7. Devotional: Broken Bread

Broken Bread

Edited by Miles J. Stanford

Jesus took bread, and blessed it, and broke it, and gave it. (Matthew 26:26)

    The Lord Jesus is not going to ‘break’ anything in our lives that does not require breaking. But that of the old which remains unbroken, which we seek to hold back from the processing of His nail-pierced hands, will continually leaven and spoil our attempts to feed others.  

    “How often we have murmured under trial only to see later the preparation of the Lord Jesus of our hearts that we might be His ministers of comfort in an hour of need in the life of another (2 Cor. 1:4). Afflictions, therefore, many times are the advance token of the Father that we are being prepared for a special ministry of comfort to others. This is a principle seen throughout the Word. All that would be used of the Father in the hands of the Lord Jesus to meet the needs of the hungry-hearted must first be made a blessing by Him. This involves being broken in His hands. This process is necessary because of our tendency to think more of working for the Lord Jesus than becoming a channel for the outflowing of heavenly bread to broken hearts on every side.” -H.R.  

    “Others come to us in their deep need, and, with our hearts breaking, we are called upon to give out of our emptiness and loss what we seem to need ourselves. We are asked to ‘claim victory’ for others in distress, when it seems that we are in greater distress than they. Thus it was at Calvary! He who had loosed others from bondage was given up, as it appeared, to the full rage of the murderous enemy. He who had done the mighty works of God for others, lay in impotence and weakness in the hands of men. Yes, this is the Cross. Life, power, blessing, deliverance for others—and nothing for thyself, but to lie in the will of the Father, and accept from His hand all that He pleases to permit to come upon thee.”