Earlier this year I was thinking of catch 22s and the phrase came to me, God wants to turn your catch 22 into your biggest breakthrough.
I wondered whether I had just thought it up, but then a week later someone released a similar word on facebook and it’s led me on a journey to see whether the concept of Catch 22s and God breaking through them is even Biblical.
First what is the definition of a Catch 22: a dilemma or difficult circumstance from which there is no escape because of mutually conflicting or dependent conditions
I have seen God break through a health catch 22 situation I had from 2017-2019 where the treatment caused worse symptoms and there didn’t seem to be a way to breakthrough.
I read a blog post recently that said ‘God is an all or nothing or God.’ They had many Scriptures with the word all in them and then others with the word nothing. He has given us provision for everything, and often seeing that breakthrough is a journey.
No weapon that is formed against thee shall prosper; and every tongue that shall rise against thee in judgment thou shalt condemn. Isaiah 54:17
And
No harm shall come near your dwelling. Psalm 91:10
I love these Scriptures, and have used them many times, whilst on a journey of faith. I feel they have even saved my life during the birth of my second daughter.
Sometimes the breakthrough will come all at once and sometimes it will come over a period of months as we continually hold fast to the Word of God. We will look at the ways God gives us words, and at the end I will be leaving you with a Scripture Printable with many of the All Scriptures that you can declare over your life and see great fruit.
John 15:7-8
7If you remain (abide) in Me and My words remain (abide) in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. 8This is to My Father’s glory, that you bear much fruit, proving yourselves to be My disciples.…
God wants us to live lives that bear much fruit, it is for His Glory.
So I thought that we would have a look at Biblical catch 22s and whether there were any patterns to them, any principles to pull out.
I think the first tricky situation that caught my attention was Jacob and Esau….now whether that’s a catch 22, I don’t know but we know that Jacob tricked Esau and his father with the help of his mother and he ran away to his uncle Laban because he was afraid for his life. He met Rachel and he wanted her for his wife but then he got tricked and possibly he was being a bit tricky with the flocks I think too. Eventually things got untenable for him to continue living with his uncle and God told him to go back to Esau.
So he has this promise from God in the face of an impossible situation. And he had to trust that God wasn’t sending him back to his death. So he divides up his camp and he goes back. Some people say there was wisdom in that and others say that there was favouritism in how he did that. But it’s so interesting how he approaches Esau, and the language and the honour that he uses, but God had obviously worked in both their hearts and knew it could be healed.
I think we see here one of the first examples of someone using their prophetic word as warfare, literally their life depended on it. We are told to war with our prophetic words, 1 Timothy 1:18, and so often that warfare is a situation screaming at us and it’s us choosing to speak out, BUT God said this.
I had a dream once where I said, ‘our prophetic words are not a mere distant promise, they are the very bridge to get there.’ And I think we can put our prophetic words on the shelf and be like one day I’ll get there but they in themselves are how we do warfare.
And then we’ve got Moses and the word that God spoke to him.
standing in front of a sea knowing you’ve done everything God said… and you’re still in a pickle. And then he heard God and used the Word of the Lord.
You’ve got Joshua and David and these two spent time with God, they knew His character, they spent time remembering what God had done for their people in the past and so when a challenge came up and everyone else was freaking out, they are like no way, we will slay.
We know that everyone else’s unbelief kept them in the desert longer, but even when Joshua was 80 he was still ready to go he had kept that fire burning in his heart.
David was a dude who was said Bless the Lord, forget not all his benefits and you know at that point some of the names of God would have been revealed and so he’s looking at those going this is your nature. I love Kari Jobe’s song Your Nature because it’s not just about how we feel it’s this is who God is.
I’m seeing a lot more of those songs coming out with just deep theology in them.
Another time when David and his band of men had their wives and children taken by the enemy he wept until he could weep no more and honestly I hate crying it just makes me so dehydrated,. Then he strengthened himself in the Lord before he sought directions. And now that word is chazaq and it is also used in Psalm 27 for courage. Wait on the Lord; be of good courage; and He shall strengthen your heart; wait, I say on the Lord. Ps 27:14 it means to fasten upon; hence to seize, be strong (figuratively courageous, causatively strengthen, cure help, repair, fortify,) obstinate, to bind, restrain, conquer.
So the worst day of his life, became the day that he was crowned king.
The word breakthrough itself came into being in another of David’s situations.
2 Samuel 5:17-20 says, “Now when the Philistines heard that they had anointed David king over Israel, all the Philistines went up to search for David. And David heard of it and went down to the stronghold. The Philistines also went and deployed themselves in the Valley of Rephaim. 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” (NKJV).
I just want to go back now to another seeming impossible situation when Saul was king.
It’s the story in 1 Samuel 11 where Nahash the Ammonite besieged Jabesh-gilead. The men of Jabesh were prepared to make a treaty with them and become their servants, but Nahash the Ammonite replied, “I will make a treaty with you on one condition, that I may put out everyone’s right eye and bring reproach upon all Israel.”1
The Israelites asked for a week to think about it and to send messages to their bothers for help, and the men of Israel wept but the Spirit of God came powerfully upon Saul and he organised an army to fight back and God gave them the victory.
I think sometimes the spirit of God does absolutely rise up in and you can deal with the situation then and there and sometimes he gives you a word to fight with, either to you or to a prophet, which is something that I’m seeing in a lot of these stories.
With Gideon it was a word directly to him and the angel of the Lord called Gideon something he didn’t feel at all, strong and mighty warrior. So even if we don’t feel it, if God is calling it out, we have it there inside of us.
We have the story of the widow in 2 Kings 4. She thought she had nothing left. . . the big man was knocking at her door and he wanted her sons. What was she to do? She called the man of God. The prophet, Elisha.
He said go ask your neighbours for pots, pans and jars, and pour the oil, don’t stop fill every pot, don’t stop. The more she poured that tiny amount of oil, the more it flowed. Till every pot was filled, then not another drop. Elisha said, go sell the oil to pay the man what you owe and then buy what you need for you and your sons.
I heard that the Italian word for supernatural literally means above the natural.
That when Jesus was thanking God for the two loaves and five fishes, that the Aramaic word there is to look into the spirit over the situation, to look beyond the natural.
I’ve just got two more examples left, I’m sure there are quite a few more in Scripture but for today we will just look at these.
2 Kings 7 The Israelites were besieged, it was really bad and they were eating each other’s infants.
Then Elisha said, Hear ye the word of the Lord; Thus saith the Lord, To morrow about this time shall a measure of fine flour be sold for a shekel, and two measures of barley for a shekel, in the gate of Samaria.
2 Then a lord on whose hand the king leaned answered the man of God, and said, Behold, if the Lord would make windows in heaven, might this thing be? And he said, Behold, thou shalt see it with thine eyes, but shalt not eat thereof.
3 And there were four leprous men at the entering in of the gate: and they said one to another, Why sit we here until we die?
4 If we say, We will enter into the city, then the famine is in the city, and we shall die there: and if we sit still here, we die also. Now therefore come, and let us fall unto the host of the Syrians: if they save us alive, we shall live; and if they kill us, we shall but die.
So we see here that the lepers weren’t even in faith they thought they were going to die either way, but they went to the enemy’s camp and God made it sound like horses and chariots were coming so the enemy had run, and then the prophecy was fulfilled but the guy who had spoken out his unbelief in the name of logic was trampled by the people running out of the city as they heard the good news.
That pattern I’m seeing here is remembering what God has done, and using the word He has spoken to you to do warfare. We’ve got the example of King Jehoshefat and the worshipper and Paul and Silas worshiping in prison when they had done everything right. It wasn’t a mistake that landed them there, it was preaching the Gospel.
But you know so many of us have made mistakes and look back and go ahh if only I’d done this that or the other, I think this final one that I felt to look up last night will speak to you. It’s the story of Ruth where everything went wrong, all the men in the family died and Naomi said God has made me empty, I’m changing my name to Mara which means bitter, but I’m going back to my people and my God, and she implored the girls to stay behind for a better life but Ruth said no I’m coming with you.
She had a taste of the true God and she knew that without him it didn’t matter and so she went with Naomi and we know the story of how God supernaturally set her up to walk into Boaz’s field. God redeemed and restored even though Naomi had spoken all those negative things over her life, and so I feel like even if you’ve spoken out rubbish, keep turning your heart back to God, knowing that without him, it’s nothing even though it might look better momentarily. Keep turning your heart back to Him, and He’s going to set you up to walk into the right field, and He’s going to change your name back from bitter to full.
