"Your breakthrough is coming"... "This is the year of breakthrough"... "You have a breakers anointing".. Whoa that's so cool!! At least it sounds cool but I haven't the slightest idea what that really means. It all sounds wonderful and I have said yes and amen to each and every one of these prayers, prophesies and encouragements in my last 2 years attending ministry school in Bethel church. Through many disappointments and discouragements in my time here, I held on to that promise that breakthrough was coming. The bigger the disappointment and heartache, the bigger the breakthrough that I would receive. This has been my philosophy and way to remain hopeful through difficulty. However I was beginning to get disillusioned. It was all promises with little or no fulfilment. I was reaching for the mountaintop when I was still hanging out in the valley.
It hasn't been all terrible. I have had moments that I can point to and say, that was a great day or I really shone in that moment. It just has often felt like a slow slog and not a significant breakthrough. I recently began to question why it always seemed like a battle for me and never an easy victory.
I came to realise that I needed a mindset shift. I stopped wondering how God would launch me to the mountaintop experience of breakthrough and started to seek him out in the valley. I discovered that it's often in our most broken and vulnerable place that we receive our breakthrough. I was looking for a moment in time that would make everything great. Make me feel like I was winning and thriving in life and yet God wanted to meet me in the valley. My definition of breakthrough being a 'one moment in time event' was keeping me locked in a perpetual state of disappointment and I needed to change.
So what am I saying? I started to see my story of breakthrough as a process and journey. God can bring transformation in a moment. Look at Saul' radical transformation but often change is a process. I stumbled upon a scripture in Deuteronomy that God highlighted to me this week. Deuteronomy 7:22 says 'The LORD your God will drive out those nations before you little by little. You will not be allowed to eliminate them all at once, or the wild animals will multiply around you.'
Wow!! Their enemies were driven out before them little by little. It wasn't a huge moment in time of deliverance or breakthrough but a process. The second part of the verse explains why that was so. Eliminating them all at once would have resulted in the wild animals multiplying against them.
What a perspective shift! It is Gods kindness towards me that he has released breakthrough in small pieces. He knows my heart more than I do. I wanted to be air dropped onto the mountaintop but he wanted to walk by my side out of the valley as we journey together to the top. He is near to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit (Psalm 34:18). He meets us in our pain and walks us out to freedom. This has become my story of redemption. It's beautiful, full of Gods kindness and nearness. It may not have happened in the way I expected but as I embraced Gods goodness in my pain, he surprised me with his glory and transformed me. Giving God my pain and watching him create in me something beautiful has been my greatest success story. Now that is breakthrough!!
No comments:
Post a Comment