Prayer answer or Breakthrough?
Sometimes I find it challenging to explain the concept of "prayer" with words. The most common understanding of prayer would be that it is a one-sided conversation with God. Even though this is part of what prayer is, we don’t necessarily talk directly to the Father, for example, when we pray for sick for the healing of the sick. Though we do cooperate with Him.
Defining prayer, I usually describe it as the ability to operate in spiritual reality.
When I came to Jesus, prayer became the main way I spent time with Him.
I noticed God's results in myself pretty fast the more I spent time in His presence in long conversations. Father literally began to change me from the inside out, affecting every aspect of my being:
My mental health problems disappeared and I gained the ability to control my own thoughts.
My emotional world balanced, allowing me to gain control over my own emotions.
Character traits such as kindness, patience, goodness, love, and everything mentioned in the fruit of the spirit began to grow in me.
This phenomenon of perfect harmony in my inner being has been shaken only in times my prayer life has been disrupted in one way or another.
As for outside answers for prayer, I focused mainly on prophesying and praying for the sick. It wasn't until years later Father began to teach me about external prayer answers. However, more than just prayer answers, He began to teach me about breakthroughs.
Many of us probably think of prayer answers and breakthroughs as one and the same thing. In a way, they are, in a sense that breakthroughs are answers to prayers, but breakthroughs go even further than that.
I would describe prayer answers to asking for a gift you would then receive. It's something momentary.
Breakthrough refers to a phenomenon that I would describe similarly to water flowing against a blockage or dam in a river. When enough water accumulates, the dam bursts, allowing water to flow through constantly.
The difference between the two lies in continuity.
When we pray healing for a sick person where the person's pain or condition is relieved but not yet healed, I would say we have not yet achieved a breakthrough. If, after recovery, a person later falls ill with the same ailment again, I would also say in that situation that breakthrough has not yet been achieved.
A nature of breakthrough is something in which the fate of the situation changes completely to a different direction.
If a certain unfortunate case caused by sin - such as illness, poverty, death, etc. - continues in the life of a person, family, or church, then more than just a single prayer answer is needed. There is a need of breakthrough!
I myself suffered from unemployment for quite a long time in my life. From time to time, my situation improved with short-term jobs or jobs where I earned the same amount as if I had been unemployed with government subsidies. A standard job with a real salary that wouldn't make life feel like living from hand to mouth seemed to be out of reach. Despite all my efforts, nothing seemed to have any effect.
While Father taught me about the breakthrough, I began fasting and praying for a complete breakthrough in every aspect of my life. It was only after this that my situation really started to shift. I finally got a jobs that getting them felt as easy as simply walking in through the door. Everything was made easy for me. I was even accepted for jobs which I had no previous education or experience in. Those companies got me the education I needed or trained me themselves.
Times when I encountered difficulties related to learning how to do my job I began wondering “Is this it? Would I now run out of luck?”
In those times I took these attitudes:
First, I was going to focus only on moving forward and then see how far I could go.
Second, because my jobs was arranged by the Father, He would also be the one to decide my fate.
Well, I never ended up getting fired.
In addition, every time I got another job, the next one was always, in some way or another, better and easier than the previous one.
Same happened with my apartments. I got ones with the lowest rents in town, and the next one was always better and in a more peaceful area.
So, breakthroughs change a person’s lifestyle to the likeness of God's will and reality.
So I don't pray anymore for just prayer answers. I'm aiming for breakthroughs!!
Perhaps the best thing about breakthroughs is that they raise our faith to a whole new level. After, we have a whole new perspective that if God brought a breakthrough once, He can surely do it again! Even more, if God brought a breakthrough to one area, He will certainly bring it to an another!
Breakthroughs always leads to the next breakthrough, and so we’re moving from glory to glory.
As we achieve breakthroughs, we also become carriers of those breakthroughs, allowing us to encourage and pray them for others as well.
After God's breakthrough in my life, I have testified them to others who are struggling with the same challenges. When I have prayed for people, they have later told me how they had similar breakthroughs:
" To the one who is victorious, I will give the right to sit with me on my throne, just as I was victorious and sat down with my Father on his throne."
Revelation 3:21 (NIV)
As wonderful as this all sounds, I must share a few important God’s principles regarding breakthroughs.
God is a father and as His children He has an inheritance for us, the Kingdom of Heaven. Breakthroughs relate to all themes - God's promises - that are part of our inheritance. As a father, God aims to raise us to maturity. In order for us to enter new lifestyles, we must be able to maintain the responsibilities that comes with then. To be able to do that, our character needs to grow first.
Someone said wisely:
"Your gifting can help you to get in, but it’s your character that will keep you there."
This is very true.
"When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures."
James. 4:3 (NIV)“I have much more to say to you, more than you can now bear.”
Joh. 16:12 (NIV)
I have no doubt that as a loving father, God wants to shower us an abundance of all good things, but because certain things require a certain amount of maturity, Father does not give us something that we don’t have the capacity to maintain.
Does this mean Father denies us His goodness? On the contrary, He begins to prepare us for it!
At least two things will happen as we start praying for breakthroughs:
Things begin to happen in our lives that will grow and shape us as people. Some can be challenges or difficulties we need to go through as we learn how to navigate them.
Also, every blessing and breakthrough matures us for the next blessing and breakthrough. As great as some of my jobs have been, there were still challenging people and situations I had to learn to endure and navigate by applying God’s ways of how to do life.
God begins to change the circumstances so that they will be in our favor before the breakthrough occurs. These are things that may not be visible for us.
It has always been interesting to hear what has happened in my new apartment or workplace for the past year or two before I got there. There have been remarkable details making it sound like the place was really being prepared for my arrival.
Even in history before Jesus came into the world 2,000 years ago, the Roman Empire first had to rise to power. All so that empire would build roads as transportation everywhere it had spread - hence the saying, "All roads lead to Rome" - so that after Jesus' ascension into Heaven, the Gospel could be spread effortlessly throughout the then known world.
As these principles are fulfilled in the required areas, Father won’t withhold anything from us.
So let us pray and seek God's breakthroughs in our lives, in our church, and in all the areas we are associated with! Not primarily for us to live abundant lives, but so that God the Father would have on earth, and in our lives, all He paid the price for by giving Jesus to the cross to make all this possible! Because it’s not right for someone to pay full price for something in order to receive just part of what legally belongs to Him.
"Until now you have not asked for anything in my name. Ask and you will receive, and your joy will be complete."
John 16:24 (NIV)"This is to my Father’s glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples.."
John 15:8 (NIV)
Follow freedom!