(Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture quotations are taken from the Amplified Bible, Classic Edition.)

When the Mountain Doesn’t Move

Living in a Hard Place

The Bible tells us about a destitute widow who was experiencing a very difficult, unfair, and painful situation, so she appealed to the prophet Elisha for help:

A certain woman of the wives of the sons of the prophets cried out to Elisha, saying, “Your servant my husband is dead, and you know that your servant feared the Lord. And the creditor is coming to take my two sons to be his slaves.” (2 Kings 4:1 NKJV)

A godly man who was a prophet had died. Now, his widow had been left in a place of financial hardship, unable to pay for basic living expenses. Not only was she grieving the loss of her husband, but she also faced the added stress of not having any money coming in to provide for her needs and those of her children. The creditor had just told her, “Unless you pay your debts, I’m going to take your two sons to be slaves.” What more could this woman lose? Everything was being stripped from her. She was experiencing loss upon loss.

Are you facing a situation that seems like an absolute dead end? You may be dealing with what look like insurmountable odds or a situation that seems as if it will never change. Perhaps it is a circumstance outside your control, a difficult relationship, an ongoing challenge in your job, a financial crisis, someone’s unrelenting negative behavior toward you, or a recurring personal weakness. You might be plagued by memories of demeaning words that were spoken to you so many times it seems impossible to get them out of your mind. Or maybe you’re trying to overcome a false belief system that is ingrained in your thinking and keeps you in a place of limitation.

You’ve been praying for a breakthrough, and you’ve been doing what you can to change the situation, but you haven’t been able to solve it through your own abilities or resources. In fact, when it comes to breakthrough, you feel like you’ve gone as high as you can go as if you’ve hit a spiritual ceiling. So, you think, “There’s nothing more God can do in this area of my life. It’s just going to stay the same.”

God sometimes eliminates the obstacles from our lives immediately and dramatically, like He did when He brought down the walls of Jericho, removing those hindrances so the Israelites could defeat the city and move forward into the promised land. (See Joshua 6.) In such instances, God crushes the walls of limitation or pushes them out of our way, giving us instant victory.

We all love that type of breakthrough. I have experienced a number of these breakthroughs, and you may have too. God’s sovereign hand can deliver at any moment, and we should live in expectation that He will move in that way.

But what about the times when the walls stay put, even after we’ve prayed, spoken God’s Word, and stood in faith? In this devotional, we will explore what we can do when the mountain doesn’t move, when God’s promises don’t seem to be fulfilled, when the breakthrough doesn’t come right away. We know that God is a healing God. We know that He is a delivering God. We know that He is a freeing God. We know that He is an unstoppable God. So, why doesn’t a breakthrough happen?

At these times, our minds may be filled with thoughts like these: “Will God ever fulfill the word He has spoken to me?” “Will healing ever come?” “Will that stubborn area in my life ever change?” “Will my marriage ever be transformed?” “Will I ever step into the full destiny God has planned for me?”

This is one of the most difficult situations a believer can experience in life, and we need to acknowledge that, yes, in the natural, we are in a hard place. We long for deliverance so we can experience relief. We’re desperate for a way out, just like the widow from 2 Kings who was about to lose her two sons. Some of us have had to deal with a number of imposing walls in our lives.

When it looks like we are surrounded by impossibilities, hindrances, and obstacles, it’s easy to feel depressed and want to give in to the limitations of the present moment. We’re tempted to lose our vision and hope for the future. We sit down in the midst of our difficulties, feeling defeated.

If you are in this situation, I want to encourage you to rise up! Keep believing! Don’t get stuck in an earthly perspective of what you are seeing in your life. You don’t have to remain in a mindset of panic or loss. God is present with you, even when the walls around your life aren’t instantly removed. He is mightily at work to bring about the change and breakthrough you long for. It may just come about in a different way than you expected.

Keep Holding On

Maybe you have a vision and a dream regarding something the Lord has put on your heart to do. God loves it when you have a vision and a dream. He loves it when you seek His purposes for your life, and when you have faith for something bigger than yourself that only He can accom­plish. God has a special reason for your life. You have a heavenly purpose. However, when a breakthrough doesn’t appear to come, the enemy wants you to think there is no purpose for your life, so he will whisper negative ideas into your mind, reinforcing your own doubts:

“You’re too old. It’s too late.”

“You’re never going to see God’s promise fulfilled.”

“You’ve already been waiting a long time. Things won’t ever change.”

“Look how God is using that other person’s life. You don’t have what they have, so don’t even imagine He can use you in a similar way.”

“God has forgotten about you.”

Even as you experience these mental attacks, God wants you to keep holding on to that vision and dream. What we perceive as limitations aren’t really limitations because of the reality of where we live in the Spirit—in the heavenly realm with Christ. Instead, the things that we believe are hindering our future are actually helping us to get there! We’re just focusing on the wrong things.

As we will see later in this devotional, this is exactly what the widow learned from Elisha, and it enabled her to receive her breakthrough. When we focus on the walls, we empower those walls to keep us in a place of limitation. We think the walls have the ability to stop God from fulfilling His amazing plan for our lives. But God’s Spirit is about to give us a massive perspective change. In the next devotional, we will discover what that changed outlook is.