Do Not Wait for the Crisis
The Lord of the breakthrough is not a title to admire from a distance. It describes what God is willing to do, and what He has already placed inside every believer. My prayer over anyone reading this is the same one Paul prayed: that God would give a spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him, and that the eyes of the understanding would be enlightened (see Ephesians 1:17-18). There is always more to find in knowing Him. Paul closes that prayer with the measure of what is actually available.
Now to Him who is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that works in us, 21 to Him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen.
—Ephesians 3:20-21
Notice that power works in us. God is looking for cooperation, which most people skip. Many people do not dig into the Word or begin feeding their spirit until a crisis has already arrived. It would be a similar situation to someone who has never been to the gym or touched a weight, and then one day a scenario comes along where they are required to bench 200 pounds. Although they are capable of it, they haven’t built themselves up to do it today.
I was a gymnast from the age of seven until my senior year of high school, and the gym was where I decompressed. I could walk in and lift serious amounts of weight without thinking about it, because I had been building myself up for a long time. This is a great example of what preparation does for you. You practice the same concept when you take fifteen minutes a day to meditate on one verse, asking what it means, how it applies, and how it works; it will build you up as a believer.
The spirit does not feel anything, and it was never supposed to. Feelings live in the soul, which consists of your mind, will, and emotions. The spirit is the real self, and it must be fed whether feelings arrive or not. Feed it until it comes alive and starts talking back. Then, when the enemy comes in like a flood (see Isaiah 59:19), the Word rises up in the spirit before the mind and emotions of the soul ever get a turn.
Forged in the Fire
At fourteen, I broke my neck, the same vertebra Christopher Reeve broke, and I died and saw the Lord. He spoke to me about assignments designed specifically for me, and He showed me things about the body of Christ that I had no framework for until He unfolded them years later. At nineteen, I was trafficked. I should be a woman who hates men, and I am not, because Jesus truly delivered me from all the trauma caused by my past experiences.
My daughter was dead in the womb for three days. When we left the hospital, my husband laid hands on my stomach at three a.m., and by the next morning there was a foot moving across my stomach. Our son was diagnosed with severe autism, and he has been almost completely restored.
Then, while my children were still very young, I went into double hereditary renal failure. I needed a kidney transplant, but I did not qualify because my antibodies were too high. I was on dialysis for nearly three years, and it was a part-time job to stay alive. In dialysis, all of the blood in the body is pulled out and cycled through a machine seventy or eighty times per session, through needles wide enough to see through.
During that time, an important lesson I learned was the difference between miracles and healing. A miracle is instantaneous and supernatural. There is no time to think, to pray, or to look up a verse. Healing takes time and is a process. Time is exactly where the heart and emotions get their opportunity, which is why you have to guard your heart with all diligence the whole way through (see Proverbs 4:23).
I did not guard my heart perfectly. Doctors came every week to tell me to get my affairs in order, that I would not make it through the week, and that a wife and mother owes her family her wishes in writing. Discouragement hit hard enough to take me off my feet. At my lowest, I told my husband he needed someone who would take care of him and help raise our children, and he told me never to say that to him again.
So I started again by faith, without feeling any part of it. I told the Lord that I had prayed, fasted, read, and I asked what else He wanted from me. He stopped me on the drive home from dialysis and said, “It is not because of what you do; it is because of what I did for you.” Then He told me to come back to Him as a first love and stop knowing Him topically.
I wiped the table clean and started over like someone who had never believed anything, because the doctrine I was standing in at the time would have killed me. What I found was love. I had known God through works and trying, but I hadn’t known that He loves me and that nothing I do can change it. A believer who has received Jesus stands in full righteousness and can say it out loud to the devil.
Your Words Carry Weight
Wrong thinking produces wrong believing. Wrong believing produces wrong speaking, because out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks (see Matthew 12:34). Anyone who wants to know where they stand with Jesus should listen to what comes out of their own mouth. “I am so dumb. I am never going to get past this. That is not going to happen for me.” Those sentences are a report on a mindset that has been running for a long time.
God spoke, and the heavens formed. He spoke, and the earth formed. He spoke, and there were animals. We were made in His very likeness, and speech is part of that likeness. God puts weight on what a person says because of how we are made
For assuredly, I say to you, whoever says to this mountain, “Be removed and be cast into the sea,” and does not doubt in his heart, but believes that those things he says will be done, he will have whatever he says. 24 Therefore I say to you, whatever things you ask when you pray, believe that you receive them, and you will have them.
—Mark 11:23-24
In Mark 11:23-24, the phrases “he says” and “I say” appear twice. You need to say it out of your mouth until your ears hear it, and keep saying it until it gets past your head and settles into your heart, because the heart is where revelation lands. Breakthrough comes by revelation. Every believer who has watched something they were believing for actually come to pass received a revelation somewhere in the middle of it, and it took their cooperation to get there.
The Name Above All Names
Signs follow those who believe in His name (see Mark 16:17). That phrase is the whole key, and it is why the name of Jesus is worth a lifetime of study. A believer who does not know the name of Jesus, the power it carries, and the authority it holds will not know how to fight in a critical scenario. In that circumstance, the enemy will lie quickly enough to win the argument.
Most assuredly, I say to you, he who believes in Me, the works that I do he will do also; and greater works than these he will do, because I go to My Father. 13 And whatever you ask in My name, that I will do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. 14 If you ask anything in My name, I will do it.
—John 14:12-14
Silver and gold I do not have, but what I do have I give you: In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, rise up and walk.
—Acts 3:6
Acts 3 shows what using the name of Jesus looks like in practice. A man lame from birth was carried to the gate of the temple every day and laid there to beg. Peter and John told him to look at them, and he gave them his attention, expecting to receive something.
Peter did not pray for him and did not intercede over him. He employed the name of Jesus. The man’s feet and ankles received strength, and he went into the temple walking, leaping, and praising God. When the crowd stared, Peter told them plainly that it was not their own power or godliness; it was His name, through faith in His name, that had made the man strong (see Acts 3:16).
It is possible that Jesus walked by the gate many times while the man lay there. We may wonder why He didn’t stop to heal him. Remember, at the time, Jesus was going about doing His Father’s business. I believe He looked at that man and knew His disciples would come after Him to provide healing.
John 14:14 says that if you ask anything in His name, He will do it. Asking is the other half of it, and the word “ask” in Scripture is a far stronger word than it is in English. To ask is to place a demand and to be expectant of what you are asking to be brought forth. It would be similar to the way a power of attorney carries the authority of the person who granted it. Peter came to that gate with the authority of Jesus, because as He is, so are we in this world (see 1 John 4:17).
The enemy’s strategy against all of that is to pull a believer into reason, thought, and suggestion. However, thoughts cannot be fought with thoughts. Anyone who stays in the natural realm and argues inside their own head is standing in the enemy’s camp. I have nearly died in that camp.
When I was on dialysis, I would wander through a grocery store for two hours looking for four items because I was not really there. Every day I had thoughts of my lungs filling with fluid overnight, and thoughts of not waking up the next morning. At first I only muttered back at the suggestions from the enemy, but eventually my faith grew to the point where I got loud! Once, I was standing in the grocery store aisle holding a can when one of those thoughts came; I proclaimed out loud, “That is a lie!”
A person cannot think a thought and speak out loud at the same time. Jesus designed us that way on purpose and then told us to use our mouths. He said to speak to the mountain, meaning the talking is directed at the circumstance and spoken out loud. There is a simple demonstration for why that works. Count silently to ten, and partway through say your own name out loud. The counting stops.
Prayer works through the name as well, and Jesus taught that separately from employing it in authority.
And in that day you will ask Me nothing. Most assuredly, I say to you, whatever you ask the Father in My name He will give you. 24 Until now you have asked nothing in My name. Ask, and you will receive, that your joy may be full.
—John 16:23-24
He told them He would no longer pray to the Father on their behalf, because the Father Himself loves them. Coming in the name of Jesus and praying in the name are two different instruments, and both of them require knowing what is actually in the name.
That knowledge takes discipline, and discipline is something a person does rather than something done to them. Paul said that he disciplines his body and brings it into subjection, so that after preaching to others he would not be disqualified (see 1 Corinthians 9:27). The sacrifice is time. It is putting the phone down and feeding the spirit.
There is a story of a bear cub being chased by a cougar. The cub runs, falls into a river, and gets cornered on the rocks, and out of desperation it cries out with a roar it does not fully have yet. The cougar looks up, and it sees a large grizzly standing behind the cub. That is a covenant working on someone’s behalf while they are still in the hard part.
A name and a person do not separate from one another. Say a person’s name and the face comes to mind; see the face and the name comes with it. Jesus’ name conveys and includes everything He is and all that He has given us through His death and resurrection. Therefore, whoever calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved (see Romans 10:13).
Jesus carried a name His entire life. However, He humbled Himself and became obedient to the point of death, and for the joy set before Him He endured the shame of the cross (see Hebrews 12:2). That joy was us. He was tested at all points; He had a choice the entire way, and He chose us.
Therefore God also has highly exalted Him and given Him the name which is above every name, 10 that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those in heaven, and of those on earth, and of those under the earth, 11 and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
—Philippians 2:9-11
A believer is not only saved from hell. A believer is saved, healed, delivered, preserved, prosperous, and made whole, and the same Spirit that raised Christ from the dead lives on the inside. That covenant has to be agreed with out loud. Sickness in a blood-bought body is illegal, and it can be told so.
Something is going to do the talking. Either the body talks to the person, or the person talks to the body. Lay hands on yourself and say it out loud: “I am healed, I am whole, I have the finished work of Jesus, and it is working in my body right now.” That is a faith action, and every faith action starts with an open mouth.
For Jesus,
Heather Z
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