Breakout: Overcoming Adversity

Crossing the Red Sea as metaphor for Breakthrough.

For a breakthrough look at the heart of the situation.  Breakthrough is more about the condition of the heart than it is the conditions of life or the situation we are in.  It is about a lifestyle that lives a life of breakthrough where one sees himself as a child of God.

If you breakthrough in the spiritual realm nothing can hold you captive.

In Exodus chapter fourteen we see that Israel has left Egypt with boldness, with celebration, in fact.  But it takes them forty years to reach their destination

Sometimes God will take you the long way just to teach you something.
He wants you to face adversity.  It makes you stronger.

When the people started to complain God directed them to be still, move on.  Stop whining and start walking.  Once God makes his way known, Go.  Walk in it.  The Red Sea represented the moment of breakthrough for Israel.  "Stop crying out and move on."  Even as Israel had Egypt, your breakthrough has a name.

"The breakthrough happens not when God takes you out of Egypt, but when God takes Egypt out of you."  (The people were whining at Moses, "You have taken us into the wilderness to die.  We could have stayed in Egypt.")

"God breaks the chains and removes the inclination to go back to them."  We are sanctified to freedom, freedom to worship.

"It is no longer about leaving Egypt but about finding the Promised Land."

The breakthrough is not only a change in motivation, but it is also a time of cleansing.  The filth is not in the mouth but in the heart.  (Illustration of a mother washing the child's mouth with soap.)
In most cases the heart is the problem.

"Rather than praying about the situation, pray about the condition of your heart."

A breakthrough is an experience of victory.

"The habit of persistence yields the reward of victory."  God does something in your heart that gives you victory over situations.

What does God want to teach you?  After the crisis it took forty years of desert to complete the job.

The "Red Sea Experience" beyond which I am never turning back.

  God said, "Let them be free so they will truly worship me."

Our worship is freedom.  We cannot know true worship outside freedom.  God will bring you out of bondage so that you will be free to worship.  God wants to turn the reason for our prayers into the reason for our worship.

Pastor Johnnie Blair

Sunday morning