Rabbi Schneider - The Greatest Breakthrough
I have a special anointing on my life for breakthrough. I don't say that lightly. There is something that the Lord has placed upon me, which has propelled me to enter into places that others have not yet entered into. And I believe that the anointing that's on me can be imparted in some way into your life. Now, when we speak of spiritual breakthrough, we can look at it from two different perspectives. We can look at it, number one, circumstantially. Sometimes we're looking for breakthrough in our lives in our circumstances. And this is important, obviously. Maybe you're wanting to get a breakthrough in your career and your job, you're wanting a promotion, maybe you're wanting a breakthrough with your finances, maybe you're wanting a breakthrough in your relationship with your mom, or dad, or in-laws.
So many different types of breakthroughs that we're contending for or desiring to have happen in our life. Now, you've been trying to buy a home and haven't been able to purchase one, you're looking for breakthrough. Whatever it might be, breakthrough in our circumstances is legitimate and important. And we should obviously be looking to the Lord and contending for Him to be at work in our life so that we can be propelled forward, in His Spirit, to get breakthrough in our circumstances. Some of you may be looking for breakthrough in your ministry. Maybe you feel that the Lord has given you a spiritual gift or some type of ministry that he's called you into, and you're looking for Him to open doors or to connect you with the right people, with the right relationships so that the gift and the anointing that's on your life can enter in a deeper way into the earth. You're looking for a breakthrough perhaps in your ministry.
There's another type of breakthrough that at the end of the day, beloved, is more important than even these first two. And that is spiritual breakthrough. What I mean by that is that at the end of the day, our circumstances are always changing. Nothing we know is constant in our circumstances. For example, let's say that you were looking for a breakthrough in your career. Let's say that you're going to law school right now and you flunk the LSAT, which are the tests that attorneys or prospective attorneys take in order to get their license to practice law. And you fail the LSAT the first time and you're looking for breakthrough to be able to pass the second time. All these things are important. But think about this using that example that I want to make applicable for all of us today.
Let's say you're that attorney, you want to get your license to practice law. You took the bar exam to become an attorney the first time, you flunked. Now you're going back the second time, you're praying for breakthrough that you'll pass it. Baruch Hashem, let's say you pass it. Praise God. But what will happen when you're 65 or 70 years old and no longer are you able to practice potentially law anymore. Maybe your health won't permit it. Maybe you're just too tired to do it anymore. Maybe you've lost the appetite for it. Then what? Where are you then? The point is that our circumstances are always changing. And if we're only looking for breakthrough in circumstances, at the end of the day, we're going to come up empty because at the end of the day, every circumstance fades away.
You know, the Lord recently showed me that I should view my circumstances, those things that are going on outside me, the same way that I would observe furniture in a room that I was sitting in. Now, imagine for a second with me you're sitting in a room. You've got a room at home and you're sitting in that room. You're sitting on a couch or on a chair. And you look around the room and there's different pieces of furniture in that room you're sitting in. Maybe there's a couch, maybe there's a chair, maybe there's a table, whatever it is. Let me ask you, as you're observing those pieces of furniture, as you're sitting in that room, what do those pieces of furniture mean to you? I mean, very little. I mean, you may like the furniture and they may have good practical purposes, but at the end of the day, those pieces of furniture are not what can fill your soul. Those pieces of furniture that you're observing they're are outside of you.
You can look at them, you can appreciate them, you may like the aesthetic appearance of them, they may serve a functional purpose, but at the end of the day, those pieces of furniture, beloved one, mean very little in terms of how much your soul is satisfied in its center, in its core. They don't mean anything. I remember years ago when I was going through a very difficult time in my life, I graduated high school. So I'm going back many, many years now. And as some of you know that I was a very, very committed athlete in school. I wrestled all through school, got a small scholarship to wrestle in college. But wrestling to me was everything. It was my identity, it was all I thought about. I didn't see beyond it. And when I graduated high school, and I walked off that wrestling mat for the last time, realizing that I looked into the future now entering into adulthood, leaving my parents' home, having to get ready for some type of career, which I had no idea what that would be, I didn't know Yeshua yet, that wrestling no longer meant anything to me.
It was so important to me for so many years. And now all of a sudden, when I was graduating high school, I realized it didn't mean a hill of beans. And I remember when that happened to me, I was so lost, I was so depressed, I was so hopeless, I lacked purpose, I lacked destiny. I was confused. And a remember in that state, sitting in my family room-I'm living in my parents' house at the time-sitting in my family room one day, looking out the back window of that family room. And we will live in a pretty nice home.
So I remember sitting in that family room, sitting on a couch there in this depressed, confused state. Wrestling was over. My purpose was gone. The circumstances changed. My identity disappeared with it. And I was looking out the back windows of this family room. And when I say the back windows, it was all one window. In other words, the entire back wall of that family room was one big window. It had a sliding glass door, and you could view totally outside into the backyard. And it was a beautiful room. I looked outside into the beautiful nature. But you know what? No matter how beautiful it was, as I looked out that family room window and even looked at all the beautiful furniture in that big family room, you know what, at the end of the day, as I was sitting there, none of those things could do anything for me.
Looking outside didn't help me. Looking at the beautiful family room and the furniture in it, it didn't help me because my soul was lost and confused. I lacked purpose and direction. And everything outside of me, the family room and that was outside of it, none of it could change what was in my soul. What I'm stressing, beloved one, is that our circumstances are like furniture in a room. They can't really do anything for us. We may get temporary enjoyment out of circumstances.
And Baruch Hashem, praise God for great circumstances. I'm not putting it down. What I'm simply trying to do is to help you and I understand that when we're talking about spiritual breakthrough, the thing that we should be thinking most about is, how can we get breakthrough in the Spirit? How can we get breakthrough into the light? How can we gain momentum in terms of being engaged in our soul with the power of the Ruach Hakodesh? How can we enter into empowerment? How can we come out of not seeing clearly, to be able to see clearly in the Spirit? How can we get breakthrough? How can we get breakthrough so that we're able to break off our lives all self-accusation? How can we get breakthroughs that we can break off us all wrong self-images? How can we get breakthrough so that we can better see who God is, so that we can better understand His love, so that we can better know Him and His nature through the person of Yeshua?
I want to encourage you today to contend with me for spiritual breakthrough. Too many of us are putting all the emphasis on the outside. We think if we shout something loud enough it gives us more power. We think if we can change the circumstance in our life, we'll be happy. Again, outer circumstances are important. But we don't have many of us a sense that the real reality is internal. That's why Yeshua said, "The Spirit of the Lord," he said "is outside you, but He will be in you". The Mystery of the gospel, Paul told us, is Christ, the anointed one in us, the hope of glory.
So as we talk about spiritual breakthrough today, I want to encourage you to begin to withdraw your energy so that you're not so focused on what is outside of you, so that you're not projecting your thoughts thinking that the answer to your happiness is outside of you. But so that you begin to bring yourself back into your soul, where the Spirit of the Lord is if you've received Jesus, and begin to learn how to function from the inside out. You see, people that are not in touch with this, if they're wanting to have breakthrough in the spiritual realm, they shout, and they think if they yell loud enough, it will create breakthrough. Or they keep on Jesus said, don't be like these people that don't know God, that keep on repeating the same things over and over and over and over again, thinking that God is going to move because of their repetition.
No, what Jesus was teaching was that power is not in the external. It's not in how loud you shout. It's not in how many times you repeat a prayer. Many of that is just fear-based anyway. Rather true spiritual power resides on the inside. And it begins, beloved ones, listen to me, with knowing that you've already got it. Let me say it again. Spiritual breakthrough begins by knowing that He's already in you and you've already got it. So you begin to move out of what you've already have, rather than moving out of a deficit, trying to make something happen that you don't have. The Bible says, "In Him we are complete". You see, when we begin our Christian walk, when we begin our walk in the Spirit, it's important to have spiritual disciplines that are outward-based. It's important, for example, to have a regimented format in which we're studying scripture and specific things that we're doing and spiritual disciplines that we've built into our life.
Those things are important and they need to happen at the elementary levels. It begins by practicing spiritual disciplines that are based on the outside. Bible study, prayers, attend all these different things that can help us in our faith. But the problem is, if we continue only to focus on outward things without recognizing that there's a deeper level that's internal... This is why right before Yeshua raised Lazarus from the dead, He prayed and he said, "Father, I thank you that you hear me. I know you hear Me always, but I'm saying it that the people around would know that you hear Me". You see, Jesus had developed that inward sense of knowing that God heard His softest whisper. When He prayed He didn't have to pray out loud. He knew that God heard Him. The slightest impulse of His heart, it's as if it was already done. Jesus knew that God heard Him.
Sometimes we think God doesn't hear us unless we say it out loud unless we pray out loud enough. That the devil won't respond unless we scream it. But Beloved, when we know that we've got it, when we know that God hears our softness whisper, we can retreat to dwelling within. And when we're able to comprehend that He's already in us, that we've already got it, we'll truly have spiritual breakthrough and walk in power. This is why the Lord said in the Tanakh, "The day will come that I will answer them before they ask". What did God mean when He said, "I will answer them before they ask"? Well, if He's answering, the need or the desire must already be within us. Otherwise, He wouldn't have to answer. What God was saying there is "they're going to become aware that I answered them before they can even get it out of their mouths".
That's how close He is. In other words, now we think sometimes unless we say it out loud enough times, God won't hear us and He won't answer. But God wants us to realize that He hears us even if we don't say it out loud, even if we don't shout it. And He wants us to come to the place where we know He hears and answers the slightest impulse of our heart that's directed to Him when we're walking with Him. "No good thing does He withhold to those who love Him". And so, beloved, I want us as we're speaking of spiritual breakthrough, what I'm trying to do is to help us understand that we're not just referring to those things that we're desiring to see God do that are on the outside. I'm wanting you to understand that the greatest breakthroughs of all happen when we become empowered through knowing that we're already complete in Him, that He's already in us, and that we're already walking in fellowship with Him.
Well, those were just some introductory comments, even though we're already coming to the end of today's message. On the previous broadcast, I was in the book of 2 Samuel corresponding scripture in And in this section of Scripture, we study the life of David and how he got breakthrough against his enemies. So let me just read by way of review today, beginning once again in 2 Samuel 5 beginning in verse 17. "When the Philistines heard that they had anointed David king over Israel, all the Philistines went up to seek out David; and when David heard of it, he went down to the stronghold".
I covered all this in my first two broadcasts. The point was the enemy attacked when David was anointed. And so you need to understand, as you're pressing forward in the Lord, as God has begun to work in your life, as God is moving you into greater victory and power, the enemy is going to respond to you, he's going to try to blow you back, even as the Philistines came against David, as soon as David was anointed. It's a spiritual law. The enemy responds. Listen, people with supernatural anointings should expect to receive a supernatural attack. Now, this shouldn't scare you; it's just the dynamics of the kingdom. You see, God uses all things to work together for good. And it's through and during the attack of the enemy, clinging to God as David did, warfaring him through it that were confirmed in the Lord, that His anointing gets solidified in us.
That's why, as I've been mentioning, the first thing that Yeshua did after He was baptized in the river by John was go into the wilderness where He did battle against the devil for 40 days. Why? Because God was perfecting him for his ministry. Jesus wasn't afraid of the attack. In fact, the Bible says, "It was the Spirit of the Lord that led Yeshua into the wilderness to do battle against the devil". So God matures you and I as His sons and daughters by teaching us how to resist, how to defend ourselves, and how to exercise authority from within over the enemy. And so to tie all this back around now, the way we exercise authority over the enemy is not just by screaming, not just by shouting, not just by making certain declarations. All those can be valid. But the way we exercise authority over the enemy is by knowing we've already got it.
We come to a place where we're so confident that the enemy is like this to us. He can't even harass us. We don't even pay attention. We don't take the bait anymore. He already is subjected to us. And so having authority over the enemy begins by knowing that we already have dominion over him, because greater is He that's in you than he that is in the world, He that's born of God overcomes the world. Hear the Word of God. Verse 18. "Now the Philistines came and spread themselves out in the valley of Rephaim".
What I'm going to teach is that the enemy doesn't just respond one time and in one way to our anointing, but he seeks to come in from multiple angles. But I want you to know you are more than a conquer and you will triumph through everything as you keep your eyes set on the Lord, on Him who called you. And as you continue to put one foot in front of the other in His anointing, God is going to perfect you in His peace, and God's peace within you will crush Satan under your feet. Be strong. Be courageous. Press on. God loves you, and He's got a destiny for you that's greater than anything that you have ever imagined.