A Few months ago I preached through a portion of the life of King David. It wasn't the "man after God's heart," or "giant slayer," or the beautiful psalmist, it was messages the Lord laid on my heart that I called "broken pieces." I took the part of David's life from when he sinned with Bathsheba until the rebellion of his son Absalom and highlighted all the brokenness experienced in this great man's life. After David committed adultery with Bathsheba he received a visit from a friend about a year later that brought good, and bad news. The good news was that God had put away David's sin, and he would not die because he had repented. The bad news was that the sword would never depart from David's house, meaning his family would always be in turmoil. Although, we do get forgiveness when we repent, the problem with sin is that it still leaves scars and comes sometimes with disastrous consequences. Those consequences bring into our lives broken pieces, and those broken pieces scatter and leave us in a mess. Maybe God lets us make a mess of ourselves so we will learn to trust Him and not rely on ourselves.
The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit:
a broken and a contrite heart,
O God, thou wilt not despise.
(Psalm 51:17)
We should always keep our hearts fixed on God, no matter how much we are blessed with in life, or how hard our days become. Brokenness is a wake up call from God, or an alarm letting us know we need to come down a notch. It is only when we remove our eyes from looking onto our Lord that we find ourselves weaker and more easily prone to give in to temptation. It was when David found himself at ease, looking in the direction of temptation that he gave in to sin. Our eyes can't be fixed on Jesus and on sin at the same time, we have to look away from temptation to see deliverance. Sometimes we do find ourselves in sin, and our lives falling to pieces around us, but God doesn't leave us there. In my own life I have found that God has taken the mistakes and the messes I have gotten myself into and turned them around. Forgiveness came when I repented with a broken spirit and heart, and confessed my brokenness to Jesus. I still had to deal with the results of my sins but who I was didn't change because of sin, my heart still belonged to God. When David sinned with Bathsheba he was still the same man, giant slayer, mighty warrior, man after God's own heart, but broken pieces caused a wandering heart to return. You may be broken today and feel God could never forgive you, or that you don't deserve forgiveness, that is not your call. Take your brokenness to God, only He can take your broken pieces and put them back together to make you an object of perfection.