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Breakthroughs present opportunities for us into God's purposes. More than they satisfy our own temporal or temporary circumstances. See, real breakthroughs do more than just satisfy my wants. They may do that, but they present opportunities to be engaged in the purposes of God, and there's no greater breakthrough for your life. You'd rather be engaged in the purposes of God than win the lottery. I promise.
Breakthroughs. Breakthroughs. Our ministry is to spread God's truth across our nation and around our world. And Alan Jackson Ministries intends to do this in every possible way, including broadcasts like these. If you'd like to listen to the full sermon, you can find it right now on AlanJackson.com on our podcast and on our app.
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Taking time to notice the good things and giving thanks for them is a consistent way to find hope and peace. That's why Pastor Allen recommends keeping a good news list, taking the time to write down the good things happening in the world and your life. Our new 52-week Good News notebook gives you a place to record your good news, prayers you saw God answer, and your current prayer requests. This simple practice will help you see how God is constantly at work all around you.
Request your good news notebook when you donate $20 or more today at allenjaxson.com or by calling 855-5772255. That's 855-572255. We're so glad you're here to listen. Today's message from Pastor Allen is called Breakthrough. The Lord is with you. We're working to do a Sunday on breakthroughs.
And I really began this because of the, I was so aware of how many people amongst us, and you can put me on that list. We're in places where we need breakthroughs from the Lord. Where only the intervention of God can bring a solution that's really acceptable. You know, there may be other ways to navigate or to negotiate, but without God's help and engagement and involvement, the outcomes won't be good.
Breakthroughs are not always so mystical. I think there's a great deal of information in Scripture, and we can cooperate. We can catalyze breakthroughs, or we can be resistant to them. In fact, as I've been working for these weeks, I'm going to write another study on breakthroughs missed.
I've become very aware of generations of people who missed the most obvious, the poster generation for breakthroughs missed was the Exodus generation. They ate manna, they drank water from a rock, they came through the Red Sea, they followed a pillar of cloud and a pillar of fire, and they came to the borders of the promised land, and they said, it's truly a land that flows with milk and honey, but it's too difficult. We don't want to do that. And they died in the desert.
They missed a breakthrough. There's all kinds of individuals, Pilate, the Roman governor. They had different his life would have been, his future would have been if he would have said, I believe you really are the Messiah. Say, well, it would have cost him something, no kidding. If you haven't processed yet the fact that it will cost you something to follow Jesus. Oh, it's free, but it's not cheap.
Breakthroughs missed, but we're not on that one yet, that's coming. Breakthroughs, God is in the business of intervening in the lives of human beings, of individuals, of families, of generations. It's a whole other subset of the study, the generational blessings that come. If you're willing to catalyze a breakthrough, there's a high degree of probability of your children and your grandchildren and their children after them will benefit.
We've been pretty casual with this stuff. So I'm excited about it. I've been consistently inviting you back to our little paradigm of watching and listening and thinking and acting because we're not doing theology in a vacuum, folks. We live in the real world. We don't gather in our building and do studies about first century culture and ignore 21st century culture. That's called academia. That's not a living faith.
We are practitioners of the Christian faith. Our faith has to impact our generation. And if you're not watching and listening and thinking and acting based upon your faith, just exactly what is it that causes you to think you're a Christ follower. Because you're a theological theoretician.
There needs to be the fruit, the biblical language around it is fruit in your life. There is something produced by the living vitality, the health of your spiritual vibrancy that is evident and tangible, that separates you from non-fruit-bearing trees. And you don't have to go to Washington, D.C. This isn't political, this isn't about Republican or Democrat elephants and donkeys.
I look forward to seeing the Spirit of the Lord poured out on elephants and donkeys. We can just stay in our community. We've struggled mindily in our community on things as simple as removing some really abhorrent books from our school libraries. We're just addled about it.
And there's goofiness all around the equation. It isn't confusing to me. It's spiritual. There's a couple dozen books that simply don't belong in children's libraries. They're not simply pornographic. They're vile. They're perverse. And then the Christian said, well, I've got to list the 400 books. Stop it. They're not Christian libraries.
You're not gonna remove every book, that opinion that you don't like in the library, but there's a couple dozen that are so vile, they don't belong there. I don't care if they came bundled in a hundred million books. We know what the titles are, they need to go. You understand the debate on, people stop me on a very regular basis, very agitated because there are books in our little resource center at church. And they say, you know, they don't have the appropriate view of some aspect of theology they like.
Or there's a Bible in there that's a translation that they don't particularly appreciate. And I'm like, of all the things in the world to be upset about, you're on the war path about a book in the next chapter. And we have trouble saying that these books in our children's libraries don't belong. And then we create all these completely false arguments. Well, I'm not in favor of banning books. That's not true.
We've seen any number of books removed from circulation because they carried racial stereotypes that we didn't want to hand down to another generation. And we very willingly said, take those out of the libraries. We didn't hesitate. We didn't debate them from once. We said, no, we agree. We don't want to sow those seeds in the hearts of the children. Let's see that they don't belong in the library. It's not the banning of books. It's about age-appropriate learning. If you're an adult and you want to read books that are racially stereotyped,
You would certainly have that freedom if you want to read books that are perverse. You have that freedom, but we don't want to subject our children to that. And since I'm off topic, I'll stay here for a minute. I don't think the school boards ought to argue about it for a year. Read the books into the record.
read the sailing at points into the record, then vote. I want that there or I don't want that there. And if we're aware enough, then we can decide who we want to lead our schools. This isn't complicated. We don't even be angry or belligerent. We just make a decision. But stop with the goofy arguments.
And I hope you're paying attention. If you say I haven't paid attention, I haven't read the books, then you'd be quiet. You shouldn't get the vote. You shouldn't have an opinion. You have to invest enough attention to pay attention, to be engaged,
You see, the issue really isn't Washington, DC. The question is, will we stand for a biblical worldview as Christ followers? In our community, the people who aren't Christians, I don't expect them to stand up for that. Why wouldn't they? They have a different worldview. But if you say you're a Christ follower, it's not our choices. We're reflecting a worldview from our Lord. Watch, listen, think, and act. That's called breakthroughs.
If they don't happen in a vacuum, they happen when people of faith live out their faith. We get far more heated up about athletics. We have a whole, we have an endless stream of talk radio and television talking about our favorite sports teams and we'll travel and how excited we, and there's nothing that's inappropriate. But when the discussion comes to our kids, we won't even take the time to look at the content.
That's really wrong. So I don't have any kids there. That's a lousy excuse. You don't have any kids playing for the Titans either. Or most of us don't have any playing for the vaults or breakthroughs when God intervenes.
See, it isn't theoretical. I'm happy to unpack the Scripture, but we'll find the breakthroughs and we begin to live out the truth that we know. We've got to stop having these biblical debates around something that happened a thousand years ago and ignoring what God's called us to do today. But since it's the holiday season,
The breakthrough I want to walk through with you in this session is a statement that God made to marry through the angel Gabriel. He said, the Lord is with you. And I want you to know the Lord is with you. God is moving in the earth. In a way, I'm not sure I've seen him move in my lifetime. I've never seen people responding to the Lord with the kind of hunger that I see these days.
I'm surprised oftentimes where it presents from and the people who don't respond, but I've never seen the Lord moving in the way that the change coming is rapidly. The realignment, the expression of things, we could spend our entire time with examples of that, but the Lord is with you. You should know that He hasn't left you. His voice isn't heard small in our generation. The wind of the Spirit is stirring the earth.
I was outside this morning with my dad for a minute, and it was real windy, and he said, well, there's going to change. Well, I have that feeling spiritually. You can feel the breeze of the spirit, folks. There's change coming. And I want to be on the God's side of that. Thank you for listening to Alan Jackson Ministries. We'll be back to the message in just a moment. But first, Pastor Allen wants to tell you about a new resource from the ministry.
You know, the two most critical junctures of any enterprise are how we begin and how we conclude. So the beginning of a new year is a tremendous opportunity. We've prepared a tool we want to share with you. It's a good news journal. We want to help you set a habit this year to do something with a bit more intention than perhaps has been our pattern in the past.
We want to start our year with an attitude of appreciation and gratitude for the blessings of God in our lives. So we've designed this journal so that you can use it as a part of your devotional. It's something you could include the children, the grandchildren. You can take it to work and create a good news journal for the people you work with.
Wherever that may be, let's start our year out purposefully, intentionally, saying thank you to the Lord for His goodness to us. I know there's challenges and we have places where we need God's help, but we're gonna begin with gratitude and walk into the blessings of God in this year. I think you'll enjoy the journal. God bless.
a warm home when it's cold outside, a surgeon who knows how to fix what's wrong, a stranger who stops to help. We have so much to be thankful for. When we turn our focus away from what's wrong with the world, and instead give attention to what's good, we find a path towards hope and peace.
That's why we created our 52-week Good News notebook. It gives you a place to record good news in your life and the world around you. You can also write down prayers God answered and your current prayer requests. Over time, your Good News notebook will become a personal record of God's faithfulness to you.
Request yours when you donate $20 or more today at EllenJackson.com or by calling 855-5772255. That's 855-5772255. Now, let's get back to Pastor Allen with this message called Breakthrough. The Lord is with you. I got to wrap it up, so let's do this quickly. Breakthroughs are the fulfillment of God's promises. I want to say it again, it's really important. Breakthroughs are the fulfillment of God's promises.
I could develop that with quite a bit of complexity from scripture, but I'll give you one passage, 2 Peter 1. This is the fisherman that Jesus recruited. He said, he's given us his very great and precious promises so that through them, you may participate in the divine nature and escape the corruption in the world caused by evil desires. How do we escape evil and the corruption it brings in our world? He told you through the promises of God.
You see, the Exodus generation were given a promised land, a space on terra firmer that belonged to them and their children and the generations who came after them forever. It's printed in the book and it still frustrates the nations of the earth. Well, God didn't give to you and me a piece of ground. He didn't give us a promised land, but our existence in our journey through time is the land of God's promises.
which means you'll have to take some time and energy to get to know the promises of God. In order to stand against the evil in our community, you gotta read some books that you probably shouldn't read. Because once you read them, you go, oh, I didn't need to be there. And if you're going to live in the fulfillment of the promises of God, you'll have to spend some time searching them, coming to understand them. They're God's provision for your life.
God's provision for you and me is in His promises. I wish I knew what God would do. He's told you. He's told you. He said, I'll never leave you or forsake you. Well, I feel like He's abandoned me. Well, your feelings not accurate. Well, you can't tell me how I feel. No, I can't. I can just tell you it's not fully accurate. It's real. I can't help how I feel. I know that you can just decide which feeling to believe, which feeling to act on.
There've been times I didn't feel like preaching. I just put on this grade, didn't feel like it today. You go, that's not a very mature response. You're right. And we have incubated some very immature responses to life. God's provision is in His promises. Look at Luke 7, I can give you support from Jesus' life.
He's talking about John the Baptist, and he says, this is the one about whom it was written. I'll send my messenger ahead of you who will prepare your way before you. I tell you among those born among women, there's no one greater than John, yet the one who is least in the kingdom of God is greater than he. I'll give you the shorthand on that, because our time is slipping past. Jesus understood the circumstances surrounding him, his life, to be the fulfillment of Scripture.
I wanna say it again. Very clearly, I can give you multiple passages. Jesus understood the circumstances surrounding his life to be the fulfillment of God's promises. We should do no less. We should do no less. Then finally, it's the ending that matters. Breakthroughs are understood in their conclusion, in their outworking.
Not on their finality because they lead to other things, but it's when you recognize God is intervened. And to do that, you have to push through, you have to overcome, you have to persevere, you have to endure all those words that I would rather not. I've mentioned Elizabeth and Zechariah and John, their son, in Matthew 14, in verse 9, it says, the king was distressed because of his oaths and his dinner guest, he ordered that the request to be granted, and he had John beheaded in prison.
His head was brought in on a platter and given to the girl who carried it to her mother. John's disciples came and took his body and buried it, and then they went to find Jesus. Well, the passage I just read to you immediately preceding that, Jesus said there wasn't anyone greater and born among women than John. And Herod beheaded him. Talk about a breakthrough mist. Herod was intrigued by John.
He wasn't strong enough to stand up to the manipulative forces in his life, and he would rather indulge his pleasures and stand up for what's right. Gee, that doesn't sound like the 21st century. And so John's mission was finished. I don't believe he did something wrong. First Corinthians 9 says, do you not know that in a race all the runners run? Only one gets the prize, run in such a ways to get the prize.
You see, breakthroughs are about a setting apart. Oftentimes from family, from contemporaries, from conventional wisdom, breakthroughs are about aligning with God. The messages are often challenging. God's called you out of the world, not to be indistinct, not to be so well camouflaged. They didn't know you were a Christian. I've told you there were seasons of my life. I was way too undercover.
I grew up in this community. They were very shocked when I showed up as a pastor. I mean, we laugh about it and I tell that with a bit of a smirk, but I'm not really proud of it. I went to the public schools here, played on their basketball teams. That was back when it was about the only option. We used to actually pray before ball games. I know that sounds quaint, but we did. In the last game I played at Riverdale,
They looked at me and said, you pray. I had never prayed before a game, or at least not in that year. And I got done with the prayer and a guy that I'd played ball with a long time, several years. He looked at me and said, dang, Jackson, I didn't know you knew how to pray. That's not a compliment. He knew I'd fight. He knew I was stubborn. He knew I'd run till I throw up.
But he didn't have any idea, I knew how to pray. You see, breakthroughs are about a willingness to align yourself with God. And we've been coached for a while now, I think, in some wrong directions. Disappointment is not the final evaluation. God can bring some great victories through disappointing circumstances. Run to get the prize. At the starting line, we all look good. No shoes, hairs in place, plenty of oxygen,
At the end of the contest, I'm a mess. There's usually blood and I can't breathe and my shirt's untucked. My hair's plastered to my hand. I can watch you move and I sweat. So if I'm moving, it's just embarrassing. Run in such a ways to get the prize. We've treated our faith like it's a photo op. We want every hair in place.
We want to tell our stories as if we couldn't imagine stress or strain, discomfort. No, I met Jesus and every day he's just been filled with greater glory than the day before. I'd hear those stories and go, I haven't met him yet. When you know the stories, Daniel got to go to the lion's den, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego got to go to a really hot furnace.
Moses had to go talk to Pharaoh over and over again. Jesus had to go to the cross. I mean, it's a long list. Breakthroughs, and I'll close with this, breakthroughs present opportunities for us into God's purposes. More than they satisfy our own temporal or temporary circumstances.
You see, real breakthroughs do more than just satisfy my wants. They may do that, but they present opportunities to be engaged in the purposes of God, and there's no greater breakthrough for your life. You'd rather be engaged in the purposes of God than win the lottery. I promise breakthroughs, breakthroughs, breakthroughs. Let's be like Joseph, yes.
He said, yes. Mary said it, and it was still somewhat theoretical. I'm not saying it was easier. She's going to get stretch marks. She's got to go find Joseph. She's got to answer. And then Joseph's got his own side of it. Mary said, may it be unto me? And Joseph said, yeah, I'm into. We can't do less, folks. Again, I believe in the new birth and conversion, but stop.
These are the covenant people of God living in the promised land, celebrating at the temple. They've got all the credentials, but God puts something in front of them that takes every ounce of courage they have. Let's decide to be those people. Breakthroughs. Breakthroughs. Stand with me. We're going to say yes to the Lord.
Lord, thank you for your word, for its truth and power and authority. Thank you that you've called us to the 21st century to be men and women of faith, to take our place in your unfolding purposes. Thank you for a Christmas season when we can celebrate the faithfulness of those who have preceded us, those men and women who said yes to you and allowed your purposes to break forth and change generations.
And Lord in humility tonight, we want to say thank you. Thank you that through the blood of Jesus, we have been delivered out of the hand of the enemy. Thank you that through the blood of Jesus, our sins have been forgiven. That we've been justified and sanctified and called according to your purposes. And now Lord, we want to say yes to you. We want to say yes to you. Forgive us where we've been stubborn or unconcerned or unwilling to prepare. Lord, we choose a new path tonight.
We want to be men and women who follow you, who cooperate with your spirit, who yield to your direction, give us discerning hearts, give us understanding and insight. May the fear of God grow within us. We thank you for what you're doing, and we want to say yes to you. In Jesus' name, amen.
God bless you. Our new 52-week Good News notebook gives you a place to record the good things God is doing in your life and the world around you. Write down prayers you saw God answer in your current prayer requests. When you keep these lists consistently, you'll create a personal record of God's faithfulness.
Request your good news notebook when you donate $20 or more today at alanjaxon.com or by calling 855-5772255. That's 855-5772255. That's all for today on Alan Jackson Ministries. Thanks for listening. Tune in next time for another encouraging message. This program is sponsored by Alan Jackson Ministries.