Broken: Confessions of the Clay

By Vic Lewis

Broken, Confessions of The Clay, illustrates the conflict that exists on the inside of the one who attempts to corral the Spiritual Manifestation of God’s Anointing, with carnal hands. The life and experiences of a person who experienced the hand of God early in life, and his lifelong struggle, grappling with the Power of God’s Anointing in the spirit realm, trapped in an earthen vessel.
When God sets the course of your life, it is written in stone. You have one of two choices at that point; either you will acquiesce to the Divine Will of God; or you will continue a life of inconsistency, floundering through life. Never truly realizing the glory and potential of your calling. In this book I will show you how inconsistency in acknowledging God, demoralized my efforts to accomplish a Spiritual appointment while in the flesh, without the guidance of the Holy Ghost completely, and how it not only affects you, but how it impacts all those around you.
My hope is that when you read this book, my grave errors, will give you the kind of direction that you have been missing in your life, to make the right choices, so that you will be found in the Perfect Will of God. And, bear witness, that those who are called by Him, will perform within the Good and Perfect and Acceptable Will of God.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jun 7, 2020
• ISBN: 9781984581754

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Copyright © 2020 by Vic Lewis.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Scripture quotations marked KJV are from the Holy Bible, King James Version (Authorized Version). First published in 1611. Quoted from the KJV Classic Reference Bible, Copyright © 1983 by The Zondervan Corporation.

Rev. date: 06/05/2020

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CONTENTS

Introduction

One Perfect Imperfection

Two Youthful Ambitions

Three Grappling With Successful Failure

Four Who Am I?

Five Lost And Found

Six Time To Come Home

The Call

Prayer For Forgiveness And Salvation

Seven Resilience

Eight My Life My Wife

Nine God’s Will Vs. Man’s Will

Ten Dealing With Devastation

Eleven Searching For God’s Will

Twelve Broken But Not Shattered

Epilogue

Dedication

And lest I should be exalted above measure through the

abundance of the revelations, there was given to me a thorn in

the flesh, the messenger of Satan to buffet me, lest I should be

exalted above measure. For this thing I sought the Lord thrice,

that it might depart from me. And He said unto me, "My

Grace Is Sufficient for Thee: For My Strength is Made Perfect

in Weakness". Most gladly therefore will I rather glory in my

infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me.

—II Corinthians 12:7–9 (KJV)

Then I went down to the potter’s house, and, behold, he

wrought a work on the wheels. And the vessel that he made of

clay was marred in the hand of the potter: so, he made it again

another vessel, as seemed good to the potter to make it.

—Jeremiah 18:6–7 (KJV)

INTRODUCTION

I N THIS BOOK, Broken: The Confession of the Clay , we will endeavor to discover that there are Principles behind everything that God does, that it’s always for the good of them who love God, and to them who are called according to His purpose. Many believe, when they are being broken, the anger of God is being expressed; and when the application of His wrath is commenced, it is deemed as punishment in their lives.

I want to show you, to the contrary, that God will break you to force you into a nature of obedience. It isn’t always to punish you but, sometimes, to correct you. God was not demoting me but, rather, promoting me into His divine purpose, for my life. Be entirely assured that the most painful and difficult moments in my life have been the seasons when God Himself was breaking me. I was not excited about it; in fact, when I revert my memory to those days when I was in the throes of God’s fashioning me, they were the most uncomfortable times of my life. It was difficult to understand at first what was going on with me, nor did I think I would ever get to the point that I’m at now. But the revelation that I received from my time on the spiritual threshing floor was that God had his hands on me. I was like the clay on the wheel, and the relationship between the two is never enjoyable. It is filled with continuous, unending revolutions, tugging and clawing, as God tries to work with that stubborn clay and conform it into His desire, while extracting the clay from his old nature unto a new vessel.

Jesus Himself went through the same process of being broken in the book of Matthew, chapter 4, when after he came up from being baptized and God announced, This is my beloved son in whom I am well pleased, He was led away into the wilderness by the Spirit of God to be tempted by the devil. There, Satan caught Jesus at His most vulnerable moment, after fasting for forty days and nights, when He was hungry. Satan tempted Jesus by challenging Him to prove He was the Son of God by using His power to transform stones, into bread.

It seems like such a small order for someone who was both God and man, but Jesus had to resist the temptation. He could have done it. It would have been very easy for Him to turn those stones into bread—Satan knew that—and it wouldn’t have broken His fast. He who fed five thousand men, not counting the women and children, with two fish and five barley loaves. He had that kind of power, to transform inanimate objects into animate objects. But no, there was a much deeper significance here. Jesus needed to provide an example for all those who would come after Him, that children of the Highest God do not practice following Satan’s leadership.

Jesus said to Satan, I was there, and beheld you fall like lightning from heaven, and I’m going to rely on the Word of God to carry me through this wilderness experience. He lifted himself and said, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God" (see Matt. 4).

Well, there was no great galactical and phenomenal announcement of my association with God, nor was there a designation of my purpose in the world. So being on the wheel just as Jesus was, I was humbled into submission to endure temptation as Christ did, and was ready to perform a greater work for the Kingdom of Heaven, just as Jesus was. Therefore, I am also an overcomer, even as Jesus overcame. Many people are not unlike me and share their dislike for being broken. I fought against the process for many years, but I learned that the lesson my God was teaching me always preceded testing time. That I must go through the teaching process over and over again, until I learned what it was He was teaching me. Once the lesson is learned—that it will be His way and not my way—then I can say within my heart, not my will but thy will be done. When that lesson registers in my spirit, what follows is God’s greatest work performed in my life!

In this book, you will discover that Men and Women of God that are allured by wealth, fame, and prestige must show their devotion to God by how they respond to the mighty hand of God and what His desires are for each of our lives. Are you able to say, Thank You, Lord, even though you did not like the process, but you found the result to be glorious? The Heart of God is just, and it is in His Sovereign will to never put more on you than you can bear. He who started a good work in you will see it through.

For we know that all things work together for the good

of them who love the Lord and to them,

who are the called according to His Purpose.

—Romans 8:28 (KJV)

Thank you, Lord, for my hurts. Thank you, Lord, for my pain. Thank you, Lord, for the times when I suffered for your name’s sake. Thank you, Lord, for my times of loss and the times of my struggle. I had to learn that when I am weak, then am I made strong because God’s strength is made perfect in my weaknesses. But in every situation of brokenness, in every one of those instances of having to be disassembled was another opportunity for me to be shaped by the hand of the Almighty God and to be fashioned after His liking. God showed Himself to me in a much deeper way than I ever saw Him before. When I was in my adolescence, He made me know my ways from the ways of the world—that they were going to be different. God has purposed to bring every area of my life under complete subjection to His will, and He was going to continue to remove from me every hindrance that was keeping me from fully surrendering to His will and fully trusting Him. You see, God desires us to be successful, but He wants our success to be because of His love and direction, and not because of our own personal influence.

In John chapter twelve verse twenty-four, God lays out the blueprint for the foundation for His Principles behind Brokenness. He says, Verily, Verily I say unto you, except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abides alone: but if it dies, it brings forth much fruit. Brokenness is God’s method of dealing with a self-life. What is a self-life? It is the desire that is within you to live your life independent of God. Each of us has that certain little part in our lives that is off-limits to God. In those parts of our lives, we try to guard by posting a Do Not Disturb sign. But God desires access to every floor and every level of our lives. He cannot complete the work in the building when there are areas that are off-limits. We must expose every area! Even the area where that inner voice resides (carnal nature) that continues telling us, that we must live separated from the omniscience of God (see John 12:24). Jesus is saying, by God’s wisdom, that it will be necessary to install a system that would overturn the condemnation that man’s life was under. Man would need to be saved from eternal damnation, where he would be forever lost to God and separated from His love. It was imperative to God that He use that same man that was destined for hell to lead other men to the light, which is life eternal. Knowing the mental makeup of man, God foreknew that man would need an overhaul in his life to allow him to perform at his maximum performance level. The only way this could be accomplished would be for man to die to himself, so that he could come alive again unto God, and thereby he could become a fruitful giver to the Kingdom of God. Then man would need an example, someone who could demonstrate righteousness and endure tribulations, hardships, and persecutions, while showing man how to live above reproach. That person was Jesus the Christ, or the Anointed One. Through Jesus’s prayer life, He displayed how there could be perfect union and peace between a man and his God, only if man walked circumspectly before God, totally devoid of himself. So our brokenness is God’s way of ensuring that we are not so puffed up with pride, that we do not become overconfident in the flesh but be secure in the Spirit of God.

Take the illustration of a stallion or an unbroken horse. Observe how our lives are not much different than that of a horse in the hands of a trainer. Firstly, let’s discuss the horse, because without the horse, there would be no need for the horse trainer. The horse is a raw, untamed mass of untried and undisciplined will. He is beautiful, he is powerful, he is sleek, and he is carefree, made to run far distances at maximum speeds, because of its nostrils, without becoming deficient of free-flowing air to his lungs. But something about the horse renders it an incomplete specimen. It is incomplete in its abilities to reach its full potential. The horse trainer’s responsibility is to help the horse see what it can become. However, the horse, absent the horse trainer, will never reach its full potential. Breaking a horse can be dangerous to the trainer, because of the power of the horse. If the breaking is done incorrectly, that process can be deadly for both the horse and the trainer. He mustn’t break the horse’s spirit to run, but he wants to break the horse’s spirit of independence. When a horse is broken, he is really being brought under submission, thusly allowing it to reach its full potential. What will his purpose be? Some horses are used to run; some horses are used to plow; some are used to power carriages or chariots; other horses are used as beasts of burden; while other horses are used for showing, as in equestrian show horses. Whatever the purpose, the horse must be brought into submission so that it can reach the maximum potential of its capabilities. But one thing is true: in all its training and breaking, what you don’t want to do is you don’t want to rob a horse of its identity. You would not want a horse to learn how to retrieve a newspaper. Retrieving the paper is something that’s within a dog’s training potential. You wouldn’t want to train a horse to put on an astronaut’s suit and test equipment that will take you to the moon; that is within the chimpanzee’s maximum potential. You want a horse to remain true to its calling and perform like a horse, and that, to its capacity.

Then there is the trainer, who is responsible for breaking the horse. It is the horse’s first confrontation with structure. The trainer is important because he must bring the horse along, who wants to run free, so it will become satisfied with becoming a service animal and loving to perform in that capacity. The trainer will experience the horse’s resistance. That horse will pull, buck, kick, be noncompliant with demands. It will throw the trainer off his back at every opportunity. He fights at every end. Its objective is to return to the wild, where he has no master, uninhibited by the laws of humanity.