Rabbi Schneider - Made for Breakthrough
If you think about it, as human beings, we were made for breakthrough. Think about us for a second. Even as infants, remember we came out of our mother's womb, and we learned how to stretch our bodies. In a sense, we were getting breakthroughs. We learned how to move our arms. And then one day our mom or dad put us on the ground, and slowly we learned how to crawl. But then the great day came when one day we were able to get up from crawling, stand up as infants and take our first baby step. And our mom got on the phone, and she called the relatives and she called her friends and said, "My daughter, my son, he took his first step today. I saw my child take their first step".
It was a great day of breakthrough. And the truth is that if we're once again growing in the Lord, we are continually breaking through to do something or experience something that we had not yet done before. Breakthrough involves having opposition. In other words, when we took that first baby step, we were coming against or breaking through the lack of body coordination that we were experiencing before that first step. And so breakthrough means coming against something that before had hindered us.
We think about Paul's words in the Book of Ephesians. He speaks about spiritual warfare. He speaks about the fact that we have an opponent. We have an enemy. We have someone that's resisting us. He called the enemy Satan. Spiritual forces, Paul said, of heavenly wickedness, darkness in high places. And he said, "Our fight is not against flesh and blood, but against principle, powers, and forces of spiritual wickedness in heavenly places". And he said that this fight that we're in is a wrestling match. And that by the power of the Holy Spirit, we can win this wrestling match. Many of you know that I was a very committed athlete in my high school days and I wrestled the same type of wrestling physically that Paul talked about spiritually in the book of Ephesians.
And there was a stage in my wrestling... I don't want to use the word career, because it wasn't a career. I was a high school athlete and then, you know, continued on. I had a small scholarship to college, but they eventually dropped the program where I was going at the University of Tampa. But I was stuck. I had such high goals for myself. My goal as a wrestler was to be state champion Ohio where I went to school. And I lived it. I ate it. I drank it. I was so committed. I was so disciplined. I was like a professional athlete with the level of discipline that I had in my life. I mean, running every single day. I mean, I trained so vigorously. Wrestling at the time came before everything for me. I didn't yet know Jesus. But yet when I came into my I had much success earlier on I did not achieve my goals.
And as I look back on it, what the problem was is that I wanted to win so bad, I needed to win so bad that what I would do is I would get out into the wrestling match, each week we had tournaments and matches, and I would get an early lead. Almost every single time I was ahead at the end of the third period. There are three periods in wrestling, each one two minutes each in high school. So I would come out wrestling to win. Very focused on winning. And I would get a big, early lead. And then once I got that early lead, I would stop wrestling aggressively. And instead I would just think, "Okay, I'm going to win now. I've got a lead. Now just hang on to your win".
So I would stop wrestling to win and instead I would start wrestling defensively just trying to hang on to the lead that I already had. And doing that cost me many matches. At the time I didn't realize all this. It was only afterwards that I realized that getting ahead and then just trying to hang on to my lead. In other words from wrestling offensively, and then switching dressing defensively, it cost me a lot of matches. But I didn't really realize what I was doing until later. And so what was happening was, once again I had this high goal to be state champ. And then I found myself losing as many matches as that was winning.
And one day I wrestled this kid that I knew that I could beat. And the reason I knew that I could beat him is because we used to scrimmage this school. In other words, we were going into an official meet against a school that my school had practiced against many times. And every time when I wrestled this kid that I was about to face in the real meet in a practice when we were practicing with this kid school, I literally, I don't want to say this boastfully, but I literally manhandled this kid. I mean, this kid was like a noodle to me. I beat him that easily. But all of a sudden we have a real match and I go into the real match, and what happens? I do the same thing. I go in, I get a huge early lead and now I start thinking subconsciously, "Okay, you're ahead now, don't do anything to blow it. Just hang on to your lead, and you're going to win".
And when I went into that defensive mindset, just wanting to hang on to my lead, you know what happened? I ended up losing that match to this kid I manhandled every single time I practiced with him. And when that happened, I became so disgusted with myself. I got so fed up of losing people that I should have been beating, that I said to myself "no more". And it just so happened that the very next day, we were wrestling a school and I was wrestling a kid that was one of the better wrestlers in the state of Ohio. And I went out and I beat that kid. That day was a great breakthrough for me, because I broken out of this kind of losing pattern that I'd got into because I would go from wrestling offensively to win and then just trying to hang on to my lead once I got the lead. I got so disgusted with myself that that had happened to me that I lost because of doing that, that I said, "I'm never going to do that again. I'm going to go out there from now on and I'm going to wrestle aggressively the entire match".
And that day, beloved, after I lost to this kid that I knew I should have beat, that day I had a great breakthrough. And for the rest of that season, I consistently was winning. And it was such a mark time in my life. I remember getting into my vehicle that next day after I lost to the kid I should have beat and then wrestling a really high level athlete the next day and beating him. I remember getting out of the school bus that day after I had beaten this kid. We were driving back as a team from the school where the match was and the coach announced on the bus to all the wrestlers that day that I was given the prize for the best wrestler of the night and gave me a coupon for a free pizza.
I remember getting out of that bus when we got back to our school, getting into my car, turning on my CD or it was a eight track tape at the time, I don't remember, and I turned the music on and it was like I can't even explain what happened. Even though I didn't know God through Jesus at the time, it felt like a God moment to me. I was like translated into a state of bliss, a state of release, a state of freedom. I had just experienced great breakthrough. Breakthroughs are real. And I had a great breakthrough that day in a physical wrestling match. But you and I, beloved, are no longer wrestling physically most of us today. Maybe you're a teenager and you wrestle, but the vast majority of us today we're not wrestling physical wrestling matches. We're wrestling spiritual matches like Paul spoke about in the book of Ephesians. And I want to talk to you again today about how we can have breakthrough as we're wrestling powers of spiritual darkness.
Our primary text has come from the book of 2 Samuel 5, where we've been looking at the life of King David (Dovid Melech) the king of Israel and how as soon as he was anointed king, the powers of darkness came to attack him. The powers of darkness in 2 Samuel will manifest through a group called the Philistines, because the powers of darkness manifest through flesh and blood. And what we've been doing through the first season and also several episodes already in the second season is we've looked at what David did when he was attacked, and how he got breakthrough. We find that David, first of all, he realized he was under attack. As soon as the Philistines came, he knew what was going on. He heard about it. And so we talked about in earlier episodes, that you and I need to gain a greater sense of the fact that spiritual warfare is real.
You know, many of you can quote the Scripture that I quoted earlier. Our fight is not against flesh and blood. "We wrestle not," Paul said, "against flesh and blood, but against powers of spiritual wickedness in heavenly places". Many of us have heard that Scripture, and we quote it. But the truth is, even though we know it by heart, some of us, we don't really have revelation about it. We don't really believe we're under spiritual attack. We don't really believe that when things are bombarding us, when thoughts are coming to our mind that are tormenting us or temptations are happening that we don't know why the temptation is so strong, we don't really have comprehension that we're under spiritual attack. We think that everything is in the physical world.
I'm talking to you right now. We say we believe but if you look at your life, Perhaps you'll be able to ascertain that you don't really believe it because you blame your problems on circumstances, on people, rather than understanding that our real problems are not the circumstances, and they're not the people. Our fight is not against flesh and blood. Our real problem is the thoughts that we're having. And thoughts come from the realm of the spirit. We're in a spiritual battle. It's not what's happening that's the problem. It's the way we perceive what's happening that's the problem. And the way we perceive what's happening is a spiritual problem. And the thoughts that we're having are either coming from the spirit of light and life, are coming from the Spirit of God, or they're coming from the powers of the enemy.
Think about it. Jesus stood before Pilate. He was completely calm, completely at peace, filled with confidence, filled with a sense of triumph. He knew He was about to be crucified. And Pilate was amazed and said to Him, "Don't you know I have the power to crucify you"? Many of us would have been terrified, shaking in our bootstraps. Some would have given up their faith because they were so afraid. But Jesus said calmly to Pilate, "You would have no power over me, unless it was given you from above". You see, it wasn't the circumstance, that was the enemy. Jesus wasn't afraid of the circumstance. He wasn't reacting to the circumstance. Yeshua had higher Revelation. He lived above it and He had breakthrough. And we could look at many examples.
Think of Paul, for example, in Scripture. He's in prison and yet rather than having a bad attitude in prison, Paul said that his imprisonment was for our good, because the gospel was coming forth through his writings while he was in prison. And because the word was being spread that he was in prison, it bonded the saints together. And so I'm trying to help us understand today that we are in a wrestling match, we need to get breakthrough. And we need greater revelation to understand that our fight is not against flesh and blood and people and circumstances and the government and our employer. No, the real fight is in our mind, in the thoughts that we're having. And these are spiritual things that we need to get in touch with the Spirit of the Lord within us.
See the Bible says that when David heard the Philistines were attacking him, when he realized he was under attack, he went down, the Scripture says, into the stronghold. We've been studying this. That's why I'm not taking more time right now. For us, the stronghold is going into the center of ourselves where Jesus is, He's within us. And becoming secure in that and confident in that and knowing that the I Am is in us, and that we're more than sufficient and conquerors of anything that we're going to face we can overcome. And that the key is to be grounded in peace. We go into the stronghold.
That's what David did, first of all. And then after that, David looked to the Lord for what should he do. And God said to go against the enemy. So David arose from being still before the Lord. He arose from just abiding in God and being at peace and receiving in that secret place, in the stronghold. He went from that place where he stood up. He went against the Philistines. And then when he went against the Philistines, he defeated them. And after defeating them, he said, "The Lord has broken through my enemies before me like the breakthrough of waters".
In the same account in the Book of Chronicles, we read that David said, "God has broken through my enemies by my hand like the breakthrough of waters". In both instances, it's the same event, it's the same thing. But in the Book of Chronicles, we find that the writer has given us some additional information. That David said, "God has broken through my enemies". But we find in Chronicles that David also said, "God has broken through my enemies by my hand". In other words, the Holy Spirit in David was what gave David the power to break through the Philistine to break through his enemy.
How do we understand this? That on the one hand in the book of 2 Samuel, David doesn't say that it was by his hand. He just said the Lord did it. "The Lord has broken through my enemies," David said in 2 Samuel, "like the breakthrough of waters". He didn't say it had anything to do with himself. He just said, "The Lord has broken through my enemies like to breakthrough of waters". And yet once again in Chronicles, David said, "The Lord has broken through my enemies by my hand like the breakthrough of waters". How do we understand it? I like to think of Ezekiel's vision. Remember Ezekiel's vision? Ezekiel said he saw a wheel. And he said, "There was an inner wheel, and outside of the inner wheel was an outer wheel".
So Ezekiel, beloved one, had this vision. He saw two wheels. There was an inner wheel, and then another wheel around the inner wheel. And Ezekiel said whenever the inner wheel moved, the outer wheels moved. But whenever the inner wheel stopped, the outer wheel stopped. And so the outer wheels got their life from the inner wheel. The inner wheel possessed the outer wheel. And it was this inner wheel that gave life and movement to the outer wheel. That's what happened here with David. David said, "I broke through my enemies. The Lord broke through my enemies by my hand".
What does this mean? It was God's working in David's heart and through David's life that gave him the victory. It was God that gave him the victory. But God was possessing David and empowering David. And so David said, it's by my hand. This is what you and I are after in breakthrough. We're wanting to become so in touch with, so possessed by the living Spirit of God that resides within us, that when he moves, we move. And because we're being possessed and motivated and filled with the Spirit, everything we do becomes effective, and we get breakthrough. If we just try to do it in ourself, in the flesh, there is no real power there. It's just flesh. But if we're moving by the power of the Ruach HaKodesh like David did, we're going to experience true breakthrough.
See, Paul said, "It's no longer I that live. But Christ," he said, "lives in me". When you and I can die to our outer impulses, when we can pull ourselves back from being so connected to the things on the outside to instead become one with the Spirit of the Lord that's in us through the dying process of dying to the flesh, dying to our own impulses, to instead pull ourselves back, to learn how to get in touch with the Holy Spirit that's in our soul, what's going to happen is we're going to be like that outer wheel. And whenever the inner wheel moves, the Holy Spirit, we're going to move. And because we're moving by the Spirit, we're going to breakthrough in our lives.
You see, Jesus said, "He that abides in Me bears much fruit". Yeshua said this: unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains alone. But if it dies it bears much fruit. What does this mean? When you and I die to living by the flesh, when you and I die to living by our own abilities, when you and I die to being connected to the things of the world, like Paul said, he was crucified to the world and the world was crucified to Him, and instead, we pull ourselves back and get in touch with the Holy Spirit within us, learning how to be led by Him, we will experience significant, powerful breakthrough in our lives.
The Bible says all that are led by the Spirit, these are the sons of God. Beloved, there's breakthrough in store for you. Eyes have not seen and ears have not heard the things that the Lord has prepared for those that love Him. As you and I depend on the Spirit, rely on the Spirit, die to ourselves, and are moved by Him alone, we're going to enter into more and more glory and we're going to experience the presence of King Jesus in our life in ever fuller ways. This is Rabbi Schneider saying I love you. God bless you and shalom.