It was only afterwards that I was enabled to give up trying to fit things into my

doctrinal scheme, and come humbly to the Cross for cleansing from my own personal
sins.

It is being 'Not I, but Christ,' and a 'C' is a bent 'I.'

It is self who is shy and self-conscious and reserved

But a worm offers no resistance, it allows you to do what you like with it, kick it
or squash it under your heel - a picture of true brokenness.

for our yieldedness to God is measured by our yieldedness to man.

Self-energy or self-complacency in service is sin. Self-pity in trials or

difficulties, self-seeking in business or Christian work, self-indulgence in one's
spare time, sensitiveness, touchiness, resentment and self-defence when we are hurt
or injured by others, self-consciousness, reserve, worry, fear, all spring from
self and all are sin and make our cups unclean.*

We do not lose peace with God over another person's sin, but only over our own.

Former selfish ways, which we never bothered about, are now shown to us and we
cannot walk in them without the referee blowing his whistle. Grumbling, bossiness,
carelessness, down to the smallest thing are all revealed as sins, when we are
prepared to let our days be ruled by the peace of God.

But a world in which each man wants his own way cannot but be a world full of
tensions, barriers, suspicions, misunderstandings, clashes and conflicts.

1 John 1:7 ... What is meant by light and darkness is that light reveals, darkness
hides. When anything reproves us, shows us up as we really are - that is light.

the first effect of sin ... to make us try and hide what we are.

Sin always involves us in being unreal, pretending, duplicity, window dressing,

excusing ourselves and blaming others

We are willing to give up our spiritual privacy, pocket our pride and risk our
reputations for the sake of being open and transparent with our brethren in Christ.

When the barriers are down and the masks are off, God has a chance of making us
really one.

Isaiah 35: "And an highway shall be there and a way and it shall be called the way
of holiness."

We are hard and unyielding. We are sensitive and easily hurt. We get irritable,
envious and critical.

To be broken means to have no rights before God and man.

VICTORIOUS living and effective soul-winning service are not the product of our
better selves and hard endeavours, but are simply the fruit of the Holy Spirit.

The Lamb and the Dove are surely the gentlest of all God's creatures.

Brokenness is the opposite to hardness. Hardness says “It's your fault,” brokenness
says “It's mine.”
 Let us remember that at the Cross there is only room for one at a time. We cannot
say, "I was wrong, but you were wrong too. You must come as well!"

In the Old Testament two sorts of servants are mentioned. There are the hired
servants, who have wages paid to them and have certain rights. Then there are the
bondservants, or slaves, who have no rights, who receive no wages and who have no
appeal.

Jeremiah adds the same witness, "The heart is deceitful above all things (that is,
it deceives the man himself, so that he does not know himself) and desperately
wicked, who can know it?" (Jer 17:9)

The Pharisee still thinks that outward abstinence from certain sins is all that God
requires. He has not yet understood that God looks, not on the outward appearance,
but on the heart (1 Sam 16:7)

if we feel we are innocent and have nothing to be broken about, it is not that
these things are not there but that we have not seen them. We have been living in a
realm of illusion about ourselves.

We suggest you might begin there, because revival for us began in our most intimate
relationship ... in the home.”

We naturally justify ourselves, therefore you're no candidate for God to justify.

God justifies - listen - the ungodly. Have you ever heard a greater apparent
contradiction?