Understanding Breakthroughs by Pastor Lawrence Oyor: MP3 Download & Sermon Notes

Special Meetings Begin with Special Hunger

Meetings are not special because God chose to specially move. A meeting is special because the hunger of the people was special. Simple ordinary water became so charged that sick people gathered waiting for the moving of the water — because of great expectation.

The pool of Bethesda had an angel who would occasionally stir the water, and the one who stepped in first was healed. But when the one who made the angels came into their midst, none of them were expecting anything. The man Jesus healed had been there 38 years. Jesus had mercy on him and took him out that day. But notice — it was only that one man who was healed. As Jesus finished, he left, and nobody was even chasing after him. Because once there is no expectation, there is no result.

The same Jesus could do no mighty works in his hometown — save but to heal a few sick folks. It does not matter how much power is available in the room. It will manifest according to the hunger present.

Declare in advance: I am hungry for results. I am ready for the power of God.

God Keeps Covenant Across Generations

In Genesis 17:19-21, God said: You shall call his name Isaac, and I will establish my covenant with him for an everlasting covenant and with his seed after him.

Isaac would not call God "my father's God" — he would find God individually. That is why throughout Israel's history it was quoted: the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob — because they all found God personally. God was saying: I will establish a covenant with him. He will understand covenant.

Isaac was not just inheriting blessing — he was inheriting covenant understanding. And that covenant understanding is what powered his results.

When there was famine in Isaac's time, his father Abraham had gone down to Egypt. Isaac assumed he would also go abroad. But God said to him: Stay in this land and I will bless you. He stayed and sowed in that land. The same year he reaped a hundredfold. He became greater than his father Abraham — not because Abraham handed him money, but because the same covenant God cut with Abraham, he cut also with Isaac. He prospered so much that from king to prime minister, the people of the land came to one man.

God does not break his covenant. His promises will carry you through whatever is going on. Covenant is stronger than changing times.

From Receiving Breakthrough to Being Breakthrough

There is a shift that must happen. There is a difference between the person who is always saying amen to someone else's intercession and the person who has now come into such working knowledge of God that they can speak over others and things shift.

Isaac, after the season of being under his father's blessing, grew into a man who could now decree things himself. Jacob, after his own encounter, called his sons together and said: Gather to me my sons, let me tell you how it will be for you. He was no longer looking for breakthrough — he was now breaking people through with two or three sentences.

A man was trying to obtain a visa for years. His breakthrough came when a minister of the gospel spoke a simple sentence over his situation: Father, international doors open now in Jesus name. That was the end of the prayer. Within that week, calls started coming from all over. Simple sentence. But it came from a man who knew what he had.

You are no longer the one looking for breakthrough. You are now breakthrough. And the moment you cross into that — family members will call you and ask you to say something to them.

The Blessing of Esau — and What It Reveals

In Genesis 27:37-40, after Jacob had taken the blessing, Esau begged his father: Do you not have even one more blessing for me? Isaac told him the blessing was gone. For the first time we see Esau crying — because now Esau understood what he had lost. Isaac then prayed over Esau, but it came out as a curse: You will be far from heaven's bounty. You will serve your brother. You will live from hand to mouth. He added: But when you grow restless, you will break his yoke from off your neck.

Yet in Genesis 33, when Jacob returned after years of hardship, Esau came with 400 men. A man who was cursed to live from hand to mouth was feeding 400 people with wives and children. How? Esau did not know covenant — but God blessed him anyway because he was still Abraham's seed. He was still in the family. He just could not maximise it.

Jacob, who had the blessing, spent 14 years to marry the woman he loved and still found himself struggling under Laban for over a decade. He looked nothing like a blessed person. That is why he was still wrestling with the angel asking for another blessing even after his father had blessed him.

If you do not know how to activate what you carry, you will see trickles — but you will not produce nations.

For your results to be consistent, you must understand something others do not understand. Light is what sponsors lasting breakthrough. You must have personal encounters with God. It must not be borrowed — you must know God for yourself.