“BREAKTHROUGH TWENTY – TEN:
BECOMING SUCCESSFUL SAINTS”
Mike Silva has preached the gospel to some 14 million people in 15 different countries around the world. He has been a regular on the Promise Keepers circuit for the past 13 years. In his book Would You Like Fries With That, Silva wrote about a time in his life when he was new to the world of computers and found his computer running horribly sluggish and slow. He got so frustrated that he called up his friend who was a computer geek. His friend told him that the answer was very simple: run the disk defragmenter program that was already installed on his computer. The disk defragmenter, he was told, would take his files that were fragmented here and there throughout his computer and would bring them together, condense them, and clean them up. When Silva did this, he found that his computer ran successfully like new again.
What transpired here? Simply that the geek handed Silva the “key” to his computer salvation. He gave him a “breakthrough,” and the ironic thing is that what he needed was there all along. It was already programmed into his computer. Silva just needed someone to point him in the right direction in order for him to find his “breakthrough” and to be “successful” once again.
It’s obvious that we don’t need another New Year’s resolution. What we need is a New Year’s solution - an authentic, spiritual “breakthrough” so that we can be a “successful saint” in Twenty-Ten. Jesus wants us to be free, not fragmented, successful and not sluggish.
If you are looking for the freedom and breakthrough like Jesus talked about in Luke 4:18 and if you want Christ to destroy the devil’s works in your life as stated in I John 3:8, then you’re in the right place this today. The good news is that the “program” for the breakthrough you need has already been created, installed, and ready for you to use. I’m just going to be the “geek” who’s going to help you find it and run it so that you can be the successful saint in Twenty-Ten that God wants you to be.
The breakthrough that frees people to become “successful saints” begins when we come under God’s authority, accept His will for our lives, and live everyday in Christ. If people don’t begin here, they remain in bondage. There will be no breakthrough and no real “success” in this life or in the life to come.
One of the most obvious and yet overlooked aspects about the
The problem is that most saints remain fragmented, frustrated, and fearful instead of successful because we define “success” in all kinds of ways except the right way. For instance, SuccessConsciousness.com has this whole list of ways that you can define success.
It is growth, development, improvement and getting better.
It is achieving what you have set out to do.
Getting good grades at school.
Passing your driving test.
Getting the job you wanted.
You feel it when someone you love tells you that he/she loves you too.
It is the pleasant and powerful feeling of achievement.
You experience it when you win or earn a large sum of money.
When you see your garden blooming.
When you fix a broken instrument with your own hands.
It is promotion at work.
Shedding a few surplus pounds.
Seeing your business prospering.
Becoming famous.
All of these sound good and are admirable, but they miss the definition of success that will give us the breakthroughs in Twenty-Ten we need in order to be successful saints for the Savior.
I was surprised and then focused this past week when I was prompted by the Spirit to look up the word “success” in the Dictionary. For when I did, I discovered that “success” comes from the word “succeed” which in turn is derived from the Latin word succedere, which means to go beneath or under, follow after.
So there it was, all spelled out by God and Daniel Webster that the key to being a successful Christian hinges on who or what you “go beneath” or “go under” or “follow after” and not necessarily if you shed a few pounds this year or see your business prosper.
The breakthrough that leads Christians in becoming successful saints in all kinds of areas in their life begins with going beneath, going under, and following after the right person. True success is not defined by some standard that some geek or religious guru holds up to you. True success comes to those who come under, come beneath, and who accept the invitation to new life from the carpenter from
The apostle Paul got this point right and conveyed it to the Ephesian Christians at the outset of his letter to them. And if there was ever a successful Christian, it was Paul.
Notice, if you will, how Paul repeats over and over again that he has come under God’s authority, accepted God’s will for his life, and was following a life that was a life “in Christ.” Look at how many times Paul repeats the words “in Christ,” “in the Beloved,” or “in Him” in just the opening 14 verses of Ephesians. If my math is correct, he says it 9 times.
When it came to living under and following the “will” of God, Paul refers to it 4 times.
I believe that God wants us to victoriously breakthrough whatever barriers, walls, habits, hang-ups, or blockages are from our past or in our present so that we can be successful saints. But we can’t breakthrough WITHOUT being “in Christ,” which literally means being under His authority, submitted to His will, and following after His word.
Success is not defined by WHAT you stand for
but by WHO you stand under.
Breaking through barriers, bad habits, unforgiveness, bitterness, spiritual laziness, fear, financial concerns, and marital and family problems comes as we come under Christ.
The reason why so many of us have failed at breakthrough attempts in the past is that we tried to do it on our own or we’ve tried to do it by material means and under earthly powers.
In the book The Shack, God the Father (a.k.a., “Papa”) reveals this fact to the central character Mack, informing him that freedom (in other words, all breakthroughs) “is a process that happens inside a relationship with [Jesus]. Then all that stuff you feel churnin’ around inside will start to work its way out” (p. 95.)
Inside this personal relationship with Jesus Christ, there is breakthrough and there is success. Outside this relationship, there is fragmentation, frustration, fear, failure, and no freedom.
Success is not defined by WHAT you stand for
but by WHO you stand under.
When the Lord is at the head of your march, you’ll always breakthrough.
In her book, The Breaker Anointing, Christian author and teacher Barbara Yoder picks up on these words from Micah and concludes: “God wants to show up as the master of breakthroughs with the anointing to accomplish His purposes for every new season in which He leads us” (p. 21.)
Yoder goes on to add that our God is not some sort of wishy-washy deity when it comes to breaking through the barriers that bind us. No, our God, she says, is a “gate-crashing, wall-breaking, obstacle-removing God” (p. 25) and that “breakthrough is something that we cannot achieve on our own. It requires divine intervention” (p. 26).
Silva could not breakthrough the sluggishness of his computer without the divine intervention of his geek friend.
Mack could not breakthrough his pain and anger without the divine intervention of Christ.
Micah and the people of
You and I cannot breakthrough the barriers that hold us back and hold us in without the same divine intervention. For successful breakthroughs do not happen outside a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. It happens inside that relationship by coming under God’s authority, accepting His will for our lives, and living everyday in Him and for Him.
That’s how breakthroughs are accomplished. That’s the ticket to successful, spiritual defragmentation.
Ephesians 1:2-3
When we do the above, we receive from God the grace, peace, and spiritual blessings, which naturally come when breakthroughs occur and which are indispensable for Christians as they move forward in becoming victorious and “successful saints” for the King and for His kingdom.
It was a New Year, a new season, and a new sigh of relief from what commentators call the “Buckeye Nation” when the final gun sounded at the Rose Bowl on New Year’s Day. A certain sort of breakthrough had occurred, hadn’t it?
When come under Christ and follow His lead in breaking through the barriers that bind us, the spiritual by-product will always be the experience of God’s grace, peace, and spiritual blessing. Paul was forever opening his letters with passing on to the saints what God had given to him in his breakthrough moments: “Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the lord Jesus Christ. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places.”
When people come under Christ and find their breakthroughs in Him, I have found that there isn’t a lot of hoopla or some emotional high and excitement. What people find is a calm, a deep sense of God’s grace and peace. There is a serenity, a defragmentation, and things feel like they’re running smoothly again.
If this is the breakthrough you desire, then I’ll see you next Sunday to get at it.
The prophet Micah in the Old Testament got this point and tried to help the people of
Ephesians 1:1-2, 4-5, 9, 11
As we begin another New Year together and another new decade for that matter, some of us no doubt feel somewhat spiritually sluggish and slow instead of successful and smooth. Life feels “fragmented,” or maybe disconnected. We have files on certain people, events, or issues in our lives that need to be cleaned up and, in most cases, just deleted altogether.
