Breakthrough Is Preceded By Breakdown & Breakout

Let this endurance complete its work so that you may be fully mature, complete, and lacking in nothing.-James 1:4

 I have learned that breakthrough comes through breakdown and breakout..  The kingdom of God is paradoxical compared to the world.  To become big, you must become small; and to live you must die.

People who want a break through, but are refusing to have a break down, never break out.  The Christian life is a life of transformation.  To be transformed, you have to give up something and leave it behind. 

A nervous breakdown is when someone falls to pieces.  A breakdown in God is when we put our sinful nature to death,

So put to death the parts of your life that belong to the earth, such as sexual immorality, moral corruption, lust, evil desire, and greed (which is idolatry).  The wrath of God is coming upon disobedient people because of these things.  You used to live this way, when you were alive to these things.  But now set aside these things, such as anger, rage, malice, slander, and obscene language.  Don’t lie to each other. Take off the old human nature with its practices  and put on the new nature, which is renewed in knowledge by conforming to the image of the one who created it.  -Colossians 3:5-10

To break-through, we must put to death, set aside, and take off the old human nature; then put on the new nature.  Breakdown and breakout of the old will take you to spiritual breakthrough.

The Christian life comes from one place or source and that is Christ.  You only get the Christian life by spending time with God.  It is personal.  It does not work to be a crowd member and to see God from a distance.  You have to get real close to God and learn to know Him.  He wants all of you and wants you to be all filled with Him.

Do you remember the time when Jesus said to the crowd following him that unless they ate his flesh and drank his blood, they would not have his life in them?

Jesus said to them, “I assure you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you.  Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise them up at the last day.  My flesh is true food and my blood is true drink.  Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me and I in them.  As the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever eats me lives because of me.  This is the bread that came down from heaven. It isn’t like the bread your ancestors ate, and then they died. Whoever eats this bread will live forever.”  Jesus said these things while he was teaching in the synagogue in Capernaum.

Many of his disciples who heard this said, “This message is harsh. Who can hear it?”

Jesus knew that the disciples were grumbling about this and he said to them, “Does this offend you?  What if you were to see the Son of Man going up where he was before?  The Spirit is the one who gives life and the flesh doesn’t help at all. The words I have spoken to you are spirit and life.  Yet some of you don’t believe.”   -John 6:53-63

I think that what Jesus meant is that the Christian life will not work, if you keep him at arms length.  You have to partake of him.  The first step towards breakthrough is to partake of him, in your life (time). 

Power for life was released through Jesus' life.  His life in your life brings breakthrough.  We start over in him and have new life, born from above life, like a child.

Power for breakthrough was released through Jesus' death on the cross and his rising from the dead.  Sin was broken down, so we can break out through Jesus death on the cross.  The cross is an essential part of the Christian life.  The way in is the way on.

There is no cross-less Christianity.  The Cross is at the center.  There is no breakthrough without your cross.  We each must take up our crosses and deny ourselves and follow Jesus to get breakthrough (Matt. 16:24-25, Mark 8:34-5, Luke 9:23-24). 

If you are seeking breakthrough without taking up your cross and denying self, it is like driving a car without wheels or trying to fly without wings.  There is always the opportunity to, "go fake".  There is the false and the counterfeit. There is the short-cut that bypasses His and your cross.

Breakthrough does not involve getting the old man into the new place.  The old man must die and the new life in Christ is what goes forward into breakthrough.  We don't clean the old nature up and dress it in Christ.

God wants to transform each of us, to make us complete or whole in Christ.  We cooperate with God and discover who God has uniquely made us each to be in Christ.  God has specially and specifically designed each one of us for a purpose. The only way to breakthrough is transformation which involves intimacy with God (into-me-see).

The way in is the way through and the way on: God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit in your secret life.