Outgrowing Oppressive Yokes

When we experience the process of breakthrough by “growing over our wall,” we can actually outgrow the oppressive yoke of our situation, whether it came from the enemy, other people, or our own poor choices. God’s anointing will completely demolish that yoke.

The Yoke Will Be Annihilated

During the time of Isaiah the prophet, the Israelites were in captivity, living under the oppression of the Assyrians. But God sent them this message through the prophet:

And it shall be in that day that the burden of [the Assyrian] shall depart from your shoulders, and his yoke from your neck. The yoke shall be destroyed because of fatness [which prevents it from going around your neck]. (Isaiah 10:27)

The word “destroyed” in this verse can also be translated as “annihilated.” The yoke isn’t just broken—it is annihilated! This indicates it is past the point of return. God doesn’t want to temporarily relieve you of a hindrance but rather to demolish its effects so that they can’t return to your life. This is what it means to be free in Christ. “So if the Son liberates you [makes you free men], then you are really and unquestionably free” (John 8:36).

The word that is rendered “fatness” in Isaiah 10:27 is one of the meanings of a Hebrew word that some translations have rendered as “anointing” or “anointing oil.” The Amplified Bible explains that this “fatness” prevents the yoke from being able to go around your neck. Therefore, when God’s anointing breaks a yoke in your life, it means a lot more than you going up to the altar at a church service and having a limitation or an oppression broken off of you by a touch of God’s presence. Rather, you have an abiding anointing within you that causes you to grow day by day, and it brings healing and deliverance as you walk out God’s Word in your life.

Again, I believe in instant breakthroughs. I’ve encountered God’s tangible presence, at various times in my life, touching me and breaking off hindrances, bringing healing, deliverance, and freedom. But God doesn’t want us to go back under our yokes once we leave that place of His tangible presence. After having a touch from the Lord, how many times have we put those yokes back on because they still fit us?

It’s not just about having the yoke broken but about our becoming so “fat” in God, so “fat” in the Spirit, that the yoke no longer fits us! It’s about having our necks increase to the point where we have “outgrown” the yoke. When this happens, the anointing has transformed us from the inside out, and the enemy or another person can no longer put that yoke on us.

Feeding on God

How do we cooperate in the process of becoming “fat” to outgrow our yokes? By eating the food of the Spirit. If we want a neck that’s “fat,” spiritually speaking, we need to feed on God’s presence and Word. There are areas of our mind and flesh where breakthrough will occur in a process over time. As we are changed on the inside, we are transformed in the way we think, we are able to walk in the Spirit more and more, and we learn to say no to the flesh and yes to God. That is how we become mature sons and daughters of our heavenly Father.

We feed on God’s presence through praise, worship, prayer, meditating on His Word, and fasting (both abstaining from food in order to pray and seek Him, and engaging in the fasting of Isaiah 58:6, which calls us to carry His righteousness and justice to others).

This means, for example, that we choose to praise God even when we don’t feel like it, because if we wait until we feel like it, it often doesn’t happen! But when we start to praise God as a lifestyle, our neck will grow fatter as we’re changed through the anointing.

In God’s presence, we can receive a supernatural hunger for His Word. When I was a young teenager, my mother had a debilitating disease that caused her to be bedridden, but God miraculously healed her. After her healing, she came under an anointing where, for three years, she read the New Testament seven hours a day. She essentially went to her own Bible school. She spent three years reading from Matthew to Revelation, Matthew to Revelation, Matthew to Revelation. My mother read the Scriptures until their words of life and faith grew so deep in her that she was rooted and established in God’s truth. I learned to hunger for God’s Word from her example.

We can’t just reach out to God one day a week at church on Sunday morning and expect that this alone is going to cause us to spiritually grow up. No matter what food we may receive at church, we need to worship God and get into His Word for ourselves. Not everyone is able to read the Bible for seven hours a day, but we can make dedicated time each day to spend in the Word so that we can be established in it.

This will help to keep us from living only according to how we feel, where we say, “I feel like being victorious today, so I will believe God,” or “I feel like doing the right thing today, so I will read the Word.” No, we have to eat so much of God’s Word and become so filled with His anointing that the anointing doesn’t just temporarily touch us but instead permanently changes us. Through God’s Word, we plant ourselves in His presence and let Him grow us over our walls and expand us to break the yokes in our lives.

If you’re struggling with something, start meditating on God’s Word, praying the Word, and speaking the Word. When you do this, the anointing will start working in you, and your “neck” will grow larger than your yoke. This is a lifestyle of living in the power of the Holy Spirit and the anointed Word of God. This is how breakthrough happens! It is not just an immediate breakthrough but a lifelong breakthrough.