Willing to be Broken: The Soldier's Formation

Intro

God is good! Good morning and I’m happy you are here. Thank you to God, for giving me a message, Pastor Dan, who is in Africa along with our prayers, and Pastor Cindy, who wisely stayed home to avoid the lions, for the opportunity to preach today.

I want to begin by asking everyone a question: Are you willing to allow your SELF to be broken?

Well that’s a really interesting question isn’t it? Don’t answer, just let that rattle around in your head for a moment while we get a definition out of the way. Self is defined as the union of elements (such as body, emotions, thoughts, and sensations) that constitute the individuality and identity of a person. The stuff that makes you, you. Are you willing to be broken? Most people are going to answer, no!! That’s a silly question! Some might go so far as to say “broken how’? And still others might need further clarification and that’s ok!

The broken I’m talking about, is you on the floor not knowing where you are, where to go, completely and utterly devoid of who and what you thought you were, crying out to Jesus for mercy! The kind of broken that shoots you from a canon pointed at the ground from a thousand feet and utterly smashing you into a billion pieces. Are you willing to be broken like that?

Story time

You heard my lovely wife point out a few weeks ago that I was a soldier. I joined the Army right out of high school. Instead of going into a job that would give me skills in the normal people world, I intentionally chose to join a combat arms MOS (military occupational specialty). 10 out of 10 do not recommend! It is not for everyone..not everyone is cut out for combat not even the ones that join it and make it through basic training. But you see, the Army has a little trick up their sleeve in order to mold you into an effective warrior. They break you. They break you mentally, physically, emotionally, psychologically, and sometimes even spiritually. The Army takes you and fires you out of a canon pointed right at the ground and shatters you into millions of pieces. They completely destroy you in every way they can. Why do they do this? In order to build you into someone who can withstand the horrors of combat, who can operate under any circumstances, and who can be effectively lethal on the battlefield. The Army needs you to be this person because the mission, your friends lives, and your life depends on you being this person when you are thrown into the crucible of battle.

When you join the military, you show up as the same person you thought you were growing up. But that person isn’t capable of surviving in a combat situation. That person would run away the second the first bullet was fired. That person wouldn’t move or pick up a weapon when it really matters. That person would get themselves and anyone around them killed. For that reason it is necessary that the Army breaks you, so they can rebuild you. Joining the Army is a transformative experience that will inform your life and the way you look at the world. It changes how you interact with the world around you. You need to be this kind of person if you are going to survive combat. If you are to be a warrior.

Hold up!

Whoa.. I thought we were at church? I thought we aren’t supposed to be broken? Eh.. about that.. we already are… at least when we first come to Jesus. Then we get put back together.. and well sometimes if we don’t fight it, God fires us out of a canon pointed directly at the ground in order to shatter us into a million pieces so He can build us up to be the creation we were created to be. We are going see an example of this in Peter. I love Peter, I can relate to him a lot.

That brings us to our core scripture which is Matthew 16:24–26.

Matthew 16:24–26 ESV

Then Jesus told his disciples, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul? Or what shall a man give in return for his soul?

Let me set this up for you, I am a big fan of context, Jesus is speaking to His disciples somewhere in the region of Magadan. Jesus had an encounter with the pharisees, Jesus won as usual, after that He warns the disciples and then asks them who they think He is. Peter, in this beautiful moment of Spirit filled clarity confesses Jesus as the Messiah. Jesus tells the disciples that He must die but He will be resurrected. Peter, in typical Peter fashion, puts his foot in his mouth rebuking Jesus. Jesus then rebukes Satan who got Peter in his flesh about Jesus heading to the cross. One moment, Peter is in the Spirit speaking truth, then in the next moment he jumps right into his flesh and gets all squirrely.

Peter was still thinking about himself. Yes, he followed Jesus. Yes, he believed in Jesus. But at this point Peter hadn’t been shot out of the proverbial canon. Peter’s failure here is that he was still trying do things Peter’s way. The very essence that made Peter, his self, that was used to doing things Peter’s way. In this moment, he was still Peter the fisherman and not Peter the Rock. Jesus called him to be the rock on which He would build His church. Peter wasn’t there yet. He hadn’t fully surrendered to God yet. He hadn’t been broken to be rebuilt. Indeed none of the disciples were at this point. Sort of like some of us in this room.

But Why?

Ok, but why Mark? Why does anyone have to be broken at all? We aren’t horses! Correct, you are not a horse! But I bet some of us are about as stubborn as a wild horse. We believe in Jesus, we have callings on our lives, we have a desire to follow His commands and to do the Father’s will but we don’t always want to pay the price for that. It’s been talked about recently here, the idea of paying a price to do what God has called us to. And make no mistake, there is price to be paid. Sometimes, that price is externally. The ways of the world, certain beverages, activities, etc. But there is one thing that all of us have to pay and this is part that I think many Christians in the church today fail to pay. And that is to completely surrender, to deny your self, to allow God to shoot you out of the canon. Let’s look at Jacob really quickly in Genesis 32. Jacob is heading back home to Canaan, after tricking his uncle Laban again.. As he and his family are walking back his brother Esau goes to meet him. Jacob remembers the trick he pulled that caused him to flee to Laban in the first place and all of a sudden he gets really nervous. Seems like Jacob’s way of doing things is finally catching up to him. In the night God pays him a visit; Jacob literally wrestles with God and manages to hold his own, his way. Until God breaks him. We see God touches his hip that causes an injury to Jacob. He’s lucky God didn’t just vaporize him. Jacob needed this breaking, he wouldn’t have relied on God as much as he did without it. He was used to doing things his way, when God touched his hip Jacob had do things God’s way. Like Jacob, Peter has his breaking moment where he finally surrenders his self. It’s when Jesus restores him after the resurrection. From that moment on, Peter is the Rock he was called to be. He started doing things God’s way.

God calls us to His service and places within us desires and passions that line up with that calling. But we get in our own way! We don’t surrender to God and what He wants! We want to cling to doing things our way! We don’t want to give up the alcohol, the cigarettes, the cussing, the gambling, the ego, the lieing, and all the other things we want to do! We’ll sing about surrendering. We’ll follow every commandment, we’ll obey the rules, we’ll give to the needy. But we won’t do it on God’s terms, we do it on our terms. We want to do things for our own glory and not for the glory of God! We get in the club and then do the bare minimum to stay in!

Yes, we are made new in Christ the very moment we are saved. But some never step in the fullness of the new life that God has for us because we won’t get into the canon!

The Point

This all sounds really scary… this surrender and being broken business. I like who I am, and I wouldn’t be good at what God called me to anyway. I’ll just sit over here and continue to do things the way I’ve always done them.

Look, I get it; surrendering was really hard for me. In the Army, I was trained to never surrender. We either fought until we were killed in battle, or until we won! That was it! Surrender just wasn’t an option in combat. Surrendering means we have to give something up, I’m not talking about giving up a cookie. What we give up when we surrender is us. We put ourselves into the hands of the person we surrender to! It means you give up your own agency and allow someone else to do with you what they will. That’s a scary place to be. Yet at some point or another, we all have surrendered to everything else but Jesus! We are more willing to surrender ourselves to some of the most untrustworthy people and harmful things than we are to submit to the Good Shepard! If you think you don’t surrender yourself to things or people I’ve got a bridge to sell you. When you do what you think is best, you are surrendering to your own desires. It’s what got Adam and Eve in trouble in the garden. Its the thing that is wrong with all of humanity, ourselves. We like to think that we know everything, that somehow we know what we are doing. But we don’t. The Bible is one big pointer to say here is the problem, no matter what you do you will never get it right because you won’t deny yourself and surrender to God. But the great hope of our faith is that there is one who can get it right! There is one who can fix the problem. Jesus came to save us and give us abundant life but before we can step into that abundant life, Jesus calls us to deny our own self, our own essence. We have to put our selves to death because if we don’t won’t be able to live the life we are called to live. Christ won’t live in us if we are still in the way not letting Him come in! The Spirit won’t dwell or flow in you if you are still in the way not letting Him in.

You think you know how to do what God has called you to do but all you are doing is getting in the way. Stop that! Deny yourself, deny your current way of thinking, deny what you think you know, deny what you think is best. Surrender everything you have and everything you are to God. What is more important? Soldiers will willingly surrender to an enemy because at some point they decided living was more important than dying. We can do things our way and have all the religion, or all the things we want and still end up missing everything God has for us because we refused to surrender to Him! To illustrate this, lets look at Matthew 19:16–22

Matthew 19:16–22 ESV

And behold, a man came up to him, saying, “Teacher, what good deed must I do to have eternal life?” And he said to him, “Why do you ask me about what is good? There is only one who is good. If you would enter life, keep the commandments.” He said to him, “Which ones?” And Jesus said, “You shall not murder, You shall not commit adultery, You shall not steal, You shall not bear false witness, Honor your father and mother, and, You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” The young man said to him, “All these I have kept. What do I still lack?” Jesus said to him, “If you would be perfect, go, sell what you possess and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.” When the young man heard this he went away sorrowful, for he had great possessions.

The man in this passage kept the law! He kept the commandments but he missed out on what God had in store because he thought he needed his things. Being rich was part of who he was and he didn’t want to surrender himself to God and follow Jesus. He wasn’t willing to be broken in order to be made new. So what is more important, denying yourself and following Jesus or doing things your way? Following Jesus is going to break you in some way. God is constantly molding us and shaping us through the power of Holy Spirit. Being saved is more that just following various rules or traditions. Its a complete transformation from our old selves into the new creation God has called us into. But if we don’t surrender totally to God, than our old selves get in the way. That’s where we end up doing the same things as the world, but oh I stopped smoking, great! But every other word is a cuss word, or you still go out and drink it up with your friends after work. If we do not allow ourselves to be broken than we deny Jesus. Then what? We are just getting those around us killed.

If we don’t surrender totally to God and allow Holy Spirit to break us, then we don’t get molded into the effective spiritual warriors we are called to be. Rest assured we are to be warriors, you won’t survive long in the coming days if you aren’t the warrior God called you to be. Friends, there is a coming Christian persecution coming to America and I don’t mean “oh someone said something I don’t like” kind of “persecution”. I mean the stuff that is happening in Africa, Bhutan, Nepal, etc. That is coming here one day. And when it does if you haven’t denied yourself and let Holy Spirit transform you, you will surrender to the enemy on the chance that he might let you live. But we all know the enemy will only kill you, as the Scripture says, the enemy comes to steal, kill, and destroy.

Its time to become the soldiers for Christ we were meant to be. 2 Timothy 2:3–4 “Share in suffering as a good soldier of Christ Jesus. No soldier gets entangled in civilian pursuits, since his aim is to please the one who enlisted him.” Are we pleasing the One that enlisted us? I’m willing to bet that unless you have totally surrendered yourself, allowed your self to be broken, then chances are probably not.

Paul in his second letter to Timothy reminds him that persecution is the reality of those who live a kingdom life. 2 Timothy 3:12–13 “Indeed, all who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted, while evil people and impostors will go on from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived.” We should expect persecution in this world because we live in a world that is hostile to God. We ourselves were at one point hostile to God. We should live as those who have been renewed, revived, and transformed into warriors by the power of the Holy Spirit. Soldiers endure much to complete a mission or to refine their skills. So we should also endure much and use the gifts God has given us, but that requires that we deny ourselves.

The Closing (One of Many)

To start to close, are you willing to be broken? Are you willing to go further than the young rich man? Are you willing to allow your self, the very essence of who you are to be shattered in order to be rebuilt?

Jesus came so that we may have life and life abundantly, but that requires Him at the center of it. That requires your self to be put away and denied because our flesh is constantly at odds with God and His ways. But who knows better? Who made the heavens and the earth? Who knows the course of the wind? We certainly don’t! Why would we think that we know better than the one who made the universe?

Jesus didn’t come to die so that we would be like everyone else. No, He came so we could be remade into the image of Him. To be forgiven, to be redeemed, to be transformed, so that we may dwell in the presence of God forever.

So today, follow the command of Jesus, deny yourself and take up your cross and follow Him. Allow God through the power of the Holy Spirit to shoot you out of the canon, to break you, and to rebuild you, so you can step into the holy, Spirit filled, abundant life God has for you.

I’ll leave you with this, allow yourself to be broken, because there at the end of your self, there is an abundant Spirit filled life in the Kingdom of Christ!