Breaking Point - A Devotion

Matthew 9:16-17 (NLT) “Besides, who would patch old clothing with new cloth? For the new patch would shrink and rip away from the old cloth, leaving an even bigger tear than before. And no one puts new wine into old wineskins. For the old skins would burst from the pressure, spilling the wine and ruining the skins. New wine is stored in new wineskins so that both are preserved.” How do you respond to pressure in your life? Is it just one more thing on a long list of potential thieves that steal your joy and rob you of peace? Can you feel God’s Inner Glory stirring ready to pour out or a long string of choice words for the opposition? Pressure in the life of every person demands a response. Will you give up or push back? God did not call you to be a weak and powerless Christian but live empowered by His Spirit that is on the inside of you. If believers could learn to release the Spirit before our temper when life does not suit us, perhaps we can victorious lives in all things and not just on certain occasions. What made us think that to follow Jesus Christ would not require anything of us? It is not what we find in His Word which clearly states you will have many trials and sorrows. There is no beating around the bush. It is clear you are going to have potential problems, troubles, hardship, sickness, disease and brokenness. BUT…take heart…BECAUSE Jesus has overcome the world. Christians who think one trip to the altar and a quick salvation prayer is enough to make it into Heaven are sadly mistaken. This is only the beginning of pressure that will bring you to your breaking point. God’s Plan for your life is not a five-minute quick fix. It’s a whole new way of life where everything that doesn’t kill you is meant to bless you! How can you say that is what you are thinking? How can cancer bless me? How can poverty bless me? How can prison bless me? How can abuse bless me? According to MY Bible, yours may say something different all together, but in mine Romans 8:28 it says that God is working every detail of my life for good. The Lord will heal every disease. He has provided everything that I need. He has set the captive free and most certainly He is your greatest protector and staunch defender giving His Life that you may live forever. This very same God will allow whatever it takes for you to discover His Very Best. The pressure in your life is God’s Love exerting His Mercy, Grace and Glory waiting for you to put a little effort in grabbing it and hanging on until His Best comes to pass in your life! Isaiah 61:10 (NLT) I am overwhelmed with joy in the LORD my God! For he has dressed me with the clothing of salvation and draped me in a robe of righteousness. I am like a bridegroom in his wedding suit or a bride with her jewels. God did not send Jesus Christ to patch things up but to drape our life in His Righteousness. Most people do not want to change the filthy rags (Isaiah 64:6) for such clothing. They like their life the way it is and are looking for a way to have their cake and eat it too. The want the best of both worlds and work diligently to convince their heart and mind that God allows for gray areas and Jesus can be found in the middle-of-the-road. But without a full change of clothes, you will never experience the overwhelming joy produced by God’s Transformation offered in the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Psalm 119:142-144 (NLT) Your justice is eternal and your instructions are perfectly true. As pressure and stress bear down on me, I find joy in your commands. Your laws are always right; help me to understand them so I may live. As a believer, following God’s Commands should bring us joy. It should make us happy and content in every situation as we live in the Righteousness of God by faithfully obeying His Word and avoiding anything that would separate us from His Amazing Love. When pressure and stress bear down on you, it will express something. When a grape is pressed, wine is the intended product. When an olive is pressed, it should produce oil. When a Christian is pressed and stressed out, joy should come of it. So you say, “I am only human…” True, but if you are a believer you should be filled with the Spirit of the Living God. Proverbs 24:10 (NLT) If you fail under pressure, your strength is too small. If you cannot seem to see Jesus in every facet of your life, maybe there are some areas not yielded to the Lord. No condemnation. I find new places in my life that have not been opened to His Holy Inhabitation all the time. It is part of working out my salvation as I put effort into following Jesus Christ and allowing His Spirit to have dominion of my life. God prefers submission by choice over unwilling surrender. He is not going to force you to let His Will and Word control your life, but when you submit to His Plan then you will have the proper overflow because God is in it. Human weakness gives way to Godly Empowerment. God isn’t forcing you to unwillingly surrender your life to Him, but He waits for you to submit your life to His Amazing Love. John 16:33 (NLT) “I have told you all this so that you may have peace in me. Here on earth you will have many trials and sorrows. But take heart, because I have overcome the world.” You are going to have some trials and sorrows in life. It just happens. Heaven has opposition, too. (Matthew 11:12) The only way to apply counterforce to the enemy of your soul is using God’s Strength demonstrated when He raised Jesus from the dead and evidenced by Jesus when He overcame the world. He never said it would be easy just that you will win! 2 Corinthians 4:7-8 (NLT) We now have this light shining in our hearts, but we ourselves are like fragile clay jars containing this great treasure. This makes it clear that our great power is from God, not from ourselves. We are pressed on every side by troubles, but we are not crushed. We are perplexed, but not driven to despair. The Glory of the Living God is on the inside of you as a believer who is filled with the Spirit of the Living God. Now He just has to find a way to get it out of you. A grape is just a grape until it is pressed and fermented into wine. An olive is just an olive until the oil is pressed out of it. The potential in your life requires pressure to be released. There are levels of refinement in order to prepare it for use. Your ability to endure the pressure of your process will determine if you will you prosper as God has planned. There is a great treasure hidden on the inside of you. Nobody wants their life to fall apart, hardship to come or devastation to be a possibility but if you truly are filled with Godly Potential and His Light genuinely shines in your heart than you have nothing to lose and everything to gain as He releases it to bless your life. Deuteronomy 11:13-14 (NLT) “If you carefully obey all the commands I am giving you today, and if you love the LORD your God and serve him with all your heart and soul, then he will send the rains in their proper seasons—the early and late rains—so you can bring in your harvests of grain, new wine, and olive oil.” The secret to surviving your breakthrough is to push back. Sin is defeated by obeying God’s Commands. Loving God overcomes sin’s stronghold. Love covers a multitude of sin (I Peter 4:8) especially when it comes to loving God. Carefully is important it means paying attention and cautiously. It means you are thinking about doing His Will every day not every once in a while. Love the Lord your God and serve Him. Lip service is not enough but walking the walking is important. He needs all your heart and soul to reveal His Glory in your life it is just too big for part of you. His Love is consuming. But there is promise attached to such devotion, God will then send the rains so you can bring in a harvest of grain, new wind and olive oil. What’s the big deal? Well according to Psalm 104, grain represents “bread to give them strength”, new wine will “make us glad” producing joy and peace, and finally, oil which is “soothe their skin” bring total healing and restoration to God’s Righteous People while in the land of the living. (Psalm 27:13) Philippians 3:12-14 (NLT) I don’t mean to say that I have already achieved these things or that I have already reached perfection. But I press on to possess that perfection for which Christ Jesus first possessed me. No, dear brothers and sisters, I have not achieved it, but I focus on this one thing: Forgetting the past and looking forward to what lies ahead, I press on to reach the end of the race and receive the heavenly prize for which God, through Christ Jesus, is calling us. It is time for you to press to possess. Be complete, perfect and lacking nothing, all you must do is believe to receive. Believing is demonstrated by what you say, but how you live. If you believe that there is New Kingdom coming and your treasure is there, then you will live in such a way to inherit its riches. But if you are not sure that there is more to life than this, it will be easy for you to settle for substitutions and common compromise just in case, Heaven is not real. Understand that you cannot push and pull at the same time, the stronger influence and power will win. Will you be pulled into the comfort and familiarity of your past or will you press in by faith to the unseen reality of God and His Kingdom? The choice is yours and so is the blessing in making the right choice if it completely changes life as you know it. Something will have to give in your life to allow His Glory to come pouring out and produce the harvest of blessing that you were promised and are waiting for. Will you endure? Leave the past behind, anything worth having there, God is faithful to retrieve, renew, restore and deliver. Press into Jesus. Clutch His Promises. Refuse to do anything less than what He is telling you to do even if it breaks your heart in a million pieces. There is really only one thing in life worth having and His Name is Jesus. You cannot find Him your own way…He is the Way. Faith in God is worth fighting for, exerting all effort to obtain, and will last forever. Love the Lord with all your heart, mind, and strength and His Glory will be expressed in your life! I Timothy 6:11-12 (NLT) But you, Timothy, are a man of God; so run from all these evil things. Pursue righteousness and a godly life, along with faith, love, perseverance, and gentleness. Fight the good fight for the true faith. Hold tightly to the eternal life to which God has called you, which you have confessed so well before many witnesses.