Positioning for Breakthrough: God’s Plan for Your Victory

By Dan Stallbaum

A blueprint for attaining your God-centered goals...We all want to experience God's favor, His blessing. We pray for it. We expect and believe for it. Yet so often we are not properly prepared to receive it. But that doesn't have to be the case.This may be one of the most practical, powerful, and helpful books you ever read.Positioning for Breakthrough provides real examples and lifechanging strategies that will position you to capture your increase; all while keeping God in the center of your processes.Don't just hope for your life to change - put yourself in a position to receive breakthrough!

• Language: English
• Publisher: HigherLife Publishing
• Release date: Nov 30, 2019
• ISBN: 9781733727303

Book preview

pastor.

INTRODUCTION

I REMEMBER LEAVING FOR church early one Sunday morning to set up for services when an elderly neighbor rolled a 1960s Cadillac DeVille out of his garage. It was pristine and had a For Sale sign on it. The DeVille was a two-toned pearl essence dusty rose-colored convertible with an immaculate red leather interior. The odometer showed less than sixty thousand original miles, and in 1988 he was asking only eight hundred dollars for this show-worthy car.

I pulled over, and we spoke about the car, which was beautiful. His asking price was eight hundred dollars, yet it was worth so much more. He offered to let me drive it, then tossed the keys to me. I drove it around the corner to my home and showed it to Carolyn. But, regardless of how amazing this deal was, we had just moved to Florida from Colorado, were managing a newly-established business, and had three kids in private school. By no means were we prepared to spend eight hundred dollars on an investment car. I couldn’t take advantage of such a great deal. I made a decision that day that if a breakthrough deal ever presented itself again, I would be prepared.

Breakthroughs can be anything from getting a great bargain to conquering inhibiting habits, excelling at something after a plateau, or breaking a glass ceiling. Additionally, some life experiences, such as getting promoted, losing weight, quitting smoking, or buying a home, are breakthroughs. Breakthroughs are always personal—in some cases they may be greater or lesser than these examples—and should be acknowledged and celebrated.

And while achieving a breakthrough satisfies a personal goal, that achievement can have a great corporate effect. Let me explain. Your personal breakthroughs will spill over into your relationships, your abilities on the job, and the way you manage your businesses. That is how it should be. Being positioned for breakthrough should affect all aspects of your life.

Being positioned for breakthrough should affect all aspects of your life.

Take the history of our church. In 1985 a small group of families laid the foundation for what is now East Coast Christian Center (East Coast) in Merritt Island, Florida. By 1987, they were 120 strong and bought a 13,000-square-foot movie theater. That building served as the main sanctuary, office space, and children’s church. As time progressed, the church grew and purchased neighboring buildings; then it grew again.

Now, thirty years later, we manage seventeen services a week: eleven live in-house and six online. Additionally, we broadcast live special events, including our monthly Night of Worship. In 2010 we added a monthly date night outreach geared toward enhancing relationships among couples in our congregation. On those evenings, after the Saturday services, which usually end by 7:00 p.m., we provide professional day care for kids until 10:00 p.m. while their parents enjoy date night.

All these services are managed among four campuses and three websites (ECCC.us, YouTube, and Facebook) and require twenty-seven full-time staff members, fifty-three part-timers, and more than 1,300 Dream Team servants (volunteers). All this is done to serve nearly 3,050 attendees each week and 12,000 viewers each month.

Art Reichle, UCLA head baseball coach for thirty years, once told me, Practice does not make perfect; perfect practice makes perfect, and, The harder I work, the ‘luckier’ I get. In other words, if you’re prepared, you will always have the advantage. However, the reverse is also true: When you are not prepared, breakthroughs can come to you yet not do you any good. To fully benefit from breakthroughs, you need to be ready for them so you can take full advantage when they do come.

To fully benefit from breakthroughs, you need to be ready for them so you can take full advantage when they do come.

What would your life look like right now if you had captured the last three opportunities that passed by, or if you had responded to the door that opened for you?

For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.

—Ephesians 2:10

God’s will is for you to walk in breakthrough—and you can. But like me, people are not always prepared. As you learn the principles in this book and practice them, you should experience more breakthroughs in your life. In the upcoming chapters, we will explore different areas that will impact every area of your life.

In God’s economy, East Coast’s continued growth directly correlated with how we positioned ourselves for more from the very beginning. One of the reasons God blessed our church with more is that we sought to properly manage most every breakthrough, no matter how small. We tried to prepare for a breakthrough by having our house in financial and administrative order. This made room for new breakthroughs, and we were able to respond to any increases we received.

In my personal life, while I still do my best, in reality, life has not always worked out for me to be prepared for every breakthrough. As I get older, however, I am growing into the principle that breakthrough can only be fully reaped by those who are prepared. I have modified Art’s saying to fit my beliefs: The harder and the smarter I work, the more breakthroughs I will capture.

We need to know the source of our breakthroughs.

Notably, we need to know the source of our breakthroughs. All our efforts are in vain if we don’t faithfully depend on the Lord of the Breakthrough, as David did in 2 Samuel:

So David inquired of the LORD, saying, Shall I go up against the Philistines? Will You deliver them into my hand? And the LORD said to David, Go up, for I will doubtless deliver the Philistines into your hand. So David went to Baal Perazim, and David defeated them there; and he said, The LORD has broken through my enemies before me, like a breakthrough of water. Therefore he called the name of that place Baal Perazim.

—2 Samuel 5:19–20

Translated, Baal Perazim means Lord of the Breakthrough. The Bible tells us that God has plans for us—plans to prosper us:

For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, says the LORD, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope.

—Jeremiah 29:11

The Bible also says He will not stop training us up:

…being confident of this very thing, that He who has begun a good work in you will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ.

—Philippians 1:6

How will God trust you with the next plan if you don’t properly see your current one through? God put it on my heart to "enlarge the place of [my] tent" (Isaiah 54:2) by turning a six-part sermon into a book. What you are now reading is my fulfillment of that plan.

As you continue reading, know that the Bible is the infallible, inerrant Word of God, and the final authority in all matters of faith and conduct (2 Timothy 3:15-17, 1 Peter 2:22). For this reason, this book is based on biblical teachings, along with my life experiences. As Christians, we need to understand that the Bible interprets the Bible. That means that the Bible clarifies itself by giving verses and principles that explain other verses and principles. In other words, if you read something in the Bible that isn’t immediately clear, you will eventually find that same principle somewhere else in the Bible which will explain it in a way that’s understandable to you. And while there are various translations of the Bible, for this book, I mostly used The New King James Version as my primary source for quoted Scriptures; with an occasional secondary source. (Secondary sources will be noted as such.)

The Bible interprets the Bible.

In the following pages is information that will help you prepare to receive God’s best for you. God loves you too much to leave you where you are; He wants to elevate you to your full purpose and potential. Your purpose in life is to glorify