BackstageI sat at the foot of that wall for thirteen months and four days. I had prayed every angle I knew how to pray. The wall had my address by then, the wall and I were on familiar terms. Breakthrough is the album I made from that spot, and it is a record about the exact moment what you cannot move finally comes down.
I did not want to write a triumphalist record that skips the wall. So this album names the wall honestly before it ever names the break. Because the God of Scripture is not embarrassed by the seasons we spend sitting in front of things that will not budge.
Name the wall before you name the break
The opener, "Breaking Through," starts at the kitchen table with a man who has run out of prayers, and the Lord standing up beside him and saying, Son, watch what I am about to do. The whole album stands on the day David called Baal-perazim: the Lord has broken through my enemies before me, like a breaking flood (2 Samuel 5:20). And on the wall at Jericho that fell not to a battering ram but to obedience and a shout (Joshua 6). And on the line I keep taped to my own life: by my God I can leap over a wall (Psalm 18:29). The first stone is already in His hand. What I cannot move, Yahuah can.
But here is the confession the album makes on "When the Walls Fall Down", some of the walls I was praying against, I built myself. I had fortified my heart. I had kept myself shielded from the dark and the pain, and the very wall I raised to protect me was the wall that kept God out and kept me lonely. Then He said, let the walls down; let Me love you. He promised through Isaiah to swallow up death forever and wipe away tears from all faces (Isaiah 25:7–8), and He meant the inner rooms too. Sometimes the breakthrough is not Him tearing down an enemy's fortress. It is you opening a door from the inside.
Son. You don't have to keep the wall up to keep My love. I have been on both sides of it the whole time.
The chain was a costume
The song I would hand anyone who feels permanently bound is "Every Chain Released," and its central image undid me when I wrote it: the Holy Spirit walking into the room where He found me and saying, Son, the keys never fit. The chain was a costume. So much of what binds us is a limitation we baptized as identity, a prison the world insisted was permanent. And Yeshua unbuckles what we could not unbuckle, because if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed (John 8:36), and for freedom Christ has set us free, stand firm, then, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery (Galatians 5:1). Every link that named me before He renamed me is on the floor now.
And I could not write a deliverance record that made freedom feel like a performance you keep up. "Walking Into Rest" flips the whole striving on its head: sometimes rest is an action, and the bravest decision you make all week is at the kitchen table on a Tuesday night, letting go. Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest (Matthew 11:28). There remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God (Hebrews 4:9–11). The rest of God is louder than my striving.
He held me the whole time
The tender center of the album is "His Arms Around Me," and it reframes everything that came before. Yeshua did not arrive at month thirteen to demolish the wall while I white-knuckled the wait. He was already holding me at the foot of it the whole time, the eternal God is your dwelling place, and underneath are the everlasting arms (Deuteronomy 33:27); fear not, for I am with you; I will strengthen you, I will uphold you with my righteous right hand (Isaiah 41:10). The breakthrough was never me finally earning His attention. It was me discovering His arms had been around me since before the first crack appeared.
And the album's peak, "His Faithfulness Endures," says the truest sentence I know how to sing over a hard season: the story is not "you held on through it." The story is: He held you. He always held you. Because his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness (Lamentations 3:22–23), and if we are faithless, he remains faithful, for he cannot deny himself (2 Timothy 2:13).
Who this album is for
It is for the one who has prayed every angle and is still sitting at the wall. For the person who built the wall themselves and calls it caution. For anyone wearing a chain they have started to believe is their name. For the believer who is more than a conqueror through Him who loved us (Romans 8:37) and cannot feel it yet.
The album ends on "Breakthrough Proclamation," and it does not let the open sky stay private. It sends you to call the next person into it, because the breakthrough is a doorway He holds open, not a trophy you keep. For a vision awaits its appointed time; though it tarries, wait for it; it will surely come (Habakkuk 2:3). So if you are at the wall tonight, hear me: the wall has your address, but it does not have the last word. He knows the seam. He has been studying it longer than you have. The first stone is already in His hand, and there is open sky on the other side.
