Breaking Through

Breaking Through
by Brodie Swisher

The end of the whitetail rut signals a time for new challenges and something different in the hunting woods. It’s at this time I often switch gears and begin chasing the ducks and geese that winter or migrate through our part of the country. Recently, after finding a good supply of ducks using some backwater sloughs off the river, I made plans to set up for a morning of hunting mallards. Unfortunately, December in Montana often finds the shallow backwaters freezing up pretty quick. After just one successful hunt with open water, my return trips found me having to break ice to open up the hole. With each trip, the ice formed thicker and thicker. I surrender the season on this particular duck hole when I could finally stand on top of the ice, now too hard to break through.

---

Have you been there before? Not on a slab of ice, but in life? Have you struggled to break through? In Mark chapter 8 of the Bible, we find the disciples squabbling over “who forgot the bread.” Jesus knew what they were arguing about and He says, “Why are you arguing about having no bread? Don’t you know or understand even yet? Are your hearts too hard to take it in? You have eyes – can’t you see? You have ears – can’t you hear? Don’t you remember
anything at all? When I fed the 5,000 with five loaves of bread, how many
baskets of leftovers did you pick up afterward?” (Mark 8:17-19)

Much like the disciples, we too can be hardened in heart and fail to see all the miraculous
things God has done – and is doing – for our lives. In such times we struggle to hear from Him, we overlook the visible ways He is moving in our lives, and we offer prayers that seemingly never leave our lips. We have become hard. Our hearts and minds shut down to the greatness of what God wants to accomplish in our lives. Left unguarded, a breakthrough becomes all but impossible. But God wants this season to pass. He wants us to breakthrough and return once again to the place where we can hear, see, and speak his goodness and glory.

Do you find your heart becoming hard? Break on through!

---