It's so easy to repeat the words Jesus spoke in Matthew 6:33, "But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you." But more often than not, we can easily find ourselves seeking many other things aside from the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and that can sometimes be our stumbling block in the pursuit of God's breakthroughs in our lives.
I've recently spent some time reviewing the faith goals that I had set for this year that I wanted to see God give me. Some of the items included a house, a trip to Hong Kong with my family, financial breakthrough, a double-portion growth in our church leaders and many others. I looked through the list and saw that God had probably answered only two or three out of a list of fifteen items.
I couldn't help but ask, "Lord, am I doing something wrong? Why am I not seeing breakthrough this 2016?" Have you ever found yourself in a similar spot? If you have then welcome to the club, and this might probably be one of the biggest clubs amongst Christians.
Often God puts us through a period of breaking before He brings a surge of breakthrough in our lives. God does this to check one area that can easily be compromised when blessings come, and that area is the area of His absolute Lordship over everything. Sometimes people chase the breakthrough and blessing instead of chasing the God of the breakthrough and blessing.
God makes it clear over and over again in scripture how utterly important it is that He remain the number one desire in our heart. When we place blessing and breakthrough as more important to us than the will and presence of God, we fall in the trap of making blessing and breakthrough an idol.
God wants to bless us no doubt, but He also wants to make sure that the blessing will never become a hindrance to us pursuing God. That's why God tested Abraham and asked Him to sacrifice Isaac - to check whether God really was number one in Abraham's life or not.
Mark 8:35-36 says, "For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake and for the gospel will save it. 36What does it profit a man to gain the whole world, yet forfeit his soul?"
When we set our eyes on things of this earth, we could as easily lose everything, but when we set the prize that is Jesus Christ and the empowering of the Holy Spirit, God adds everything into our lives including blessings.
