Where Is My Breakthrough?
God, is this seriously taking this long?
If you ever drive the winding roads in the Black Hills of South Dakota, you’ll find yourself staring at the faces of four dead presidents. George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt, and Abraham Lincoln, all permanently etched into the mountain, looking towards the horizon across the nation they once led. Mount Rushmore is among America’s most recognizable national monuments, and for good reason. It was quite the task.
When American sculptor Gutzon Borglum took on the assignment of carving four, sixty foot busts of the president’s likenesses into the side of a mountain, I doubt he knew what he had signed up for. Fourteen years passed between the beginning of construction in 1927 and its completion in 1941. Gutzon died just a few months shy of completing the project, but he was able to hand the legacy of his leadership off to his son, Lincoln. With the help of an asinine amount of dynamite and young men that probably shouldn’t have been working that dangerous of a job at their age, more than 800 million pounds of rock were moved, and Mount Rushmore was made.
I think we all want breakthrough in some area of our life. We can see the mountain that we feel like God has called us to carve, we can even see where the faces will be and how they will look, but we’re still waiting for that breakthrough moment. That moment where we can finally lay claim to what God has called us to collect and break ground on the dream that brings glory to His name.
I’m not sure where you are praying for breakthrough. It could be in your relationship with God, to get out of the funk you’re in and to feel a deep desire to spend time with Him and go deeper into the mysteries of His glory and goodness. Maybe it’s in your finances, to get out of the red and to a point where you don’t have to worry about paying your bills. Possibly in your relationship status, you’ve waited well and feel like God has prepared your heart and soul to mingle with another, but the wait is taking longer than you anticipated. Potentially in your calling, that things would start to move and shake from, “I feel like God has called me to do this,” to, “Woah, Lord. We’re actually doing this.”
Listen, I’ve been there. In many different ways, I am there. You probably are too. In your frustration and discouragement, allow me to encourage you for a moment. Psalm 31:24 says, “Be strong, and let your heart take courage, all you who wait for the Lord!” 1 Corinthians 15:58 tells us to, “be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain.”
You are not waiting in vain as long as you are continuing to do the greatest, God-glorifying work that you can with what He has given you today. Your breakthrough won’t be the result of one big blast out of nowhere, but the culmination of consistent and faithful chipping each day that helped move 800 millions pounds of rock.
The men who made Mount Rushmore went to work for fourteen years. I’m not saying that God will make you wait fourteen years to see breakthrough, but I’m also not telling you that it’s out of the question. Great work tends to take great time. Mount Rushmore is currently eroding at the rate of only one inch every 10,000 years. My point?
It took fourteen years to make Mount Rushmore, but it’s not going anywhere. It’s here to stay, and it won’t lose its beauty. Long after you and I are gone, generations of our families will potentially stop to see what generations before us had seen because of fourteen years of consistent and faithful chipping.
Whether you can see it or not, you’re working towards breakthrough. It takes consistency and faithfulness. Some days are harder than others, no doubt, but you’re getting there. How close or how far? Who can say? But we can say this, that each day you don’t go to work on the mountain, you are one day further away than you would have been otherwise.
God has downloaded something special into each and every one of us, but unpacking that takes time. If God let you skip critical parts of development so that you could get everything your heart desires in an instant, it would derail you from developing into who God is creating you to be. Ultimately, here is the best news when it comes to breakthrough…
Your greatest breakthrough won’t be when you can hold the desires of your heart in your hands, you’re living in breakthrough right now. Jesus didn’t say, “I might overcome the world!” He said, “I have overcome the world.” If Jesus brought your breakthrough into eternity by His blood, what makes you think He won’t be able to bring breakthrough in the situation you’re dealing with right now?
Your friend,
- Luke
Keep up with Luke on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook: @lukelezon
If you like what you read here, I’d love to encourage you to check out my first book that comes out this November, Your Mess Matters: Trusting The God Who Creates From Dust And Redeems By Blood. Just click the button beneath!