Before God will use you, He will break you. Before God will bless you, He will test you.

I mean that the carnal nature must be broken. God will use circumstances and challenges to change you. He will use pressures and problems to process you.

Challenges have a way of making us cling tighter to the Lord. I think of Jacob who, upon having his hip broken, held tightly to the Lord.

When the man saw that he would not win the match, he touched Jacob’s hip and wrenched it out of its socket. Then the man said, “Let me go, for the dawn is breaking!” But Jacob said, “I will not let you go unless you bless me.”
– Genesis 32:25-26

Of course, we later discover that the “man” with whom Jacob was wrestling was actually God.

When wrestling with you, when dealing with you, God will sometimes break you. I don’t mean that He will harm you. I mean that He will break you in the same sense that a wild horse is “broken”. He will tame your unruliness by making you need to lean on Him.

God wants to bless you. God wants to use and anoint your life for His glory. God wants to change your nature. God wants to give you a new name. But first, He has to break you.

Why?

It’s because the broken lean on Him; the broken cling to Him.

Jacob was alone. Jacob was facing pressure (His brother was pursuing him). Yet that loneliness and pressure positioned Jacob to meet God face-to-face.

Don’t fight the process. Don’t resist what God is doing.

You may find yourself alone. Perhaps you’re reaching out for help, and nobody seems to be reaching back. Often, the invitations of God are disguised as the rejections of man.

You may be facing pressure. Your circumstance may make you uncomfortable. But pressure makes you desperate, and desperation drives you closer to the Lord.

Could it be that God is using your current predicament to get your attention?

We don’t want to find ourselves in the place of challenge, pressure, loneliness, and heartache. But that is the very place where God will meet us and deal with the flesh. That is the place of brokenness where we receive true transformation from a true encounter with God.

Embrace it. Let God break you.

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