Breakthrough - Making Room for Breakthrough, Part 1

This is not all there is.

I mean, do you believe that? Do you believe that what you're experiencing today is not all there is? Now, what if I told you right now God is orchestrating events, circumstances, people, and relationships to bring about a breakthrough, a shift in the status quo, a fresh awakening in your heart of His Spirit, and that He wants you to get in on the action? The question is, will you be ready?

Find out. That's today. Welcome to this Edition of Living on the Edge with Chip Ingram. Living on the Edge features the Bible teaching of Chip Ingram, helping Christians live like Christians. I'm Dave Drouy, and we're in a series called Breakthrough, unleashing God's power into impossible situations. Chip's already given us the first step to breakthrough. In this program, he shows us a pattern that's common to all breakthroughs in the Bible and in church history, which means it'll apply to your breakthrough. I'm glad you're with us for this one because it's going to shed a lot of light on your personal pathway to breakthrough.

So let's get going, shall we? Here's Chip with his message, Making Room for Breakthrough. I have a little devotional called Magnificent Prayer about prayer that I read just about every morning, and I came across a quote that literally kind of energized my whole view of breakthrough. It's by a preacher of the 19th century. His name is Phillips Brooks, and he said this, Pray the largest prayers. You cannot think a prayer so large that God in answering it will not wish you had made it larger. Now, is that an amazing thought? You cannot pray a prayer that no matter how large it was, that after you have prayed it, God would wish that you would have made it larger.

And then I love the last nine. He says, Pray not for crutches, but for wings. Don't pray for a little help to get through the situation.

Pray to soar. And it just reminded me, God is good. I mean, God wants to bless you. He wants to intervene. He wants to take the most difficult situations, the most difficult relationships, the most amazing things that you couldn't fathom in your neighborhood and at your job and with your relatives and with your past and with your struggles.

And he wants to blow his power into him and change him. Can you imagine, would you just kind of lean back for a second and just let your mind imagine what it would be like? Can you imagine one of your neighbors knocking on the door and saying, you know something? We kind of known a little bit that you're one of those Christians. Would you lead a Bible study in our neighborhood?

We would like to discover who Jesus is. Or can you imagine going into work one day and you know the person that's a jerk, I mean the person that you wish would leave, you know coming in and saying, excuse me, could we talk? And you get over there and he goes, I was riding on the bus and some really weird looking person started talking to me and I just wanted him to go away and he talked about Jesus and life and eternal life and payment for my sin and I have no idea why I was listening. I found myself at a park bench later sitting down and I prayed to receive Christ and can you imagine that?

Can you imagine one of your relatives that I mean is just mean, cantankerous, that you just think there's no hope for? And having them calling you and saying, you know what, I've just trusted Christ. God really loves everyone. God can do anything. What would you want him to do?

What would you want him to do in your life? And maybe it's not a neighbor or a boss. Maybe it's like, you know, you've struggled with that alcohol, that porn addiction, the guilt from the past, from a divorce or an abortion. You know, just an issue inside where you know you just sense and you've tried a number of times and for you it's a spiritual issue. It's not even a weight issue.

It's just you keep eating food when you know you're not really hungry and you keep hitting it, hitting it, hitting it and you're down on you and you live in shame. What would happen if the power of God was released in your life and then through your life? We're going to learn that he wants to do it but we're going to learn also that we have to make room. Isaiah 53 is the biggest breakthrough. God talks about a Messiah is going to come and liberate and bring light. A Messiah is going to come and he's going to bring life and forgiveness.

But in chapter 54, he says to Israel at a time when I mean their life is not going well and breakthrough doesn't even seem possible, he says this to them. Enlarge the place of your tent. Stretch out the curtains of your dwellings. Spare not. Lengthen your cords.

Strengthen your pegs. Why? For you will spread abroad to the right and to the left. Your descendants, I mean they're in captivity, your descendants are going to resettle cities and nations. God is going to use you. He's saying you need to make room for the huge and amazing blessing beyond what you can imagine is coming.

And what I want you to do is that you and I have to do that in our private lives. We've got to do it in our relational lives and we need to make room even in the church to let God work. So what is a breakthrough?

It's an offensive thrust that penetrates and carries beyond a defensive line in warfare. We're in a war and it's a war for your soul and it's a war for the future. But breakthrough isn't something we wait around and hope God will do someday, someway, sometime. God has promised and wants to.

It's something we do. Only he makes it happen but there's initiative on our part. It's an act or instance of breaking through an obstacle. So breakthroughs have to do with there's resistance. It's difficult. There's a barrier and breakthroughs always have a sudden advance. Change happens.

There's a difference. We find in our personal lives or in a group or in a church or in a city or as we see globally, there's a great need and the great need is caused by great sin and sin is just missing the mark. It's about doing life God's way and sin always leads to great bondage. People become slaves.

Come slaves of food, slaves of money, slaves of sex, slaves of power. Breakthroughs come when people not realize they're in pain and difficulty and they're bad people and they don't measure up and God would never want them. Breakthroughs come when they understand the goodness and the kindness of God. It's the tolerance of God. It's the love of God. It's the patience of God. Romans chapter 2 tells us that leads us to repentance, to a change of mind. I want you to know that whatever breakthrough you're struggling with, whatever breakthrough you would long to see happen in your family, the breakthrough will come not when you're down on yourself and I can't measure up.

I need to get with the program. The breakthrough will come when you can begin to grasp that God is waiting with open arms and He loves you and He loves people that you don't think much of and He cares about them. And He literally wants you and me to be agents of kindness and love. It doesn't mean there aren't boundaries. It doesn't mean there isn't truth. It means that you aren't the judge God is.

And the judgment of God by and large is just the consequences of people's behavior. And then God over and over and over and over, He does it in individuals. He does it in families. He does it in small groups. Historically He does it in churches. At times He does it in whole cities. And then there's times where we've even seen it in the last 40 or 50 years.

He does it in nations. Where there's a revolution of breakthrough and the kindness and the goodness of God. God's deliverance comes through a clear, strong vision.

Of what? Of God's goodness and mercy. Notice where does this clear, strong vision of God's goodness and mercy? It's birthed in ordinary people that meet the great needs by unleashing God's power in impossible situations.

What we're talking about is not for special people that get in stained glass someday. What we're talking about is the God of the universe that wants to take the person that's sitting in your seat and get you to believe and to trust that He's so good and so kind and so willing and so powerful that He would use an ordinary person like you to receive that and then pass it on. If what I just said is true and it's born out in Scripture, it's born out in church history, how does breakthrough actually happen? How does it happen? This isn't theory. This isn't what ought or should or maybe could happen someday, someway.

How does it happen? The answer is the pathway to breakthrough involves three things. But I want you to know the pathway to breakthrough involves God's sovereign work in the world first and foremost. Then we're going to see it's His sovereign work in His people. And finally, a little bit later, we'll see it's His sovereign work through His people.

Let's take them one at a time. First of all, God's sovereign work in the world. When you look at how God has broken through in seasons in the Old Testament, in captivity, in the coming of Christ, in major things like the Reformation, when you see what happened in China or in Korea, in South America or in Africa in the last 90 or 100 years, the pattern is all the same. Number one, there's external pressure. External pressure.

Stuff starts happening. Economies, politics, shifts, famine, plagues, difficulties. There's external pressure in the world.

Simultaneously, there's internal deterioration. This is a picture of the Roman Empire. God didn't just come at a certain time. Galatians 4 says, when the world was pregnant, when it was ready, when the world was ripe for a breakthrough, there was external pressure. There was ethnic divisions. There was problems with the economy.

There was Romans and Greek culture in conflict. And there was internal deterioration, infanticide, families, women being passed around, being divorced seven, eight, nine times. There was a global crisis, and into that breakthrough, Jesus came. And you see that pattern, God sovereignly works. We're going to talk about our responsibility, but, Jod, if you would, in the corner, Job 42 too. It's near the end of the book, and if you know the story of Job, he's been through a lot.

And he didn't know what was going on behind the scenes. But as he gets near to the end of the book and sees life for how it is, this is what Job says, I know, oh God, that you can do anything and that no purpose of yours can be thwarted. I will tell you this, no purpose of God will be thwarted in your life, in this country, in any nation, or in all of history. God is sovereignly at work, and he will take the air and the pain, the disobedience, the judgment, the faithfulness of people, and he aligns those things, and he brings about the velvet vice of external pressure. And then as the way people live begin to deteriorate and they realize they have need, he creates windows of crisis in individuals' lives, windows of crisis in groups and in churches and in cities and in nations. And when there's responsiveness, we make room. And when we make room, the Spirit of God blows with power, and he works in individuals, and revolutions occur. And we've seen it happen over and over and over.

Second, it's the sovereign work of God, not just in the world, but he always begins with his people. When you happen to be a follower of Christ for a while, after a while, what we start doing is, you know the problem is Hollywood. I mean, are they just putting out a bunch of lousy stuff or what? Or you know what, it's the government. I mean, let's have coffee and just talk about the government.

Or you know what, the educational sit, right? Or it's corporations. Or it's all those lazy people. What we tend to do is we find someone else somewhere where the problem is to blame, and I will tell you this. Here's God's perspective. Repentance always begins with the household of faith. Here's the principle. God must work deeply in you before he will work powerfully through you. That's always his agenda. I mean, he worked in Paul.

He worked in Peter. You look at what happened in China. He worked in people, external pressure, persecution, kicking the missionaries out. You look at Korea, a pagan nation. You look at what's happened in South America. You look at the last 90 or 100 years in Africa. At the current rate, there will be more black Christians than white Christians in the world because of the movement and the power of God. But he always starts in us.

He always puts his finger on what he wants to do in us. And so individuals have a breakthrough like an apostle Paul. And then a group has a breakthrough, like the church. And the early church breakthrough was to realize, can you imagine this? You mean God doesn't just love Jews? I mean, this was like hundreds of years of breakthrough.

He cares about them. And after that breakthrough, then you see communities impacted. And as it's rolled out of the New Testament, you go from the Jews to then the Samaritans, the mix breed. And then by chapter 10, it's the Gentiles. And what you see is a spontaneous movement of God and often centered around cities.

City movements are birthed, and nations are transformed. In 1857, it's an interesting story, and there's many more of these. But in 1857, morality in America was in the pits. If you know some of the research between 1857 and about 1890 or close to 1900, it went from about the average of seven kids to three kids because abortion was so widespread in America. And thanks, believe it or not, to the feminists and the American Medical Society, they said, how we're treating women, abortion was just basically birth control.

Pushed on women. And in 1857, with external pressures and internal deterioration, a group of people thought something needs to happen, and they started praying in New York City. And that little prayer meeting, they just began. They took three request answers, three request answers, three request answers. And all I can tell you is they made room for God.

And they said, you know, we've got a big problem, and this country is going down the tubes, and boy, there's all kind of issues, and it's family issues and moral issues and economic issues. And pretty soon, something happened, and thousands of people were taking their lunch hour all over New York and praying. And then pretty soon, it went to other major cities, and literally, statistically, millions of people came to Christ, and there was a reshifting and a rebalancing.

Why? Because God worked in his people. But when God works in his people, the litmus test is not that they get together and go, oh, I love Jesus now. We need everything Christian. I love being with Christian people, and let's read the Bible more, and I want to be at church not three times a week, but seven times a week. In fact, we'll have Christian bowling, and we'll have Christian dentists and Christian doctors and Christian recording artists and Christian everything. In fact, I'll Christian floss with a Christian toothbrush made by Christians who make great toothpaste. And what happens is the privatization and thinking that this movement of God is about our little world, and there's the bad people out there, and somehow that we are God's people totally misses everything God wants to do.

That's not a breakthrough. The litmus test of when the Spirit of God supernaturally works is he's orchestrating things in the world sovereignly, and then he begins to work in his people dynamically. And then his people get it, and they begin to deal with issues in their heart and their relationships, and then he works through them supernaturally. Notice, God's sovereign work through his people. Here's what happens.

There's life. And since it comes not because I'm trying hard, I'm going to church more, I'm praying harder, oh God, please listen to me, it comes because we Christians realize the good in life isn't out there. It's from God.

We start believing our own message. It's the gospel. He's merciful. I'm a Christian, and I love God, and I have a deep eating disorder. I'm a Christian, and I love God, and I've got one divorce in my past, and it looks like another one's on the radar soon. I'm a Christian, and I love God, and I have this secret habit on the Internet. I'm a Christian, and I love God, and I hurt my back, and they gave me those pain pills, and now my back's better, but the pain pills are still with me.

I'm a Christian, and I love God, but I'm working like 90 hours, and I'm telling myself, and we feel shame, and so what most Christians do is try to project everything's okay and fake it, because down deep, you don't believe God's good. You don't believe He's patient. You don't believe He's tolerant. Unlike the prodigal you don't believe, you have a father that's going, Son, daughter, come home.

Understand? You're in the pig pen. I mean, you're doing life your way instead of my way. I'm not down on you every day. What did the Father do? I wonder if He's coming today. I wonder if He's coming today. And so Jesus, what He says to the church so He can work through, He says, Come, come to me, all you that labor in a heavy laden or stressed out and trapped with sin and shame and difficulty. I'm not down on you. All the judgment that I have, I've already placed on my son.

You're forgiven. Come to me. Are you ready?

Don't have some little emotional experience. Come unto me, all of you that are laboring and stressed out and under pressure, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke.

It's a picture of, you know, the oxen. And Jesus says, I'm on this side. I want you to get your life hooked up with mine, and I want you to let me lead.

I've got the power. In fact, your side of it will be light. My burden is light.

It's not burdensome. I want you to do marriage my way. I want you to do finances my way. I want you to do your thinking my way.

I want you to discover how much or how little or what to do with the media the way I would. Why? Because I'm good. Because I want to give you the best. And all the mistakes and all the junk, you don't have to hide from me.

You don't have to be in shame. I want to forgive and restore just like I did when you first trusted me. And then I want to do life with you, and I want to empower you.

And we need to erase some of those old tapes and some of those lies and some of the stuff that is just absolutely messing you up. Because I'm good. I'm merciful. You know what mercy is?

Do you know what the word means? It means you don't get what you deserve. We don't believe God's merciful. We think, you know, we're going to come, and he's got a big ruler, you know, like this cosmic ruler, wap, wap, wap. We got to get honest, and he'll change us.

But you got to come. And when you do, here's what happens to all those people around you. He's not just working in the world, and he's not just working in you.

He starts working through you. And your focus instead of all your energy on trying to find the good out there and hiding in shame from God is neighbors are known and loved. Co-workers observe excellence, integrity, and concern. A community's deepest needs are met. The poor get fed.

HIV patients get a drive to their doctor. And you're not concerned about how they got it. Because you realize, you know what? God, mercy, and goodness is really as much for everyone else in the world as it's been for you. Paul would say, I was a chief among sinners. Some of us are so uptight about people's lifestyle or their behavior or where they're coming from or the direction of this or that that we're not kingdom people anymore.

We're our people, and don't mess up our little world and our country like it's ours. I got news for you. The kingdom of God is near. And the kingdom is, I want you to think about these people the way I do. They're hurting. They're lost. They have needs. They have hurts. Their relationships aren't working.

They're in bondage. And I want to set them free and love them like I did you. And that begins to produce some things. You've been listening to part one of Chip's message, Making Room for Breakthrough, from his series, Breakthrough, unleashing God's power into impossible situations. When you need a supernatural intervention, this series is a powerful resource that'll help you find the direction you're looking for. From the first step to a new normal, Breakthrough is a life-changing series not to be missed. Now, to get all the messages and really dig in, there are both audio and video options for you, including online streaming with a study guide.

For previews and ordering details, check out Breakthrough at livingontheedge.org, special offers on the Chip Ingram app, or give us a call at 888-333-6003. Well, Chip, we know from recent experience that tough circumstances can slow businesses and create new ones in ways we never expected. And the same's happened with us as a ministry. We've eased off on certain things, and on the other hand, new ways to minister have opened up and just taken off like a rocket. Could you tell us a little bit about that?

Well, Dave, it has. I mean, we did some things in China and the Middle East pre-COVID, but some webinars begin to emerge, and we've been asked by networks literally of tens of thousands of pastors in Asia, in Africa, in Latin America, and they've asked us. We started monthly global seminars, and we, in this year, as soon as we can travel, we'll be doing some live training in countries in whole networks around the world.

And it's created great opportunity and great demand. And one of the things we need is for people to partner with us. Now, some can make a large gift now and then, but we need a cadre, we need a team, we need an army of people that could give each and every month, because when we think about the number of pastors and leaders around the world and here in the United States that we want to help, we need to have a steady financial base, and that only comes knowing that each month, X amount of dollars are going to come in. And so we're asking the listeners of Living on the Edge, and whether that's here on the radio or on the app or however they get Living on the Edge, we're asking them during this time, would you pray, would you ask God, would you be willing to go from a listener or a supporter to a monthly partner? And so that's my request. We want to walk through the doors that God has opened, but it's going to take a new commitment on our part, but also a whole new army of monthly partners.

Thanks, Chip. Well, if you're a regular listener, but you've never really thought about helping others benefit from the ministry of Living on the Edge, there's never been a better time. Even in the midst of hardship and shutdowns, God's opening avenues of ministry we could never have anticipated. So we're inviting you to join us by becoming a monthly partner. Now, to set up a recurring donation, call us at 888-333-6003.

Tap the donate button on the app or donate online at livingontheedge.org. Together, we can minister in amazing ways. Well, now here's Chip with his application. As we close today's program, I realize we have really covered a lot of material.

And as my wife often reminds me, Chip, you talk so fast. So let me encourage you, if you happen to be in the car or on the treadmill or maybe there's some kids in the backseat or you're on one of those pelotons and you're grinding it out, let me encourage you to go to livingontheedge, all one word,.org, and download the message notes. When I taught this for the first time and then I began to share it in small groups, I have to tell you, I watched God break through. I watched God do things in people that they thought were impossible.

And what I want to remind you is that it doesn't happen just by listening and hearing and intellectually acknowledging. What we learned in today's message is God sovereignly works in the world. So that means right now, at this moment, He's working.

He's working in your circumstances, the good and the bad, what you think is ugly and difficult. He's orchestrating things. It's like that picture of the beautiful tapestry.

And when you look on the one side, it is really beautiful. But if you look on the back side, I mean, there are knots and strings and all kind of junk, and God is orchestrating things in your life to bring about good. And many of those knots, many of those strings, many of the difficult things, He's really preparing you. He's creating a new level of dependence as you lean in and as you seek Him. He wants to bring about the best in your life. But often, are you ready? It gets harder or it gets worse before it gets great. All through Scripture, remember the disciples when it was like, hey, there's 5,000 people, and hey, by the way, you guys feed them. And they go, it's impossible.

He says, well, what do you have? God allows impossible situations to create dependency that make you and me lean in in a way like never before. And then when we get to the end of ourselves and we trust Him, there's breakthrough. In our next program, I'm going to be sharing the personal path to breakthrough. Don't miss it. .