Breakthroughs often follow breakdowns. All of us love breakthroughs right? We love spiritual breakthroughs when God answers a prayer or some miracle happens. We love breakthroughs, but in my experience, those are typically preceded by breakdowns.
In the Old Testament, The Lord often didn’t deliver Israel until the people were broken down. What did they need to break down? In this case, some Baals and Ashtoreths that were idols in their lives. I don’t doubt that many of them thought that they were serving the Lord and worshiping the Lord, but they had their little Baals on the side.
Listen, I think what we need to understand is that we have a loving God who is a jealous God. He is a jealous God for all of us. He doesn’t want part of us, He wants all of us. That means that sometimes we have to go through the process of God breaking us down.
When I look back at the setbacks in my life, I think part of what God was doing was breaking me down emotionally, spiritually, and motivationally. The Lord sometimes reveals your true motivations and not all of them are right? That hurts, but here’s what I’ve learned. I’ve learned not just to endure but to embrace some of the breaking down that God does in my life. Because when God breaks me down emotionally, here is what I believe He is doing, He is expanding my emotional capacity to handle more stress!
Awesome! How exciting! You want to be used by The Lord? You want Him to expand your influence? We all want the promotion and the paycheck that comes with it, but you know what else comes with that? More stress! So we are not seeking the stress, per say, that tends to be the thing that we put up with for everything else that comes with it, but what I’m suggesting is that there are situations where God expands our emotional capacity.
Motivationally, He breaks us down and purifies our motives to make sure that what we are doing, we are doing for the glory of God. Spiritually, when I’ve faced ministry setbacks, just gut-wrenching disappointment that came with it, I’ll tell you what happened. It broke down my faith. Have you ever been there? Those moments where you think God is leading and you are sure this was it, then what?
The Lord was breaking down that faith. Why would the Lord do that? There are a lot of parallels between the physical realm and the spiritual realm. Hopefully some of you know this, when you go to the gym, in essence, you are trying to build yourself up, but how do you do it? You do it be breaking down your muscles. That’s the only way you can grow stronger. You’ve got to break them down.