This message is concerned with the pressures of this walk. I have not been able to understand the dealings of the Lord: I can only grasp His ultimate purpose.
If people are hungry and thirsty for the Lord, if they really want to walk with God, and if they have had some exposure to this walk, they soon begin to make some very simple prayers, “Lord, I want to really walk with You.” It’s amazing then, how God exposes them to themselves; how God cripples them.
Before we read the passage in Psalm 51, concentrating on the eighth and ninth verses, let me bring to your minds the story of Jacob from the book of Genesis in the Old Testament.
Jacob wanted to be blessed. In fact, he wanted to be blessed so badly that he robbed and cheated his brother of his birthright and deceived his father. Jacob was quite a character. He wanted to be blessed and he was willing to do any dishonest thing to get that blessing. When his brother Esau came home from a hunt, so hungry that he claimed he was ready to die for a bowl of lentils (as it is sometimes translated), Jacob bought his older brother’s birthright for a mess of pottage. Later on, of course, the brother disregarded that, but when the father, Isaac, grew old and his sight had failed him, he sent for Esau, ready to give the blessing to him. But Jacob still wanted that blessing. So with his mother’s help, he took the skin of a kid and sewed it very carefully on his arm. Then he went in to his father, pretending to be Esau. Isaac said, “You don’t sound like Esau. That’s Jacob’s voice. Come here and let me touch you.” Remember, Esau’s nickname was Edom, which means “red,” and his descendants were called Edomites from that time; so I picture Esau as a huge man, covered with fiery red hair. He must have been quite a sight! But Isaac could no longer see him. When the old man felt Jacob’s arms, the hair on the skin of the kid felt like Esau’s hairy arms, so Isaac gave Jacob the blessing intended for his son, Esau.
When Esau found out about it, he was ready to put an end to that mama’s boy, Jacob. But Jacob, having been warned, set out for Haran, where his mother’s relatives lived. Later in his life the cheating and deceit came back on him. Just as he had deceived his father with the skin of a kid, his own sons deceived him by killing a kid and spilling the blood on Joseph’s coat of many colors and bringing it to him. The same deceit was in them.
When Jacob was fleeing from Esau, out there in the hills—the rocky country where the wild beasts lived—he saw a ladder with the angels of God ascending and descending it. “Good,” he thought, “now I can be blessed.” (He was always wanting to be blessed.) And he made a deal with God: “Of everything You give me, Lord, I’ll give You ten percent back.” Then he went on to be blessed. But still we see the wrong things in his spirit.
At Haran Jacob decided to work for his uncle Laban, and in the course of time he arranged with Laban to marry Rachel and to work seven years for her. But Laban cheated Jacob and gave him Leah, Rachel’s older sister instead; and he had to work seven more years for Rachel. After some twenty-one years, Jacob started to make his way back to Canaan with his two wives, numerous offspring, flocks, and herds. As he approached the land of his birth, he didn’t know what he would face. He still feared his brother’s wrath; he feared Esau was still determined to kill him. So Jacob sent the whole caravan ahead and personally took his wives and children across the Jordan River at the Jabbok ford. Returning to camp, he began to wrestle with the angel of the Lord. He wrestled all night and into the breaking of the new day. Up to this time, Jacob had been a fairly healthy, self-willed, ambitious specimen of humanity. He had been willing to make and keep his deal with God. He had said, “Of all You bless me with, I’ll give ten percent back to You.” It was a pretty good deal for Jacob. God had given him much. And Jacob was willing to be very religious without being very dedicated. But he had one driving thing in his heart: he wanted to get that blessing! He really wanted it.
There are many people today who want God’s blessing and they get along pretty well. God blesses them and they manage an angle here and an angle there, until little by little they can say, “I’m blessed. God has been good to me.” They’ve been good to themselves, too. But the time comes when they cry out, “I’m really hungry for God.”
So many of us found that our self-sufficiency was at an end when we came into this walk. Mine was. Using old-order methods I could take over a church and fill it in a short time. I knew how to do that. But when I came into this move of God I became crippled, just as Jacob became crippled. When Jacob wrestled with the angel of the Lord, the Lord said, “Let Me go, for the day breaketh.” But Jacob replied, “I will not let You go unless You bless me. I want that blessing above everything else” (Genesis 32:26). So the angel of the Lord hit him in the thigh. That had a unique meaning—He didn’t hit Jacob in his heart to discourage him; he hit him in his thigh to cripple him. And all Jacob could do was to just hang on. But that sunrise, when Jacob limped away after his family, his flocks and his herds, he was defeated only in the sense that he was no longer called Jacob (which means “a supplanter”); he was now called Israel (which means “the prince of God”).… for as a prince hast thou power with God and with men, and hast prevailed. Genesis 32:28. Even though he had a change of character and a change of name, he was still crippled.
Don’t be surprised if you find a lot of people limping along in this walk, because the prophet said, “In that day the lame shall take a prey” (Isaiah 33:24). The lame man hasn’t been a good warrior. He’s crippled, he’s another Jacob; but he’s the one who takes the blessings and the anointing of the Lord.
David must have known the same thing after he had sinned with Bathsheba, and Nathan the prophet came to him, for he sang in Psalm 51: “Make me to hear joy and gladness: that the bones which thou hast broken may rejoice. Hide thy face from my sins, and blot out all mine iniquities. Create in me a clean heart, Oh God; and renew a right spirit within me. Psalm 51:8–10.
Notice: it’s the bones which thou hast broken. Most people get along pretty well in this walk until God gives them a whack! It’s an exposing, revealing thing that hits you, and then the real, deep needs are uncovered. A self-sufficient man suddenly finds he can’t function. He’s uptight; he doesn’t know what to do or where to go. He asks, “Which way do I turn?” “What do I do?” He does what Jacob did—he hangs on, saying, “I won’t let You go until You bless me.”
A person in this walk comes to a place where he no longer feels self-sufficient. I came in that way. And as I have watched God pull the rug out from under those who were cocky, self-willed, and self-righteous, I have thought, “God has been in their failing; God has been in their backsliding.” Can we charge God with throwing a man into sin? Not unless we can truthfully say, “That sin was in that man’s heart. God put pressure on him to expose it and he became a victim of it.” Which is worse—to have lust in your heart and commit the sin of lust (as David did), or never to express the lust in your heart and have that frustration become such a force within you that all your life it keeps you from a walk with God, because it is always under the surface, a hidden source of defeat? In my opinion, if God puts pressure on a man and what is in him erupts, either in an expression of sin, or an emotion, or a failure, and God deals with it, it’s forgiven. And that man is better off than if God had never dealt with him and those weaknesses had remained within him and kept him from what God had for him.
The better way would be to pray, with David, Search me, O God, and know my heart: try me, and know my thoughts: and see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting. Psalms 139:23–24. How much better to say, “Lord, search me, deal with me, expose my sin and weakness to me; but keep me from making a mess of my life.” In a sense this happened to Jacob when the angel of the Lord smote him and his hip was thrown out of joint, causing him to limp, crippled for life. It happened to David when God dealt with him and brought him down. The chastening of the Lord can do that to you.
You don’t come into this walk without the chastening of the Lord. It’s a part of it. Since you came into this walk, God has dealt with your life very drastically. He’s dealt deeply. He’s broken a few bones. But don’t look upon any of these experiences as being devastating; they just crippled you so that you could walk with God. Then you can pray: Make me to hear joy and gladness: that the bones which thou hast broken may rejoice. Psalms 51:8. When a little lamb becomes willful, tending to stray, the shepherd sometimes has to break its leg. He then binds it up. The little lamb now can do nothing but stay close to the shepherd, and it learns not to wander.
God is teaching something: Before I was afflicted I went astray: but now have I kept thy word. Psalm 119:67. God is bringing us into true holiness—a holiness where there is honesty, where nothing hypocritical nor Pharisaical exists. This holiness is not a put on. It’s something that starts deep in the heart because God has dealt with it and brought forth reality. When I see the religiosity of some churches, I become even more thankful for this walk. I’m thankful for its lack of pretense. I’m thankful that we are continually being exposed to the Lord and to ourselves. This walk has the amazing quality of revelation. We have to say that we have had a revelation of the Lord, and we have to say also that we’ve had a revelation of our own need and failure.
I wonder in how many hearts the Lord has put a vision of this walk, and vision of the kingdom, a burning message that lies in them like lead. Oh, how they would like to share it! How they would like to walk in it! But they can’t and they don’t know why. Why does God deal with them as He does? Why does He touch everything lying close to their lives, coming closer and closer? I’ll tell you why. He’s breaking their bones! Let me explain. The bones or skeleton of a human being or an animal is the framework upon which all of its functional parts hang. The skeleton is basic and essential to your anatomy. You could have all your organs, but if you didn’t have that framework, you wouldn’t have that which holds them together or holds them apart and in proper relationship to each other. So much hangs on that skeleton of yours! The very framework of your nature and life is filled with so much evil, that God begins to break it. The very basis of your life is sinful.
There is something in this Psalm that bothers me: Behold, I was shapen in iniquity; and in sin did my mother conceive me. Psalm 51:5. This is a Scripture that has bothered me, something that I have had to face. Imagine that as a text to preach on Mother’s Day. Doesn’t God say that motherhood is glorious and wonderful? Yes, but He looks down at the fabric of the whole thing and He sees sin in the entire human race. He sees sin in the old nature. Glorify motherhood and you may have a most beautiful illustration of love and tenderness, but that doesn’t alter the fact that God says that in sin your mother conceived you—you were born and shapen in iniquity. You may say, “Oh, I don’t want to believe that. I want to believe that we are all sons of God, coming forth in a glorious nature.” Fine—believe for all that, but still, when God gets a man who is going to walk with Him, he must start breaking the bones and letting them heal, because the structure and the foundation of that life are such that he will never break through to a walk with God until God alters certain things in his nature.
You come into this walk saying, “I want to be a son of God. I want to be a part of the great end-time company. I want to know my God, and be strong, and do exploits” (Daniel 11:32). And yet there are things in you that keep you from knowing God. There are things in you that constantly feed and minister the poison of unbelief and fear to your life. Oh, you would get along all right as an ordinary Christian, but you want to make it in this walk. So God starts breaking you down, and He sets the bones the way He wants them. He changes the whole structure of the skeleton of your life, and then this prayer comes forth: Make me to hear joy and gladness: that the bones which thou hast broken may rejoice.
I used to think it would be wonderful if God would bring someone with money into this church. And several times He almost did. But just about six months before they came to us, they were financially wiped out. God took the money away from them. He was breaking the bones, the structure, of their lives. Let the rich man rejoice when he’s brought low and the poor man when he’s exalted (James 1:9–10). That is the key.
God is breaking the bones in your life, altering the circumstances, the things you trust in, the things that make you stand as the being you are—which is not the being you want to be. He strikes you on the thigh, and you begin to hang on. Then as you start limping into a new life, a new nature comes forth. That is what is taking place. “Lord, make me to hear joy and gladness; that the bones which thou hast broken may rejoice.” The Lord broke the bones, and He’s setting them the way He wants them to grow. He’s taking over your life; He’s possessing you. When God is through with us, He will have a people who do not run after their own ways, or their own ambitions, or their own goals, but a people who do exactly what He wants them to do.
We’ve wanted God to be everything to us, and He’s blessing us exceedingly. He’s bringing us into new life. He’s bringing us into accomplishments and achievements that we’ve never known before.
I have watched the Lord allow things in me that made me feel inadequate and insufficient and sometimes even less than human. But I walked on and ministered in the ability and sufficiency that God has given me for the ministry, because I’m supposed to do so. There were times when I ministered, knowing that I was under the dealings of the Lord; and being careful not to once minister from myself, I reached up in faith and drew from the Lord for that individual. I didn’t bring the blessing and deliver it to him; I brought it down for him. I couldn’t afford to give out anything from myself; there wouldn’t have been enough left for me, as I continued to go through God’s dealings.
Have you started a business which should have succeeded, but because it wasn’t in God’s timing He just let it fold up under you? Have you had good jobs and prospects with everything looking rosy, but then the Lord began to cut you down? He takes care of you, even though He keeps you uptight most of the time. About the time you think, “I’m ready to go,” does He level you?
God brings you to a place where He starts to bless you a little bit, but He keeps you uptight just long enough so you begin to limp like Jacob. Perhaps you thought yours was a unique experience, with the loneliness, the pressures, the assault, the misunderstanding, all the days in which God brought disappointment after disappointment and you said, “Here I am in body ministry, but I can’t communicate. Nobody is reaching me, and I stand like an island alone.” No, you are not alone. Welcome to the club, brothers and sisters. God is breaking the bones. What should you do?
To make it easier on yourself, you must see that God is blessing you with a hunger after Himself. You can never be satisfied—God won’t let you be satisfied—with a superficial cleansing and blessing. It’s not enough to wash only the outside of the vessel. He’s going to scour it to the depths. Behold, thou desirest truth in the inward parts (that’s where the hypocrisy is, way down deep): and in the hidden part thou shalt make me to know wisdom. Psalm 51:6.
I have a way by which I can pretty well know what is in another person’s heart. If a person is not given to real heartsearching and prayer, if he is not easily driven by God to his knees, if he is not a deep repenter, I know his walk with God is superficial. You never reach truth in the inward parts and you can never come to know wisdom in the hidden parts through superficial dealings. For that reason, David sang, Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean: wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow. Psalm 51:7. Hyssop is symbolic of cleansing. At the first Passover a branch of hyssop was used to apply the blood to the doorposts of the houses of the Israelites. Hyssop tea is one of the best herbal blood purifiers. Consequently, hyssop became the symbol of deep inner cleansing. Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean: wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow. Deeply cleanse me, and then create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a right spirit within me. Psalm 51:7, 10. I repeat, there cannot be only a superficial cleansing and blessing. God must reach way down into hidden areas. I think that God will give you enough hints about what is in the heart depths that you can save yourself a lot of trouble if you are alert to catch them. Another suggestion: When you get a hint of what is down in the depths of your heart and you don’t like it, go on a rampage of deep repentance. Don’t stop just because you begin to feel a little better; pray until you know you have reached the answer deep within.
God taught me long ago to be a good repenter, but I had to learn from experience to repent deeply. The act of repentance must not be like cutting off leaves, or pulling off the fruit. It must be as John the Baptist preached: And now also the ax is laid unto the root of the trees; therefore every tree which bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down and cast into the fire. Bring forth therefore fruits meet for repentance. Matthew 3:8, 10. Laying the ax right down to the root cuts off the thing that feeds it.
Find the thing within the depth of your own heart that’s feeding it. Are you jealous? That’s too bad. What are you doing about it? “Well, I’m praying that God will help me to have the right attitude toward the things that are bothering me so I won’t be jealous.” That’s not enough—go deeper and find out what’s at the very root of that jealousy, and then say, “God, lay the ax to that!” You may say, “Pray for me. I’m up one day and down the next. I keep getting wiped out.” Maybe there’s a reason for that shallowness. Find it. Stop playing around on the surface and keep praying, “Lord, show me the depth of this thing!”
Don’t be like the foolish fellow who owned a dollar watch. One day his watch stopped. He wound it, he shook it, but it still didn’t work. So he carefully took off the crystal, removed the two watch hands and took them into the local jeweler. “I want you to fix these hands.” The jeweler answered, “You’ll have to bring in the whole watch.” “But,” the old man replied, “there’s nothing wrong with the rest of the watch—it’s just the hands.”
When God starts fixing your hands and feet, He’s going to have to get inside of you (into your workings) because that is where the deep motivations are that regulate what you are, who you are, what you’re going to do, and the whole operation of your life. And that is why He deals with us as He dealt with Jacob—dislocating his thigh bone, knocking it right out of place. He has to get down to the thing that makes us work and act and react as we do now, and change it so that we’ll act and respond in the way He wants us to. And that happens only when He has dealt deeply with us.
At this point it would be a good experience for you to read the fifty-first Psalm again. Read it in this light: Lord, touch the inner mainspring that makes all the rest work and tick—so that the bones which Thou hast broken may rejoice … and then You can create in me a clean heart and renew a right spirit within me.
If you’re among the people who can say, “Yes, this is the way God is dealing with me; He’s really dealing deeply with me,” thank God. He’s working you over so that you will act and respond as His child, His servant, His handmaiden, so He can pour out His blessings upon you. If this message brings a sense of conviction to you, notice also that there is, at the same time, a sense of joy, because you now understand what you have been going through. You know that He has been leading you and you are on the right course.