Dangerous Prayers – “Break Me”
Key Verses – Micah 2:1-12 NKJV; Mark 14:3-7 NKJV; Mark 14:22-25
The Breaker – Micah 2:1-12 NLT
1 What sorrow awaits you who lie awake at night,
thinking up evil plans.
You rise at dawn and hurry to carry them out,
simply because you have the power to do so.
2 When you want a piece of land,
you find a way to seize it.
When you want someone’s house,
you take it by fraud and violence.
You cheat a man of his property,
stealing his family’s inheritance.
3 But this is what the Lord says:
“I will reward your evil with evil;
you won’t be able to pull your neck out of the noose.
You will no longer walk around proudly,
for it will be a terrible time.”
4 In that day your enemies will make fun of you
by singing this song of despair about you:
“We are finished,
completely ruined!
God has confiscated our land,
taking it from us.
He has given our fields
to those who betrayed us.”
5 Others will set your boundaries then,
and the Lord’s people will have no say
in how the land is divided.
True and False Prophets
6 “Don’t say such things,”
the people respond.
“Don’t prophesy like that.
Such disasters will never come our way!”
7 Should you talk that way, O family of Israel?
Will the Lord’s Spirit have patience with such behavior?
If you would do what is right,
you would find my words comforting.
8 Yet to this very hour
my people rise against me like an enemy!
You steal the shirts right off the backs
of those who trusted you,
making them as ragged as men
returning from battle.
9 You have evicted women from their pleasant homes
and forever stripped their children of all that God would give them.
10 Up! Begone!
This is no longer your land and home,
for you have filled it with sin
and ruined it completely.
11 Suppose a prophet full of lies would say to you,
“I’ll preach to you the joys of wine and alcohol!”
That’s just the kind of prophet you would like!
Hope for Restoration
12 “Someday, O Israel, I will gather you;
I will gather the remnant who are left.
I will bring you together again like sheep in a pen,
like a flock in its pasture.
Yes, your land will again
be filled with noisy crowds!
13 Your leader will break out
and lead you out of exile,
out through the gates of the enemy cities,
back to your own land.
Your king will lead you;
the Lord himself will guide you.”
God’s people—who should have been meditating on His Word—were lying in their beds, plotting about what they were going to do the next day to get ahead. Contrast this with David, the man after God’s own heart, who said, “My soul shall be satisfied as with marrow and fatness, and my mouth shall praise thee with joyful lips when I remember Thee upon my bed, and meditate on Thee in the night watches” (Psalm 63:5, 6).
Instead of using their money and things to help and serve people, the people of God were using people to get money and things. They were manipulating the people instead of serving the people.
The question was what you resort to when you need provision? Do you resort to manipulation and oppression, or do you trust God? Do you not trust God to provide for you and trust Him to take care of you?
In verse 7 of the NKJV, the Lord asks a question through Micah.
You who are named the house of Jacob:
“Is the Spirit of the Lord restricted?
Are these His doings?
Do not My words do good
To him who walks uprightly?
Jeremiah declared that the word of the Lord was Like a fire!
Jeremiah 5:14
A fire will either burn you warm you.
It depends on where you are standing. Naturally speaking, you want to be standing near but not in the fire.
Spiritually speaking, the closer you are to the fire, the more you will be warmed and satisfied. The further you are from the fire of the Lord, the more you are going to get burned.
The people were heaping prophets unto themselves, promising continued prosperity and abundance even though there was no repentance. They heaped unto themselves prophets who prophesied what they wanted to hear but ignored the prophets telling them what God needed them to hear.
God said I will bring pain to you to move you back to who I called you to be. I am going to break the pride off of you so that you will live humbly before me.
God used Micah for an entire chapter telling them of the reality of their judgment, then here in chapter 2, God says here is the reason for what’s happening in and around you. It was the sins of the people.
Then God says, I will break off of you what is on you if you depart from what you are doing, the actions you have been taking, and the mindsets you have developed. The oppression that you have accepted arise and depart.
“The breaker is come up before them.” In the tenth verse, the Lord says to his people, “Arise, and depart; for this is not your rest: because it is polluted.” But we say to ourselves, How can we depart? How can I make a change? There is so much between where I am now and where I need to be and where I want to be.
How can we find our way out?
How can we face the enemies of our life?
How can we break down barriers?
Notice that he said I will surely gather you like a flock or a sheep in the text. How then do we, sheep, cover the trails and paths lined with wolves? We are ill-equipped to pass through this on our own.
The answer lay precisely in the word of the Lord.
13 The one who breaks open will come up before them;
They will break out,
Pass through the gate,
And go out by it;
Their king will pass before them,
With the Lord at their head.”
The One who breaks open… that’s speaking of Jesus! The one, the great shepherd, He will make away.
Jesus is the breaker. He is the God of the break-through. He broke down every area that prevented you from getting to Him.
He has abolished and will abolish anything that is on you if you will but turn it over to Him and turn your life to Him!
Ephesians 2:14-17
14 For He Himself is our peace, who has made both one, and has broken down the middle wall of separation, 15 having abolished in His flesh the enmity, that is, the law of commandments contained in ordinances, so as to create in Himself one new man from the two, thus making peace, 16 and that He might reconcile them both to God in one body through the cross, thereby putting to death the enmity. 17 And He came and preached peace to you who were afar off and to those who were near. 18 For through Him we both have access by one Spirit to the Father.
Jesus breaks down everything that would prevent us from getting to Him,
It is a blessing for Him to break through for Us, but it is also a blessing to be broken for Him.
Broken in the right places (Psalm 126:5; Haggai 1:9-15; Haggai 2:11)
Our world is broken, but it’s breaking in all the wrong places. We live in a broken world!
Wherever you look, wherever you observe people, you see hurts. People are broken. People are in challenging situations.
And we who have the Light and Life of Jesus Christ can only touch them to the degree to which we can relate.
If the world is broken in the wrong places, we must be broken in the right places. People who are broken and in darkness are looking for a light, and light only comes through our brokenness.
The world is broken for the same reasons that brokenness was upon the people of Israel in Haggai.
Haggai 1:9-15
9 “You looked for much, but indeed it came to little; and when you brought it home, I blew it away. Why?” says the Lord of hosts. “Because of My house that is in ruins, while every one of you runs to his own house. 10 Therefore the heavens above you withhold the dew, and the earth withholds its fruit. 11 For I called for a drought on the land and the mountains, on the grain and the new wine and the oil, on whatever the ground brings forth, on men and livestock, and on all the labor of your hands.”
The failure of the people to do the will of the Lord resulted in a drought. I believe that a drought atmosphere is exactly where we find ourselves today.
The failure of the people to build their temple resulted in a drought. If the oil of the anointing of the Spirit is absent from your life; if the wine—the joy of the Spirit—is missing; if there is a barrenness and dryness within! We have failed to build our temple. Your temple is lying in ruins!
19 Or do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and you are not your own? 20 For you were bought at a price; therefore glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God’s.
For 16 years, they failed to build the temple. After hearing why they were in the condition, it took 23 days to turn it around.
Those of you who have lived on your parents’ relationship or your Godly heritage, you lived on the blessings and the brokenness of your parents; the words of Haggai still ring true!
Haggai 2:10-14
10 On the twenty-fourth day of the ninth month, in the second year of Darius, the word of the Lord came by Haggai the prophet, saying, 11 “Thus says the Lord of hosts: ‘Now, ask the priests concerning the law, saying, 12 “If one carries holy meat in the fold of his garment, and with the edge he touches bread or stew, wine or oil, or any food, will it become holy?” ’ ”
Then the priests answered and said, “No.”
13 And Haggai said, “If one who is unclean because of a dead body touches any of these, will it be unclean?”
So the priests answered and said, “It shall be unclean.”
Haggai was to pose two questions to the priests.
“If a piece of meat that has been offered to the Lord accidentally touches some other object, does the object it touches become holy?”
“No,” the priests answered.
Second, “If someone is ceremonially unclean because he touched a dead body, can he make others ceremonially unclean by touching them?”
“Yes,” the priests answered.
We can conclude then that holiness, righteousness, and relationship cannot be passed on! However, corruption and pollution can be. In other words, if you hang around in, you can’t help but be affected. Simply hanging around a church or hanging around other Christians doesn’t make you a Christian. You’ve got to be obedient to the Lord personally. You have to build your own temple.
Oh, Lord, break us! Break us in all the right places.
Brokenness becomes a blessing (Mark 14:3-7; Mark 14:22-25)
Two events happened in the life of Jesus. The first occurred in the town of Bethany at Simon the Leper’s House! It is here at Simon’s house that a woman comes in while Jesus is seated at the table, comes in and with an alabaster flask of ointment of pure nard, anoints the head of Jesus. She didn’t dab the oil, nor did she dribble the oil; she broke the flask and poured the oil. The breaking is what caused the oil to flow.
In breaking her flask of oil and anointing the head of Jesus, she took what was reserved for kings or the high priest and placed that honor upon Jesus. This high honor came with a high cost. Worth one year’s wages was the bottle. She takes her past and present and pours it over the head of Jesus.
Rest assured, when you desire to be broken in all the right places, there will be one who is broken in the wrong places present! Mary was broken in the right places, Judas, though, was broken in the wrong places.
In the Passover tradition, the bread used is not a nice soft loaf that you might get at a restaurant. It’s an unleavened cracker called matza. It’s broken and distributed amongst the guests.
Parts of the matza were wrapped in a cloth and saved for the end of the meal, and then it is unwrapped and distributed at the end of the meal. (Mark 14:22-25)
What Jesus is saying is, “I’m about to be broken. My body’s going to be broken, and it’s going to be wrapped in burial clothes, then placed in a tomb. Soon, I’ll be unwrapped, and then I’ll be available for everyone.”
This gives us a new perspective towards communion. “And the cup full of wine represents My blood that is going to be poured out for payment for all of humanity’s sin against God. I’m giving My life to be broken and poured out for God’s purposes.”
It would seem like a much better prayer for us to pray, ‘God, help me keep it together! I feel like my life is shattered and broken already. If you, God, can hold it together, that will be a much better prayer.
The value of brokenness (Judges 6) Reference
Gideon becomes what God told him he would become by tearing (breaking) down his father’s pagan altars. (Judges 6:27)
The breaking down of false altars created boldness! (Judges 6:28-31)
When Joash saw the boldness of his son, something stirred within his heart. Once a worshiper of God, now had been sucked into worshiping Baal. His son’s action inspired him once again to stop serving other gods and return to worshiping the One, True, God!
Brokenness creates boldness.
Brokenness brings victory – (Judges 7:19-23; 2 Corinthians 4:6-12)
Brokenness. It’s the most effective way of touching others’ lives. Job knew this. He went through more breaking than any of us could imagine. He lost it all, and yet it was Job’s breaking which silenced Satan.
A five-dollar iron bar can be pounded into a couple of ten-dollar horseshoes. Or, that same iron bar can be pounded further into $350 worth of needles. Or, that same iron bar can be pounded even further to produce $250,000 worth of fine watch springs. It all depends on how much pounding is done.
Maybe you feel like you have been pounded on, worked on, broken this week, or throughout this past year. This is the time to rejoice and be exceedingly glad, for it means God is making you into something pleasing, something useful, something valuable for His glory.
Those of you who want to captain your ship, be in charge of your destiny. Then you need to look at Acts 27…
En route to Rome, where he was to stand trial before Caesar, Paul advised his shipmates they were headed for treacherous waters. Ignoring his warning, the captain sailed on—right into a storm so fierce the ship was tossed to and fro on the waves, eventually running aground, where it was broken into pieces. However, all on board were saved by clinging to the same boat’s broken remains of which they were previously so proud and confident. It was the broken pieces that saved them.
The Lord will take the breakings, the hurts, the heartaches of your life, and He will bring you not only safely to shore, but He will use the remnants of your ship to bring others as well. You will touch, pray, and relate to people in an entirely different way—for you will have been broken.
Wherever you are, He’s working on you, breaking you so that the light of Jesus Christ may shine from you.
The prayer is Lord break me and break me in the right places. Break me so that I may be a blessing.
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