Touré Roberts - The Beauty of Brokenness

Today, I want to talk about the beauty of brokenness. The beauty of brokenness. Let’s pray. Father, thank you so much for your Word; it is food for us, it edifies us. God, here in this moment, I want you to prepare a table with all sorts of bread and refreshing water, and everything that your sons and daughters need to be strengthened, made new, renewed, and to have their minds transformed in such a way that it will create breakthroughs in their lives. Father, I thank you for the spirit of wisdom, revelation, insight, and knowledge, and I thank you, God, that through these lips I will connect with heaven. Living water will flow, and it will bless your sons and daughters as they engage. We love you, we thank you, and we consider it done in Jesus' name. Amen.

In 2014, I wrote my sophomore book. It was my second book, and it was called Wholeness. The book, Wholeness, was all about discovering, identifying, and uncovering brokenness that often hides in our blind spots. I talked about how brokenness limits us and how, if we don’t address brokenness, we won’t have the life that God has called us to have. It was a great book, a bestseller; you know, God did His thing with it. But there’s another type of brokenness that I want to talk about, and this brokenness is actually extremely profitable to you and me. That’s right; you have two types of brokenness. I’m going to break down what those two types are.

The first type of brokenness is self-induced brokenness. Let me back up and qualify this: when I say «brokenness,» I’m not talking about when something has happened to you in life that has broken you down, and instead of getting that area of brokenness healed, you allow other things to fill that area. That’s bad brokenness. The type of brokenness that I’m talking about is actually good brokenness. It is a brokenness that, if we yield ourselves properly and if we do these things, it will bless us and be profitable. So, you’ve got bad brokenness—that’s when something happens, and you’re broken, and you live from this broken place. Then, we have good brokenness, which is actually profitable and will produce God’s best in your life. If you’re tracking with me, put it right there in the feed. I want to break this thing down. I am teaching today, by the way.

As it relates to good brokenness, there are two types of good brokenness. This time, it’s almost like cholesterol; you know, cholesterol—you’ve got good cholesterol and bad cholesterol. You’ve got LDL and HDL. It’s similar to that, right? The bad brokenness is what I described earlier; this is the good brokenness. The first one is self-induced brokenness, and this self-induced brokenness disciplines the mind, the spirit, and the heart so that space for God is created in our lives, accompanied by truth, power, and blessing. Stay with me. This self-induced brokenness is when we take it upon ourselves to break ourselves before the Lord because it creates space for God, and we temper ourselves so that God can move in our lives. I’m going to unpack it in just a second.

The second type of this good brokenness is God-induced brokenness. There is a difference; this God-induced brokenness is, first of all, extremely uncomfortable. This is the type of brokenness that God knows we need to get to a certain point. Him loving us so much, and because we lack the discipline or sensitivity, or we don’t have the unction, the wherewithal, or even the knowledge that we need to be broken, God steps in and brings about His brokenness. This God-induced brokenness, let me tell you—doesn’t always feel good. This brokenness crushes that thing we all have, called the pride of life. It crushes it. You know how the Scripture talks about how we shouldn’t love the world or the things that are in the world, and it breaks down the three things that are in the world: the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life. The pride of life is that thing where we don’t believe that we really need God. We need God, but we don’t need Him; all we need is our money, our looks, our relationships, our platform, or our followers. You know what I’m trying to say. You can even be a believer and walk with the spirit of pride on you and not even know it because it ultimately comes down to who or what you’re putting your trust in.

So there are two types of brokenness: again, the self-induced brokenness and the God-induced brokenness. Now, let’s go further. The easiest way to be broken, quite frankly, is when God does it. God-induced brokenness is relatively easy for you. Now, I didn’t say it wasn’t pain-free; it’s easy, but it’s extremely painful. It’s easy, watch this, because you don’t have to do any work, but it’s not fun at all. So, in other words, we can sit around and do…