A few years ago I had a friend send me an ten minute audio of a man who was visited by 12 angels. The leader of the angelic group called himself “Breakthrough.” I know, if you are not accustomed to hearing about angels showing up in modern times, then you probably live in the West and are educated into believing they do not visit since the ones whom we depict at Christmas pageants.

Well, this is a good story true or not. I figured it would prove out in time. I just met another man last month who reported visitation from the same angel. So if this scares you get over it. Fiction is sometimes more powerful than fact, and if true, God does not want you to be afraid of him or his angels. Read Luke Chapter 1 if you want to see what a bullheaded old priest got for not honoring an angel who visited him. (Hint-it was John the Forerunner, a.k.a. John the Baptist’s aged father, Zacharias.)

Why am I telling you this: to risk scaring you into thinking I am a nut? No. I believe the message is really important and timely. It sounded like something God would do. Would a demon quote Isaiah 54? O.K., that aside, he said to the man, “Study Isaiah 54. It is about breakthrough.” He said other things but I am writing today about this beginning thing.

So I read Isaiah then and it was not clear to me. I figured it would come around someday. So I put the MP3 on my computer desktop and shared it with a couple of people over the past few years. I listened to it again after hearing of another man saying an angel named Breakthrough visited him. The man telling the visitation story was speaking of another passage about breakthrough, 2 Samuel 5. So did the man on the MP3. So, the story gains momentum.

I also have studied it over the many months. I have an additional two passages and more. All of them are long chapters in the Bible with rich stories. So, if you are way past me spiritually or do not believe in the Bible at all, these stories are really good, and so is the angel’s appearance. I mean, this stuff does not get on TV but UFO’s do. Whose life ever influenced the world to have love and compassion on the world after supposedly seeing a UFO? One of the biggest stories in the news last year for hits on YouTube was a sort of UFO sighted by a NEWS 8 reporter doing a video of it while covering a marathon in Central Texas. No one has yet found any other evidence of what it was or that it was; only that something went across the sky about the size of a car in flames and landed probably East of Waco, Texas (that is a big maybe.) This had no influence on my life, either-it was just an interesting phenomenon. So, lets get to a story that has more meaning!

“The key to Breakthrough (spiritual overcoming in lives and culture) is Praise,” the angel told the man. We do not seem to understand it or practice it as it truly should be is the point.

That rang a bell. I get uncomfortable when people shout, “Praise the Lord.” I am a person who does not like noise and loud things, except maybe music sometimes. So, years ago I would ask myself, “Are they showing a sort of nervous religiosity, or am I just not wired that way. Does that really praise God just to say PTL?”

I think it depends on the heart. The ancients who praised God, some preserved in the Psalms and many other books, gave specific reasons they praised God. Things like, “Praise God for His justice” or “God is an awesome God, He moves mountains!” Stuff like that.

If I want to praise my wife I do not usually say, “Praise the wife.” I will usually say something I love about her. That is true for praising anyone with whom I have relationship. “I really love how you look today” or “You are an excellent writer, one of the best.” How about simply say, “You are so beautiful!” How about “you light up the room when you enter. We would all miss something if you were not here.” Or maybe, “You are a great observer and listener. That is so important to real friendship.”

The West Coast guy reported that his group of people (in the U.S.A.) Is breaking through. The sign for it is that people celebrate each other and themselves in a balanced way!

This began to sound like really living the Great Commandment-love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, strength and mind, and your neighbor as yourself.” They said loving of self (not malignant narcissism, the great disease of today, but the real thing) pervades their meetings when they collect. It creates a “full of hope community” they repeated. Sounds like a big breakthrough from where I sit. The healthy self love is a balanced love that loves others equally. Narcissism is the “all about me” syndrome. It is all about all of us and about the one who created it even more. “I like my shaved head (we call it bald when over 50!) but I also like that guy’s massive head of hair.” I am adding humor to the mix but I hope you get the idea.

Another way to look at this “Praise” breakthrough is to give it another theologically imposing name that has richness: and it is described in community as I just described it but also adds meaning-Consecration. What is that??

I like to think of it in light of our current meditation as liberation, setting apart from the things that keep us from being what God originally intended us to be. That, my friend, is “full of hope, I really like myself and the people around me” sort of “praise for all that is good” environment. It often is called “set apart” in theology but I like liberation.

Once we understand the truth, we are free to understand God and praise Him in detail. That is the same with self. A narcissist is in the inner prison; that person cannot think of anything but self and is isolated, lonely and keeping bad company. When we are overly self-indulged we hate ourselves.

When we start to see Breakthrough, we see God’s creative hand in the difference, and we celebrate sameness and difference. We are liberated to say things we now hold back from saying for fear of all sorts of things: “nice outfit” or “l really like what you are doing with your life” or “ you are one of the kindest people I have ever known. You make me think of God’s kindness and love.”

We are glad now, after being free, that God is not like us but created us (and that we are not God, Whew!! What a burden moderns have created for themselves.) So we praise God for his goodness, his kindness or whatever trait He has revealed to us- there is no end to it. Wonder in it. Let other people, very different people, remind you of God’s attributes built into them, things you do not jealously envy but actually “praise.” Get it?

The passage I am reflecting upon is Isaiah 45, which I still have not quoted but will now:

This link will show the entire chapter: http://bit.ly/4dqwi0 It starts out with praise and gives reasons. The last thought I want to leave with you is the context of Breakthrough Praise. Is is desolation. Ouch.

The great breakthroughs of history seem to come at crucial moments, moments that if nothing happened there would be an unalterable systems failure- a point of no return from bad to hellish. But, that is the point of the breakthrough praise. Get this and you will have it for life:

“Sing, O barren,
You who have not borne!
Break forth into singing, and cry aloud,
You who have not labored with child!

Anyone can praise God when things are rosy. Anyone can praise the rich and lovely. But, when we praise God with no current evidence, knowing that promises will be fulfilled (Hope) and knowing whom He has been in the past, then we have pure praise. This is not the praise of “I got some money today, PTL!” Or, when we see God in the people who on the surface are unlovely, or just “different” then we have the opportunity to push love into its powerful place.

This is the praise of “even if the fig tree does not bear fruit, or if my wheat crop fails, I will still praise the God of my salvation.” Why? because He is awesome. If we can praise God in times of great crisis, like now in our current world, then the seed of breakthrough has been planted. Then we find others who can do this and we have a “full of hope, I really like myself and others” community. Who does not want that. God certainly wants that for us. That is why He is going to so much trouble to tell us all of this in all the ways we can hear it. I also am convinced that is also why trouble is here-he demands consecrated praise, set apart to love in times of crisis-that is His gift, not His curse. Then if you embrace the first things, you can move on into “breaking through.”