Break Me

Brandon Petras

Dangerous Prayers • Sermon • Submitted 10 months ago • Presented 10 months ago

0 ratings

· 2 views

Notes

Transcript

Intro

Have you heard the term AWOL before? Most people understand the term to have something to do with being missing when you are supposed to be somewhere.

For example, someone doesn’t show up for work and you might here somebody say “I don’t know where he is, he is AWOL today”.

The word is actually a military term. It is an acronym for the letters A-W-O-L. It means “absent without leave”.

It is a term used to describe a service-member who fails to report for duty and they weren’t given prior permission to do so.

It is a pretty serious offense that can land you jail time in a military prison depending on how long you are AWOL.

In fact, if you are AWOL for too long, you eventually get charged with desertion which carries with it an even higher penalty that could lead to the death penalty depending on the circumstances of the desertion.

I remember an incident when I was in Army basic training. It was my first Sunday there, and while you train hard Monday-Saturday, and Sunday is not a day off, it is a little less intense.

Typically everyone goes to Church, even those who aren’t believers go because they just need to get away from the drill sgts. for an hour or so.

Then when you get back it is essentially a cleaning day. This is when you work on cleaning the barracks from top to bottom, doing laundry, ironing and starching your uniforms, spit shining all your boots (not anymore).

You do all this because you know that by evening, a drills sgt. would be coming by to do an inspection and it better be perfect.

So this is my first Sunday and it is a little chaotic. Guys are waxing and buffing floors, cleaning bathrooms, organizing foot lockers, the list goes on.

This is also one of the few times you don’t have a drill sgt. breathing down your neck. It is a little less structured, and there is a little less supervision.

With that said, it was on this Sunday when I crossed paths in the hallway with a soldier from another platoon who had been there longer than me.

As we passed each other he was wearing his class A’s or dress uniform and had his duffle bag over his shoulder.

He told me good luck, but this wasn’t what he signed up for and out the door he went.

Well, you can imagine what he was doing. He was going AWOL and was about to try and sneak off the base.

In the moment, I had no clue what was going on. I was green and I just figured he had a day pass since he was further along in his training than I was.

Needless to say, they caught him and we never saw him again. I have no clue what happened to him.

But what he said stuck with me. “I didn’t sign up for this”. What do you mean? There is no draft. No one forced you to raise your hand and be sworn in. Of course he signed up for this.

However, in his mind, the cost he was having to pay to become a soldier was higher than he thought it would be when he signed up.

Their job was to break us, and he wasn’t willing to be broken so that he could be rebuilt into something else.

The Most Dangerous

And this brings me to our final prayer this morning in our dangerous prayer series.

Remember, the purpose of this series was....

to highlight the fact that for many, prayer has become this mechanical, routine practice

to show that it doesn’t have to be that way and one of the ways to fix it is to start praying dangerous prayers

There are 3 prayers we have looked at so far.

Your will be done

Search me

Reveal my fears

The prayer I want to look at today might just be the most dangerous one you will pray. This prayer might be one that takes you a little while to get to the place where you can pray it and mean it.

Power in the Text

To understand the prayer we need to go to the scripture and look at something Jesus said on his final evening with his disciples.

It was during what we call his last supper with them.

Luke 22:14-20 NLT 14 When the time came, Jesus and the apostles sat down together at the table. 15 Jesus said, “I have been very eager to eat this Passover meal with you before my suffering begins. 16 For I tell you now that I won’t eat this meal again until its meaning is fulfilled in the Kingdom of God.”

17 Then he took a cup of wine and gave thanks to God for it. Then he said, “Take this and share it among yourselves. 18 For I will not drink wine again until the Kingdom of God has come.”

19 He took some bread and gave thanks to God for it. Then he broke it in pieces and gave it to the disciples, saying, “This is my body, which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” 20 After supper he took another cup of wine and said, “This cup is the new covenant between God and his people—an agreement confirmed with my blood, which is poured out as a sacrifice for you.

Now, if you have been coming to this Church for at least a month, you have heard these words read before.

Every first Sunday of the month when we do communion I read this account, only from the Gospel of Matthew instead.

It is verse 19 this morning that I want to hone in on.

Luke 22:19 NLT 19 He took some bread and gave thanks to God for it. Then he broke it in pieces and gave it to the disciples, saying, “This is my body, which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me.”

Here we see Jesus breaking bread into pieces and giving it to his disciples. He says that this broken bread that you are eating represents my body which unbeknownst to them would be severely broken in a matter of hours.

And then he says, do this in remembrance of me. Do what?

Almost all Bible scholars agree that Jesus’s instruction to “do this” provides believers like you and I a way to remember, honor, and celebrate his death and resurrection.

But some believe that when Jesus said to “do this”, he was also referring to how we are to live.

What if Jesus wasn’t just talking about a ritual that we do occasionally at Church?

What if he was also inviting us to be broken and poured out daily?

What if you and I had the courage, the audacity, the faith pray, “God, break me”.

Let that settle for a moment. The idea of asking God to break you. What does that mean? Should we be praying that, and if so why?

This is the way

During a previous conversation between Jesus and his disciples we see Jesus sharing with them that soon he would have to die.

Peter gets upset by this and basically scolds Jesus and tells him that this is never going to happen.

This is the famous scene then where Jesus looks at Peter and essentially calls him Satan. He tells him to get away from him or get behind him.

In other words he is saying, get out of my way Satan. He then accuses Peter of seeing things only from a human point of view and goes on to say...

Matthew 16:24-25 NLT 24 Then Jesus said to his disciples, “If any of you wants to be my follower, you must give up your own way, take up your cross, and follow me. 25 If you try to hang on to your life, you will lose it. But if you give up your life for my sake, you will save it.

I don’t know about you, but it sounds like Jesus here is calling us to be broken, just like he was about to be.

That to follow him didn’t just mean to listen to his teachings but to literally walk the path of sacrifice and if need be, death, that he was about to walk down.

Jesus isn’t inviting us to a life of comfort and ease, but one of surrender and sacrifice.

As we already addressed in week one of this series, our highest desire shouldn’t be for our will to be done.

Jesus is inviting us to die to our own lives so that we can live moment by moment, day by day, for him.

To leave our cozy living rooms and safe prayers in order to know what it means to broken for the sake of the Gospel.

Why it Matters

This runs opposite of what we most often want doesn’t it? We want a life of comfort and ease.

So often we run to God because we want his blessing. It seems counter-intuitive to then ask him to break us doesn’t it?

But here is why this prayer matters.

By playing it safe, we risk missing something far more precious than our security and comfort.

We don’t realize what blessings might be on the other side of God’s breaking.

This may not sound appealing at first glance. In fact, if you are like me this sounds utterly terrifying doesn’t it?

I mean, when I look at my life and all that I hold precious and then consider what might have to happen in order for God to break me, I question whether or not I can pray like this.

I mean, who wants to be broken and poured out? It sounds painful at best and miserable at worst.

But it’s in the giving of our lives that we find true joy.

Rather than pursuing our will, we surrender to his. Instead of trying to fill our lives with all we want, we empty our lives to make a difference in the lives of others for the sake of the gospel.

Application/Closing

When I go back to the story I opened with and I think about the man who went AWOL because this isn’t what he signed up for I think about myself as a follower of Christ.

It would be really easy to look at what it means to take up my cross daily and die to self and to really consider what it might take for God to break me and think, this isn’t what I signed up for.

Listen, the born-again life is not all roses and rainbows. Following Jesus, and I mean really following Jesus is hard. At times it will ask more of you than you think you can give. There will be times of loneliness, heartbreak, frustration, and struggle.

But as the apostle Paul said it so well in...

Romans 8:17-18 NLT 17 And since we are his children, we are his heirs. In fact, together with Christ we are heirs of God’s glory. But if we are to share his glory, we must also share his suffering. 18 Yet what we suffer now is nothing compared to the glory he will reveal to us later.

If we are brave enough to ask God to break us it is because we understand this to be true. That what I gain by being broken far outweighs the cost.

And this isn’t a one time prayer.

True brokenness before God isn’t a one time event; its a daily decision.

Every day we must choose to crucify our own desires so we can live fully for God’s.

If you have the courage to pray this prayer, get ready.

Get ready to know God and be known by God in a way you’ve not experienced before.

We can play it safe if we want. But lets choose something different. Let’s choose to be faith-filled rather than fear-filled

Let’s choose to be risk takers and stop insulting God with small thinking and safe living.

If there are blessings on the other side of brokenness, then let’s pray, God break me.

Related Media

Related Sermons