh because they were fierce warriors who had attacked the Israelites. Consequently, Jonah wanted to see them punished and destroyed. In contrast, God in His mercy (see Jonah 4:2, 11) had commanded Jonah to go and warn the Ninevites that He would soon punish them for their wickedness, in order to give them an opportunity to repent and be delivered. However, Jonah’s resentment and hate were apparently greater than his love, so that he quickly decided to disobey the Lord’s instructions.

Has God ever asked you to do something for another person with whom you didn’t get along? What did you do? Did you choose to disobey God? Sometimes anger, resentment, and hate will carry more weight in our heart than the fear of the Lord.

Let us examine, step-by-step, how the Lord brought Jonah’s heart to brokenness, and what He told Jonah after the prophet stubbornly held on to his resentful attitude even then.

1. God Sent a Storm

“The L
ord
sent out a great wind on the sea, and there was a mighty tempest on the sea, so that the ship was about to be broken up”
(Jonah 1:4). Because of Jonah’s rebellion, it was necessary for God to use the process of brokenness to turn him around. Even in the midst of a terrible storm in which his life was in jeopardy, Jonah apparently wasn’t moved to repent and obey God. He preferred to die at sea rather than preach to his enemies about turning from their wicked ways.