| I discovered during last Wednesday’s Men of the Path that Drew is not the only expert on the book, Calvary Road. Our Pastoral Care Minister, Monty Pries, taught on Chapter One, which is titled, “Brokenness.” Monty hooks you right away with saying, “This book begins with brokenness, but we don’t. We begin with pride/ego; we want to accomplish our will, not God’s will for us.” Coming from the East Coast I can totally relate. See, in the good old NE, Frank Sinatra is still king in many people’s eyes. It is amazing how many times you will hear the song, “I Did It My Way” proudly sung. Many of us know, however, that Frank eliminated the part that says, “Yeah, and look where it got me.” Which brings me to Monty’s second point; there are two types of brokenness. One is voluntary, where you choose humility on your own, and the second is involuntary. Involuntary is where God chooses humility for you; He puts you in the refiner’s fire, and does a very thorough job of it. Of course, many of you know I waited for God to refine me as I was too busy doing it “my way.” For those of you that don’t know, “my way” landed me in the best place to not only find God but learn submission – prison. If you go to www.uberlumen.com, you can hear my testimony, and find a lot of other great stuff.
We had some great discussion around the tables. Our table opened with a few words about revival. A revival is an individual process that takes place in your heart. It does not have to be the big event we usually imagine when the word revival is mentioned. We talked about the four desires of the unbroken heart; unyielding, seeking one’s own glory, standing up for one’s own rights and justifying oneself. {A question – do you need all four to have an unbroken heart? Please go to uberlumen and ask Drew to post your answer. } If you have been in a place of brokenness you know what it means to cry out to God, and you also know that if you were sincere in your plea, God got you through it. Hession puts it this way in his book; “pride at last bows its head to God’s will, admits its wrong, gives up its own way to Jesus, surrenders it rights and discards its own glory-that the Lord Jesus might have all and be all. In other words, it is dying to self and self attitudes.” Can you think of a situation where this happened in your life (or is happening now)? Did you yield to God and His desire to correct your path, or did you exercise your free will and stiffen your neck and refuse to repent? On thing about dying to self – it is a constant process – every day, several times per day. Bucky sat at our table and asked, “What are you doing each day as a reminder of dying to yourself?” I will end with one last question for those who could not attend. Monty talked about the retreat he was on last weekend. During that time he spoke about entering through a “monk’s door.” With using any search engines, can you tell me what a monk’s door is and what it’s purpose is? I’d love to hear from you. See you next Wednesday morning at the Northpark clubhouse. This is an EXCELLENT series; please don’t miss it. Even if you went through it at Mariner’s; we are a different group of people. You never know what you may learn, or how God will use your knowledge to help someone else. Remember, EVERY encounter you have with someone either gives life or drains life. Which do you usually do? Dave |