Broken & Cleansed

“Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” Matthew 5:3

This past Sunday, Pastor Ben highlighted this beatitude as the most important one of the list. He said that until we learn to see God and ourselves correctly, we will never be able to become the other beatitudes. We must be broken, deconstructed and rebuilt. 

Hearing these words, I remembered the day that I brought my broken and haughty spirit into a service to worship the LORD and the Spirit of God suddenly revealed me to myself and…gloriously…revealed Himself to me. I was shown to be nothing more than a beggar…a beggar for people’s love.

I was born into a severely broken family. I choose not to share the details because I desire to honor my parents. I also do not wish for details to overshadow or dissuade from the preeminence of Christ’s ongoing work in my life. It is sufficient to know that from birth through high school, my daily life revolved around persisting fear, crippling anxiety and hateful resentment. Perspectives were invested into my heart and a condemning pessimistic spirit was created.

I don’t know how my parents met or how long they dated. I know that their relationship was primarily instinctual and that their affections were not exclusive for one other. During her senior year of high school, my mom became pregnant with me. Her plans to pursue a career after high school transformed into an expectation to marry my father. My father suddenly found his life aspirations changed, as well. Both of my parents’ original individual hopes and dreams were replaced with the new and sudden reality of living with a colicky baby boy in a rented single-wide trailer.

Once described by my Scout Leader as an overly cynical and critical boy, I was quite involved in youth group, church choir, Vacation Bible School, clam bakes, fish fries and revivals. In my mother’s family’s Pentecostal churches, I was encouraged to seek “the baptism of the Holy Spirit.” 

In my father’s family’s Baptist churches, I was encouraged to pray the “sinner’s prayer” and walk the aisle to confess my new faith. I recall countless calls to “give my life to Christ” and, though I tried to be what I was supposed to be and obediently “gave my life to Christ” multiple times, I never reaped the promises of the sermons, preachers or teachers. Nothing in or around me was new. I was still me and all the days still felt like the days before.

I graduated from South Brunswick High School and left home for Appalachian State University. Having been awarded a full academic scholarship, I was freed to escape the gravitational pull of my home. I occasionally attended church but, in the absence of a need to escape from home, I no longer felt compelled to go. I held no real desire for the LORD and based upon the lessons taught to me all over all those years ago, I believed that I understood Him and that He was “living in my heart”. He did not fill my thoughts. He did not factor into my decisions.

While attending church service one morning with my Great Aunt Faye and Uncle Ken in Cary NC, my bitter, haughty and hardened spirit endured another service of worship. I attended because I loved being with my aunt and uncle AND because they took to me Bojangles for breakfast and to Boston Market for lunch anytime that I visited on Sunday. While sitting in the pew at Durham Church of God and doubting the authenticity of everything around me, I ridiculed the false joy of people. Their smiles, joy, tears…so much weak emotionalism. And for what? Why? Then, without warning, my heart was miraculously turned towards the Lord Jesus Christ.

I don’t know why God chose to call me that day. I sat in His service as a contemptible fraud believing that I would be in heaven some day. I was not seeking Him but like the blind beggar in John 9, I can only declare that I once was blind and then…suddenly…I saw.

In a split second, my condemnation of others was reversed with a sudden self-desperation. No longer suffering through the choir’s song, I found myself instead hungering for what they were singing, “I want to be washed! I need a cleansing! My soul is hungry! I’m aching within! 

In that moment, I knew my lostness and I perceived the emptiness of my heart. I broke. Or as The Message translates it, “You’re blessed when you’re at the end of your rope.” I felt personal responsibility for my sin and longed for forgiveness. It was all so very new to me. Always gifted with conjuring feelings of superiority so that I could smother my feelings of inferiority, I was no longer blinded to my corruption and need for real inner change. 

Never having responded emotionally to the Lord in any way, I instantly found myself standing from the pew with my hands lifted heavenward for the first time in my life…as if seeking rescue…as my babies used to raise their arms towards me… and with tears streaming down my face, I sang loudly with the church choir, “I wanna be washed by the blood of the Lamb! I need a cleansing from the fountain.”

Since that day, the Spirit of God has been regenerating my heart, soul, and spirit. My desire to love Him and to genuinely love other people is ever increasing. The Spirit convicts and counsels me with His love and truth. God is changing me.

I still struggle with the experiences that occurred during my formative childhood. But God is faithfully using my brokenness to bring me to Him. In my brokenness, I have found Him to be Who He says that He is and He regenerates me.

~ Jason Lanier serves as the Worship & Arts Pastor at LIFE Fellowship and is a co-founder of A Cause For Tea.