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Break Me
Well, it is great to have you all here for part two of our series Dangerous Prayers.
If you were with us last week, actually, I said at the beginning of the message that I believe for many of you, one of the three prayers that we're praying will have a significant impact.
Last week, we talked about search me God, search my heart.
I already had some of you say, how powerful that was.
Next week we're going to ask God to send us.
Here I am God.
Anywhere, anytime, I'm available to you.
Send me.
It is my favorite now, of the three, next week.
Today though is going to be the most difficult.
If there is one that is by far the most dangerous of all three, it is the prayer we're going to talk about this week.
I want to warn you and just tell you upfront, some of you will not like this prayer.
Many of you will refuse to pray it.
I'm simply not going to pray this prayer.
I'll tell you upfront, it's not a common prayer.
It doesn't feel good.
This prayer is not consistent with the, “God will always make your life better,” version of Christianity.
This prayer though, it does have the potential to open your heart up to the work of God in such a way that it can forever change your life.
The prayer that I'm going to ask you to consider praying is the prayer Break Me.
Break Me, God.
Break Me.
I was at camp this week and have been many times and one of the things kids say and trully we all say.
“We want to be closer to God.
We all want the junk out of our lives.
We all want to be conformed to the image of Christ, but we really don't feel safe praying the prayer Break Me.
We don't really want to pray that.”
I understand that.
It is a very dangerous prayer to say, “God, break me.”
You remember some of the old wrestlers.
I mean the old school wwf.
Hulk hogan, Jimmy Heart, Lex Luger, Hacksaw Jim Dugan.
Those guys.
Man and when they would get in front of the camera for their interview before the match.
One of the things they would do is take both hand and do them like this.
To symbolize I am going to break you.
It was not a good a things for someone to tell you that.
Right.
It was intimidation.
We say this in many times in Christian walk that you have to be broken.
But no one wants to be broken because inevitably that means pain.
I have been in the places of broken.
I have had bones broken.
I have been emotionally broken, and I believe I am in the process of spiritually broken right now.
This is an extremely Dangerous prayer, God break me.
It is very hard to imagine the blessings and the intimacy with God on the other side of the pain that I would one day experience.
I want to ask you to consider praying a very dangerous prayer.
Not all of you will.
You don't have to.
This isn’t like you have to pray this, but to consider giving God permission to do a deep work in your life, God, break me.
To study this today, what we're going to do is we’re going to look at two different stories in the Bible which is really cool as they're both side by side.
They're in the very same chapter in the book of Mark.
There's one story immediately followed by another story.
The first story deals with a prostitute.
Have you every tried to put yourself in the position of some of the poeple in scripture.
I mean expecially this woman here.
Because nobody in the first century wanted to be a prostitute.
Contrary to popular belief, I don’t believe people this century actually want that either.
One like, “Hey, hopefully by the time I'm twenty-one, I'll be in the top 10% of prostitutes in the community.”
Nobody wanted to do this.
In fact, if you were a prostitute, it’s only because life dealt you cards that you felt had no other way to play except for this desperate plea, because they were hated, despised, they were full of shame.
Who knows what would have led this woman to this.
Maybe she was a single mom and had no other way of paying for the bills.
Maybe she had been abused by men, knew nothing else.
Whatever it was, she was hated by every woman and used by many men, full of shame.
One day, she met a man that treated her differently.
Maybe for the first time from a male, she was shown honor, she was shown respect, he treated her with dignity, and he loved her appropriately.
It so transformed this woman that she wanted to worship Him in the most sacrificial way that she could imagine.
Her extravagant act of worship completely confused everyone else in this story.
Mark chapter 14 verse 3
We know this woman to be the same sinful woman in Luke’s gospel.
Now, first thing I want you to pay attention to is whose home was Jesus sent?
He was in the home of Simon.
But Simon had an issue.
In fact his issue labeled him.
It classified him.
He was Simon the leper.
Everyone else ran from lepers.
Jesus would befriend them and heal them.
That’s who He was.
So you have a Rabbi, a leper, a prostitute.
Sounds like the beginning of a truly inappropriate joke.
But they are all in this house along with the disciples and she comes in with very expensive perfume.
Now, before we move on, let’s talk about this perfume.
This perfume was extremely valuable, we find out later in the Gospels that it was valued at a year’s worth of wages.
Just imagine what you make in a year and then spending it on one thing.
Your wife would kill you.
Some of you, your husband may.
Why was it so valuable?
It’s valuable because it was incredibly rare.
Not only did ordinary women not wear perfume because they could not afford it.
But this particular perfume was even more rare.
So, who wore perfume?
Basically, it was like the calling card.
You wore perfume to attract the male species to let them know you were available.
So truly for her, it was like an airgun to a roofer or a wrench to a mechanic.
It was a business expense that she would have to purchase.
The more expensive it was or the better smelling, the more business she would attract because in order to afford that, she must be good.
That’s all I will say about that.
She's got this incredibly expensive perfume and in the next part of the verse what does she do with the perfume.
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