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chapter_one.docxChapter One
You Don’t Have to Be Stuck Anymore
Do you ever have the feeling that you are missing out on something important?
It’s probably because you are.
You are separated from blessings so incredible, in fact, that if you realized what you were missing, you wouldn’t stop until you had them in your possession. Those blessings are as real as the book you hold in your hands, and they are waiting for you! But you will never enjoy them if you remain where you are right now. You are stuck, and you don’t have to be. There are walls that hold you back and keep you from living your life to the fullest. And those walls don’t crumble through sincere effort or positive thinking.
I discovered through my own trials that overcoming walls is not always that simple. For me, that struggle came from the most unlikely place.
Lily changed everything.
Lily is now a four-year-old firecracker. Her therapists have nicknamed her “the Texas Tornado” because of her uncanny combination of energy and speed. In a matter of seconds she can playfully dismantle objects that once seemed indestructible. There is no barrier from which she cannot escape, and the word childproof is lost on her, but she can weasel out of trouble in an instant with the most beautiful smile you’ve ever seen. With big, bright blue eyes and floppy brown hair, Lily is the cutest little girl you’ll ever lay eyes on. We call her Lily-bird because, well, it just stuck somehow.
If you ever meet her, though, you may sense that something is not quite right. That’s true. In four short years of life she has accumulated an entire file box of medical records. Lily-bird’s life has been a roller-coaster ride, and the adventure isn’t over yet. But the highlights and heartaches of this one adorable little girl have shaped our family more than I ever thought possible.
Lily has brought me face-to-face with my own walls. Her struggles for life caused me to question not just the beliefs I held dear, but the reasons I held on to those beliefs. My journey with her has helped me realize just how important it is for people to face the walls that hold them back.
The lessons in this book are straight from the Bible, and I am totally convinced that they are effective and true. But I’ll have to admit that I underestimated their profound impact on real life until I lived them myself.
If you are like the rest of us, there’s a good chance that something has challenged your understanding of God, and there’s a strong possibility that those struggles have affected every other relationship in your life. Even so, I have great news for you, news that has the power to change everything: there is a way past the walls that are holding you back.
But before you overcome the walls in your life, you have to understand what’s happening around you that has the potential to ruin you.
You have been robbed, and you might not even know it. Millions of people throughout history have been robbed in the very same way, but that doesn’t make it any more acceptable to have something taken from you that is rightfully yours.
You may be like one of the unwitting victims of Albert Gonzalez. You’ve probably never heard of him, but there’s a chance he has heard of you. Albert was the hacker behind the largest credit card theft in U.S. history, swiping data from more than 130 million accounts and making off with nearly 200 million dollars before his arrest in 2008. With that many accounts involved and that much money stolen, there is a good chance you or someone you loved was a part of that number without knowing it.
But that’s not the robbery I’m talking about. I’m referring to a much larger heist with a far greater consequence.
Chances are good that at this very moment you are being robbed of a breakthrough—a breakthrough that would lead you to a life God designed you to enjoy. This breakthrough has already been promised to you. You were created to experience it, to walk in its freedom, and to comprehend its power.
Just as walls come in all shapes and sizes, so do the breakthroughs that move you beyond them. You can have a breakthrough financially and receive a raise at work. You can experience a breakthrough in a relationship and marry the person of your dreams. But a far more significant breakthrough is waiting, one that ultimately paves the way for a whole new life of victory.
This is what I call a Faith Breakthrough, and I am praying that there is one in your very near future. A Faith Breakthrough is the act of overcoming a life barrier by learning to trust in, and intentionally pursue, God and what he has promised you.
s a pastor, daily radio show host, and national speaker, I have had the privilege of coming into contact with tens of thousands of people across America, and I have yet to meet someone who hasn’t faced walls. It turns out, as far as I can tell (and unless you are the first), that we are all stuck in some way. By “stuck” I mean that we tend to find ourselves caught in a place where no progress is made for an extended period of time—even when we know instinctively that more lies just ahead. This is true in our personal lives, in businesses, in churches, and in entire communities.
Of course, I have had a front-row seat to one of those groups. I have spent long days and nights trying to figure out the reasons for the frail faith of the modern church—a group of people who seem to be better at talking a good game in a building once a week than truly walking with God in daily life. I have witnessed what happens to families when parents fake their faith on Sundays and then forget it at home. I have looked at the pervasive inconsistency between most people’s stated goals and their actual schedules. I grow even more frustrated when I witness the sincere desire of the wonderful people in these households to live life as they should. The inconsistency is rarely a defiant act of hypocrisy, but instead a sense of confusion about how to fix the problem or an inability to see that problem at all.
I have looked at all the “quick fixes” for home life and been left wanting more. I am convinced that the problem goes deeper than giving people a few simple lifestyle adjustments and hoping all will be better. Nope—most of us are beyond the Band-Aid phase. It’s time to stop settling for business as usual and to pursue the spiritual life we’ve always dreamed of.
Everybody’s Stuck, and Nobody Has to Be
If we’re enjoying all God really has for us, then our faith will overflow into every nook and cranny of our lives, transforming every relationship we have, every perspective we perceive, and every legacy we leave. That’s the magnitude of a Faith Breakthrough—and the secret to overcoming every unseen wall that is holding us back.I’m not promising it will be easy to face the regret of having been robbed for this long or to realize what could have been. I am only promising that you don’t have to be robbed any longer if you take ownership of what God has in store for you.Albert Gonzalez and his band of hackers were able to rob so many of so much because they were invisible to the victims. His electronic scams were taking place without detection because nobody knew he was there. It’s much harder to steal something when the owner is holding it in his or her clutches and there is a sense of loss. It becomes a lot easier when the owner never knew what was missing in the first place.
Maybe you never knew you were stuck behind a wall or missing out on your breakthrough. You’ve heard about God’s promises perhaps all of your life, but you never quite grasped just how personal they were to you—until right now. And that’s why there is so much opportunity in store for you in the pages ahead.
As a pastor, there’s nothing more disappointing than seeing someone I care for who has fallen victim to the lies of the enemy. I’ve known drug addicts who decided it was too late to change, who ultimately wrote their own death sentences. Fathers who determined they had already wasted too much of their relationships to reconcile with their grown children. Sinners who decided they were far too guilty to seek forgiveness.
They were robbed of the blessings awaiting them, distracted by the lies holding them back.
On the other hand, there is nothing more gratifying to a pastor than watching walls come crashing down.
The Carpenter family will never, ever be the same again. Brad’s bout with prescription painkillers had started years earlier when he was dealing with a work-related injury, but the dependence on the pills extended far beyond the medical need and eventually dominated his thoughts, his motivations, and his very existence. After being stuck for years behind a Wall of Discontent and Shame, Brad was about to give in to all of the pressures he was facing and run away from it all. Instead, he cried out to God—and cried out for help from some close friends in his congregation. They shared with him the truth about his walls and the opportunity he had for a genuine breakthrough. As the principles in this book began to permeate Brad’s life and family, what happened next was nothing short of a miraculous transformation. I’ll never forget a recent Sunday morning service when Brad told the entire church about his walls, the addiction that those walls brought about, and the powerful forces of change that had totally transformed his family, his future, and the way he looked at life. He looked out at that crowd, eyes welled up with tears, and proclaimed something to every person in that auditorium: You don’t have to be stuck anymore.
Brad wants you to know the same thing, and I want you to know that there is an opportunity before you that might just be greater than you ever imagined.
Jesus warned his disciples in John 10:10 that just such a robbery was a genuine threat to them: “The thief’s purpose is to steal and kill and destroy.”
It is important to remember that the life you’re missing out on is not being taken from you by accident. Believe it or not, the Bible tells us we have a very real enemy who is out to deceive the people God loves so dearly. You’ve heard him called the adversary, the devil, Satan, and Lucifer, to name a few. Just know that this enemy is real, and he has a heartless plan to rob you and leave you lifeless, trapped forever behind your own walls with all your breakthrough opportunities left in a garbage heap along the way. He is in the business of creating barriers of deception that are intended to hold you back, and many of these walls are cleverly disguised as very enticing alternatives: Comfort. Revenge. Ignorance. Entertainment. He intends to do only one thing: to con you out of the life God has in store for you.
But you don’t have to settle. There is so much more beyond the walls! The passage in John 10:10 actually has great news after that solemn warning. After telling his followers about the thief, Jesus continues to tell them something better: “My purpose is to give them a rich and satisfying life.”
In the context of this book, Jesus might have said, “The thief comes only to place you firmly behind a wall that will rob you of everything I have planned in your life. But I have come that you might have life—the life that’s waiting after your Faith Breakthrough!”
If you were made for a breakthrough—for “a rich and satisfying life,” as Jesus himself said—then that should happen naturally. You don’t have to attain some great stature or learn some secret to enjoy it. You need only to tear down the walls that are keeping you from it. Like a healthy plant that has not grown beyond the confines of its pot, you may have walls that are keeping you stuck in a no-growth pattern that won’t change until you address the problem.
I need to warn you right now, however, that there will be times in the pages ahead when you will be waiting for me to offer you an easy formula. I’ll be very clear: I find no indication in the Bible that this is simple or easy. Instead, I find that it is natural. And because you were made to live life beyond the wall, I can assure you that it is absolutely worth it.
