#273: A FRANK TALK ABOUT MINISTRY: Part 5 – Three Things Not to Ignore

The first, brokenness.

There is quite a bit in the book on this subject, but I have noted and observed that many Christian leaders have no earthly idea what brokenness is, why it's critical, and how we underestimate its importance for those who do understand something of its power.

It is very clear in the New Testament that in order for the light of God to break through we must be broken if you have put your hand to the plow of god's work you are in critical need of brokenness and every one of you listening to this i speak from experience has underestimated what that means i won't go into detail here but from the ages of 18 to 39 the hand of god sought to break me for the work he called me to And in those years, I was shanghaied, waylaid, bushwhacked, steamrolled.

And there were days where every day of the week, a new shipment of nails arrived at my doorstep.

And after the dust settled and my garments were still smoking, Jesus Christ came up with a zero in the life of Frank Viola.

I was still not fully broken.

And it took monumental suffering.

some years later to actually do some serious breaking in my life and so i can say this that throughout the years particularly after 39 and on jesus christ has in fact gained some ground in my life but i use that illustration to tell you that not only is brokenness absolutely necessary for you to minister life I am not talking about information.

You don't have to be broken at all to disseminate information.

That's simply passing data on from your frontal lobe to someone else's frontal lobe.

But there's no transformation in that.

I'm talking about a ministry of power and life.

And the more gifted you are, naturally, the more talented you are, naturally, and the more gifts God has given you, the greater the brokenness must be in order for it to be the Lord and not you.

I will simply say that if Jesus Christ breaks you, we will hear the screams from hell to heaven.

And as I put it somewhere else, when God decides to break a man or woman, you'll come very close to choosing hell instead.

It is ultimate agony.

It is unmitigated torture.

Now, if you've been brought up with the teaching, and I'll preface it by saying the very lopsided, unbalanced teaching that anything negative that comes into your life is the devil and not God, you have severely misunderstood the gospel.

Study the word suffering, study the word trial in the New Testament, and you will find that it is the hand of God who so often brings that into our life.

Now, certainly there is a role for the enemy, and there are times we are to resist, but at the same time, there is the submitting to the hand of God, the sovereign, and ultimately, when you pull back the curtain, you may see fallen man working.

Pull it back again, and you will see God's enemy, and your enemy, your spiritual enemy now.

You pull back the curtain again, and you will see the hand of a sovereign God.

who is working everything out to accomplish his eternal purpose.

Well, I've addressed this in books like God's Favorite Place on Earth, some in Insurgents, so I will not belabor the point, except to say that the reason why we have such a shallow gospel, and why we have such ineffectiveness, and so much of what is being preached is insipid, and doesn't get past the cranium is because so few who are in ministry are broken vessels.

I do have to add a postscript to this.