By Mary Forsythe

Preparing to Embrace God’s New Season in Your Life

Are you feeling the way so many others do right now?  Do you sense that things are shifting in your life?  Are you a bit restless inside? 

Are you feeling weak in areas where you were once strong and confident?  Is there a low-level frustration and unsettledness deep inside of you?  Do you feel unprotected or uncovered at times? 

Are you now struggling to do things that were once easy for you? 

Do you feel vulnerable in areas where you once felt secure?  Are changes taking place in your relationships, even among people who have been friends or coworkers for many years? 

Do you feel as though you do not “fit” in places where you once seemed to belong?

If you answered “yes” to all or many of the questions above, you are most likely in transition — a time of moving from one place to the next, developing new interests, seeking new endeavors, sensing new desires, perceiving new assignments from the Lord, shifting to new sources of provision, becoming aware of new responsibilities, seeing increasing opportunities for influence and feeling like something new is around the corner. 

Experiencing any of these could be a sign that you are right in the middle of a divine transition—destined for transformation and spiritual growth. 
That is good news!

Symptoms of Transition

• A sense that things are “shifting” in your life
• Feeling weak in areas where you once felt strong and confident
• Frustration and “unsettledness” deep inside
• Feeling unprotected or uncovered
• Struggling to do things that were once easy
• Feeling vulnerable in areas where you once felt secure
• Recognizing the need for changes in relationships
• Feeling out-of-place and awkward

When the Lord orchestrates divine transition in your life, He is preparing you for something new.  He is a God of increase and wants to lead you to a new place where you will continue to grow spiritually and move forward in the destiny that He has for you.  To accomplish this transition, the Lord is drawing you out of your comfort zone; He is stretching you, realigning you and increasing your capacities.  He is preparing you to live your everyday life with an increased understanding of your calling, destiny and purpose —and in order to do that, He is getting you in position to enter a new season.  You have a specific assignment from the Lord to advance His Kingdom in your sphere of influence.  Practically, this means that the Lord wants to work through you to affect your neighborhood, business, school and marketplace. 

Isaiah 43:18, 19 will help all of us as we navigate this season of change and embrace the new assignments and experiences God has for us in the days to come:  Do not remember the former things, nor consider the things of old, behold, I will do a new thing, now it shall spring forth; shall you not know it? I will even make a road in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.

We see from this verse that the Lord will call us out of things that have become old.  He is telling us not to focus on the past, but to look forward and seek the new things He is going to do.  The fact that we are leaving a season, shifting in relationships or maybe moving cities or changing jobs does not mean the old was bad or unfruitful.  We must be careful not to criticize the old as we move into the new.  Our lives have seasons and we need to allow the Holy Spirit to lead us as we leave an old season and embrace a new one.   

Know What to Take With You
During times of transition, it is important to discern what needs to be left behind and what should be taken with us into the new season.  Maybe it is time to give away certain possessions, maybe some priorities in relationships need to change, maybe some activities need to be adjusted.  Some things that were blessings in the old season can become curses and hindrances if they are brought into the new season.  

In this changing spiritual season, we need to heed the advice Jesus gave His disciples in Matthew 13:52.   In this verse, Jesus tells His disciples a parable about the Kingdom of God.  He said, ... every scribe instructed concerning the kingdom of heaven is like a householder who brings out of his treasure things new and old.

The Lord has divine strategies available for those who have ears to hear what the Holy Spirit is saying and who will not allow their emotions or their thoughts to guide them.  We need to be determined not to be led by our souls, but by the Holy Spirit, as we move into new things.  He will prevent us from falling into the trap of assuming that we know what needs to be left behind and what we need to keep.  We need to discover the Lord’s strategy, weaving together the old and new with divine discernment and not with mental reasoning or emotional responses.

We often have a hard time leaving things behind because of emotional attachments or fear, but we need the Lord’s perspective on change and transition.  It is time for us to grow up in our attitudes and develop hearts that are more concerned about being in God’s timing, rhythm and plans than satisfying our feelings, agreeing with our comforts, feeding our fears or giving our thoughts the deciding vote. 
There will be aspects of transition that will call for us to leave behind even the good things of the old season — things the Lord has used in instrumental ways in our lives to help us grow and to accomplish His purposes. 

Nevertheless, the Lord knows that those things will not serve us as well in the future as they did in the past, so we must have open hearts and open hands in this hour.
My friend Barbara told me about her husband’s aunt who insisted that Barbara and her husband come to her home to see her new sofa.  When they arrived, they could barely get in the door to see the new sofa because the old one was in the hallway!  The aunt had decided to keep the old one — and that kept her from truly making room for the new!
Let me encourage you to pray and ask the Lord what you need to release and leave behind as you navigate through this time of transition.  Only take with you what the Lord appoints.  Move the old sofas out of your life so that the new things will fit right where they need to go. 

ASAP
People fall into one of two categories when facing a new season.  The first group approach change with this attitude:  “I am ready!  What has taken so long to move forward?  In fact, I was ready yesterday!”  They embrace change easily and look forward to all the elements involved in transition and change. 

The second group has this attitude toward change: “Not now, maybe later.  I am not ready.  I don’t want to move forward because I am just getting comfortable where I am.”  Some people want to stay right where they are.  In fact, I remember talking with a mother of five who was so sad because her youngest child was “graduating” from pull-up diapers to regular underwear.  For some reason, this mother loved the “diaper days” and did not want to move into “regular underwear season” with her youngest child.  This seems like wrong thinking to me!

Both types of people must learn to cooperate with the Holy Spirit and be sensitive to His leading.  Those who are ready and eager for change need to wait on His timing and not rush ahead, and those who dislike transition need to be willing to change as He leads, even when they must adjust or adapt more quickly than they would like.  A friend of mine offers a wise and balanced piece of advice:  “Do it as soon as possible—but not prematurely.”
Go from Glory to Glory

Let me ask you:  Will you enter the new season God has for you?

Second Corinthians 3:18 tells us that we are being transformed from glory to glory.  The Lord has been speaking to me about this verse, saying, “My people are between the ‘y’ and the ‘g’” and going on to explain to me that many of us are at an in-between place and feeling frustrated, unsure, insecure and unclear about the future.  He showed me that we are between two “glory points.”  We go from glory to glory; we are finished with one glory level but we have not quite arrived at the next.  So, we are between the “y” of the former season and the “g” of the new one. 

These are not simple changes we are going through.  The word transformed in this scripture is the Greek word metamorphoo, which is the word for the process that a larva on the back side of a branch goes through as it is transformed to a butterfly.  Now that is a major change!  We are being “metamorphoo-ed” so that the Lord can move us and establish us at the next glory level.  We never go to the next level in the Lord without being transformed and one of the primary areas He is dealing with as we transition is our thinking.  He is exposing old thought-patterns and old patterns of religious behavior.  These cannot go into the new season.  He is calling us to become new wineskins to hold His new wine because we are called to carry His glory in greater measure than we have in the past. 

This call from the Lord to move into the new season is not some imaginary thing, but it has practical applications in our lives and it requires real changes.  For example, He is realigning relationships; He is releasing creative ideas that take a new level of faith to accomplish His purposes; He is dealing with hidden motives of the heart that would destroy us at the next level; He is pruning behavior that is no longer acceptable.  The Lord is calling us to grow up and He is getting us prepared for what He has prepared for us.  This time of preparation is critical in this hour. 

Recognize and Resist
James 4:7 teaches us to submit to God and resist the devil and he will flee.  I do not know about you, but at times I get that sequence backwards: I submit to the devil and resist God and nobody goes anywhere!  We cannot resist what we do not recognize.  We must recognize the devil’s attempts to hold us in the old season and trap us in our past.  Here are some of the lies the devil wants you to believe so that you will be held captive in the old season and not be free to move forward in all that He has for you:

This is for the really spiritual people.  I need to stay where I feel safe... It is too hard...It will take too much effort to move forward...I will lose my provision if I release that old assignment...I will have to walk alone if I realign those relationships...What if this is my own idea and not God’s plan after all? So, how do we rise above the lies so that we can enter into the truth of the new things God is unfolding for us?

Transfer Your Trust
To let go of the past, move through this time of transition and become established in the new season, we must have our trust rooted and grounded in the Lord.  We are in a time in which the Lord is exposing areas where we need to transfer our trust to Him. He is revealing areas where we have subtly shifted our trust onto others for our provision, or perhaps we have begun to lean on our education for spiritual answers and look to the world for solutions that can only come from the Lord.  Ask the Lord search your heart and reveal to you any area in which you have shifted your trust away from Him.  This is vital to moving from the “y” to the “g” and getting established at the next level of glory.  
As you walk through this time of transition and preparation for the Lord’s new season in your life, remember that He has great and awesome things in store for you, things you have not even considered yet (see 1 Corinthians 2:9-11).  Keep doing what you know to do during this in-between time, and I believe the Holy Spirit will be giving you glimpses of His good plans that are ahead! The next level of His glory awaits you!