A Deeper Perspective of Breakthrough

On day 1, we talked about how we often think the walls and hindrances we experience have the ability to stop God from fulfilling His amazing plan for our lives. But God’s Spirit is about to give us a huge change in perspective.

What is that changed outlook? Here it is: our walls don’t have to come down for us to experience God’s goodness and the fulfillment of His purposes. We just need our spiritual eyes opened to receive a deeper understanding of what breakthrough is really about. If we have an accurate picture of breakthrough, we won’t fall into a state of heartsickness because of deferred hope.

Because their difficult circumstances haven’t changed, some people have come to the point where they don’t believe God anymore, they don’t pray anymore, and they don’t even want anyone else to pray for them.

All of us love instant change, but not all change is instant. We love the instant miracle, but not all miracles are instant. We love the instant breakthrough, but not all breakthroughs are instant. We must understand this truth: when God gives us breakthrough over a period of time, it is just as supernaturally transforming as—usually, even more so than—the immediate breakthroughs we experience, as wonderful as those are.

Why? Because breakthrough is not meant to be a onetime event where we receive from God and then essentially go on as we did before, with merely one problem solved. Breakthrough is about a transformation of our entire life so that we can have a closer relationship with God and advance in His kingdom purposes. His plans for us are much larger than we can see right now because there’s a work He wants to do within us that will have eternal impact.

Growing over the Wall

If you feel stuck in your circumstances, recognize that your breakthrough is still unstoppable because of the God you serve. It will come to you in the same way it came to Joseph, whose father, Jacob, prophesied about his life in this way:

Joseph is a fruitful bough, a fruitful bough by a well (spring or fountain), whose branches run over the wall. Skilled archers have bitterly attacked and sorely worried him; they have shot at him and persecuted him. But his bow remained strong and steady and rested in the Strength that does not fail him, for the arms of his hands were made strong and active by the hands of the Mighty God of Jacob, by the name of the Shepherd, the Rock of Israel. (Genesis 49:22–24)

This passage begins, “Joseph is a fruitful bough, a fruitful bough by a well (spring or fountain), whose branches run over the wall.” Here is a prophetic picture of Joseph as a tree, planted by a well, completely surrounded by walls. Joseph saw a lot of walls in his life! He saw the walls of the pit, which his brothers threw him into when they turned on him and betrayed him. He saw the walls of a life of bondage when he was sold to Potiphar by the Egyptian slave traders. He saw the walls of the dungeon after he was unjustly accused of wrongdoing and imprisoned.

For years, Joseph faced those walls. How should you respond when, like Joseph, you’re praying for deliverance but you still see the walls of an enclosure around you? When you think you’re being delivered, only to be sold as a slave and put into another walled-up place? What do you do when your life is surrounded by the walls of others’ jealousy or false accusations, or by the limitations that other people and circumstances have put on you? You may be thinking, “God, how am I ever going to climb over or break through this wall? How am I going to become what You’ve called me to be? Please, take down the wall!”

When the Walls Don’t Move, We Can

Often, when we pray for a breakthrough, we are praying about what we perceive to be the specific limitation imposed upon us—whether it is a hindrance, roadblock, struggle, or person—and we’re asking for that external issue to be removed. Again, we think that if somehow the situation would change, we would receive our breakthrough and fully enter into the destiny God has for us.

But notice that Joseph is described as a fruitful tree by a well whose branches “run over the wall.”

What does this tell us? That when the walls don’t move, we can.

We can grow in the midst of our surroundings. We can change. We can still be fruitful. How? God will cause our roots to go so deep and our branches to reach so high that we will grow right over the walls the enemy has tried to put around us! When your roots grow deep in God’s presence and God’s Word, no matter what walls surround your life, your tree will keep growing. The limbs will keep getting higher and higher. Because you’ve been planted by the well, your branches will bear much fruit. And no matter what obstacles the enemy has constructed in order to hem you in, you will keep moving over them.

This means that before you can receive an outward breakthrough, you have to experience an inward breakthrough. That is what will bring lasting change and freedom in your life. As long as you keep your heart connected to God, you will have access to a source of life that is outside your natural circumstances. It is a heavenly source that comes from the well of God’s living waters inside you.

The prophetic picture of Joseph’s life is that of a fruitful tree—not a barren tree, a dead tree, or even a small tree, but an abundant tree—planted by a well. This image is similar to what we read in Psalm 1:3 about the person who delights in God and His Word: “And he shall be like a tree firmly planted [and tended] by the streams of water, ready to bring forth its fruit in its season; its leaf also shall not fade or wither; and everything he does shall prosper [and come to maturity].”

The secret to fruitfulness is not about removing the walls that surround your life. It’s about the well or streams of living water that you’re planted next to. The breakthrough will start as your roots go deep into that well-watered, rich soil.

Always keep in mind that you can develop your gifts and become mature, personally and spiritually, even if the people around you never do. If your wall is another person, don’t wait for that person to change. Don’t make your breakthrough dependent on someone else’s attitudes or actions. Don’t make your breakthrough dependent on a situation that is out of your control. You change.

Remember, no individual, circumstance, or demon can stop God’s blessing and purpose for your life. You are going to be radically blessed and favored by the Lord. His dream for your life will be fulfilled, and His word to you will come to pass. Even if a situation remains the same, you don’t have to be limited or confined by it. Rather than continuing to try to plow straight ahead into it, hitting your head on it time and time again, you can “break through” that wall by going up and over it.