Wake Up to God's Will for Your LifeSample

Discovering God’s Will in the Valley of Brokenness  

Years ago I had a vision in which I saw a dam. On one side was a mighty river, but on the other side was dry, cracked earth. I understood that the river represented the glory of God and the dry ground represented the world. I knew intuitively that the river was supposed to flood the dry ground, as the Scriptures say, “For the earth shall be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea” (Hab. 2:14). But the dam’s mighty wall seemed impenetrable. Suddenly I saw something else. Tiny cracks began to form in the wall, and razor sharp spurts of water were shooting out of these broken places. Soon larger and larger chunks of the wall began to fall away until water was pouring in from all sides. Suddenly, in one moment, the entire wall was swept away, and the river flooded the dry ground, leaving no place untouched.

 I knew instinctively that those cracks in the wall represented “broken” men and women. They are those who have surrendered their lives to God, praying with Jesus, “Not my will, but thine, be done.” Suddenly I knew how the glory of the Lord would cover the earth as the waters cover the sea. In fact, it is through these people that, even now, the kingdom of God is invading the fallen world. God’s eternal glory will penetrate the natural world through broken men and women. And when the kingdom of God comes into contact with the fallen world, we begin to see heavenly effects: the sick are healed, the dead are raised, bondages are broken, and the supernatural begins to happen.

This is exactly what Jesus demonstrated when He was on earth. “Not my will, but thine, be done.” was not just a prayer Jesus prayed one time before His crucifixion. This was the unvarying posture of His heart. He was always living and walking in perfect submission to the will of God. Everywhere Jesus went, He taught about the kingdom, but He didn’t just talk about it, He demonstrated it!

 First, the kingdom was inside of Him because He was perfectly submitted to His Father’s will. And consequently the kingdom was manifest wherever He went: the sick were healed, the dead were raised, and demons fled. “Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven.” was not Jesus’s hopeful musing for an imaginary utopia. Jesus fulfilled His own prayer and showed us how it will be answered. Through Jesus, God’s will was being done on earth as it is in heaven. And this is what God desires to do through our lives as well. But it all begins when we come to a place where our will is submitted to God’s— “Not my will, but Yours, be done.” It is in this place of submission that we will discover and fulfill God’s will for our lives. The Greek term “seek” is an action word. It is ongoing and continuous. This is important to understand because discovering God’s will for our lives is not simply a destination to be reached; it is a posture of the heart! It is not simply a matter of choosing the right career path or marrying the right spouse. It is an ongoing stance of submission to God’s will above our own. It is a lifelong prayer, “Not my will, but thine, be done.” As long as we live, we must continue to follow and obey. Discovering God’s will for our lives happens daily as we constantly and faithfully seek to know and to do His will.

 As we travel on the journey of discovering God’s will, the narrow road cuts through a dark valley where God tests our hearts and breaks us. The breaking process is uncomfortable but very important to endure if we want to see God’s will done in our lives. The valley of brokenness is where we learn to say, “Not my will, but Yours, be done.” This brokenness, while painful, releases amazing power and makes us useful to God.

  Paul, speaking about the power of God, says in 2 Corinthians 4:7 (NIV), “But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us”. Before the great power that is inside us can be unleashed, we must be broken like Gideon’s clay jars.

 When we are broken vessels of clay, then God’s power shines out, and all the glory is His. This is why Paul says, “But God has chosen the foolish things of the world to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to shame the things which are strong, and the base things of the world and the despised God has chosen, the things that are not, so that He may nullify the things that are, so that no man may boast before God . . . that, just as it is written, ‘Let him who boasts, boast in the Lord’” (1 Cor. 1:27–29, 31 NAS). God loves to use broken vessels because through them He gets the most glory!

 At the Last Supper, Jesus took the bread of Communion and said, “Take, eat: this is my body, which is broken for you” (1 Cor. 11:24). This brokenness that He spoke of was the crucifixion He would soon endure. That brokenness would loose the greatest power the world has ever known. The apostle Paul says, “I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me” (Gal. 2:20). When we are crucified with Christ, this death to self is a brokenness that allows the life of Christ to flow out of us. A broken person is a person who is crucified with Christ. It is in this kind of person that God’s will is being done and in whom God’s kingdom is present and flowing out to the world around him.