The title of this article comes from a “God-word” this morning through a weekly prayer call group I am part of related to my business.

 

So many times it seems like things are breaking apart in our lives—breaking down—all around on numerous fronts. I can identify with that right now in my own life. There barely ever seems to be respite from this breaking down and breaking apart of things.

 

But the word from this morning’s prayer call was that breakdown is necessary to get breakthrough. “Breakdown to get breakthrough.” That was the God-word.

 

In other words, the breaking down of things in our lives is not contrary to our desires and goals and purposes in God or His for us. It is rather necessary to their fulfillment.

 

This prayer call was in context of national issues. The point of the prayer was that when things are built on a flawed foundation, God has to break them down in order to rebuild what He is after, which is where the breakthrough comes in.

 

Breakthrough is God’s building of what He intends out of the breakdown of what man has built, perhaps even in His Name.  The nations are built on flawed foundations, and so must be broken down in order for God to build what He intends out of nations.

 

The truth is that no matter what God builds in our lives, there is always faulty mixture in it tied to our mortality and remaining sin. The fact that He built it does not mean it is not flawed, and the fact that it shows flaws does not mean He did not build it.

 

So even if God initiates the building with us, because He is using flawed vessels, He is eventually going to have to break down what He Himself has built in us or through us to remake it in a context of higher breakthrough. Because of mortality under sin, flawed foundations are unavoidable in anything God builds among men. That’s just the way it is.

 

 

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The large picture of this is of course the transition from the Old to New Covenants. The Old Covenant was a flawed covenant. So says the book of Hebrews. Therefore it was subject to breakdown and had to be replaced with a breakthrough Covenant built on the everlasting resurrection life of Christ, the Faultless One.

 

Even so, the faultless New Covenant is still building today on the foundation of flawed mortal lives. Because of this, repeated breakdowns to achieve new breakthroughs are required on a lifelong basis individually and on a generational basis corporately. To this extent, even the New Covenant, building as it does upon the foundation of mortal lives demonstrates flaws, though the Covenant within itself is built upon the Flawless One.

 

And so we have an entire church age of movements begun in one breakthrough phase which, building on the mortals we are, eventually lead to another breakdown—leading to yet a higher breakthrough, and so on...

 

Paul describes this process as going “from glory to glory.” The terminus of this age-long breakdown / breakthrough cycle is the church’s final breakthrough into sinless immortality that will remove all further flaws in building going forward. We will be presented as Faultless as is the Faultless One Himself on Whom we are built. Hallelujah!

 

But until then, we still have to deal with the breakdown / breakthrough cycle.

 

 

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Thirty years ago I saw this cycle in the church but just didn’t know what to do with it. It left me in despair over the church with no acceptable options.  Many founders of breakthrough movements never recognized the cycle in their generation for what it was. So they expected that “their” movement would “at last” be the movement to “put an end to all movements.” 

 

And under intoxication of the initial power of new breakthrough, it was easy to see why this could be believed... Who after all on the “Day of Pentecost” would have ever believed that from that day forward anything could ever go anywhere but “up” for the church?

 

But Pentecost eventually waned and faded away just like the Old Covenant. Breakdown occurred. By the end of the written New Testament, we are reading about warnings from the founding apostles of failures and infiltrations and corruptions of the church. And certainly that is what we see in the Book of Revelation.

 

And so throughout this age, all “new” movements always managed to self-destruct within their own generation if not within two.

 

And others, after watching centuries of this cycle from the outside looking in, were left asking, “Why start anything only to watch it all corrupt later under our own eyes?” That is why Roger Williams (founder of this colony) would not start churches among the Indians and became a “Seeker.” It is why many of us just disappeared into the wilderness to become isolates and mystics after numerous attempts to join ourselves to one failure after another, wondering if there could ever be such a thing as a “true” permanent breakthrough movement worth giving our lives for.

 

(It never occurred to us that Jesus still thought it was worth building His flawless New Covenant on flawed disciples, knowing what would become of His own Name in the world as a result! Maybe we didn’t factor that in?)    

 

 

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Somehow, we have to find the grace to get past our despair over what seems to be an interminable cycle that will never end—both in the macro picture of the church, and in the micro picture of our own lives.

 

Mortality is here to stay with us in the short term. We all still carry sin in our bloodstreams. We remain flawed to the remaining degrees our souls have not already been cleansed.  And on those flaws God still pours out the temporal breakthrough power of His Anointing. And we rejoice, until we see God turning around later to break down what He has built through us—maybe what He has built over 10 or 20 or even 50 years—maybe a church, maybe a movement—maybe just a family that we dedicated to Him….

 

If break down is what you are seeing in your life right now over big ticket items you put out so much of your life for in Christ, do not despair. Do not give up. Do not give into that sense of futility that characterizes the Book of Ecclesiastes. All is not vanity in the end. Always just keep looking for the new breakthrough out of the collapse of what God has already built on your flawed life.

 

Sometimes the breakdown in life is so severe that it appears life’s bridges behind us are being burned faster than they can be built ahead of us, and we are certainly doomed to a fiery destruction we cannot outrun.

 

But God is here today through this message to tell you otherwise. Your breakdowns will not overtake your hope of breakthrough. Just keep hoping. That is all. And remain in His Peace while all seems to collapse around you.

 

The Lord is with you in the fiery furnace. Your next breakthrough is at hand!

 

And so is the Church’s ultimate breakthrough into forever flawless immortality.

 

Hallelujah! 

 

Chris Anderson

First Love Ministry
- a ministry of Anglemar Fellowship
http://www.firstloveministry.org

12/14

 



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