The Adventure!

Transition is an adventure. But it is an adventure into the unknown with all the attendant risks that the uncharted can formulate around us. Change provokes our hearts because it challenges the status quo. It makes us feel uneasy and vulnerable because it takes us into territory where we have never been before. We are happy to talk about Abraham going out without knowing where he was going, simply trusting God to get him there (Heb 11:8). However, when it is our turn to make the journey of faith, it is a different matter. God has his own road maps for times such as these. The old ones are useless to us, and the new ones are filled out as we go!

Every change involves a letting go of one thing to reach out for what is next. It is death by installments - the slow death of our mind-sets, our attitudes, perceptions, and paradigms with apparently nothing to take its place. That is, we only see the replacement concept as we journey. We don't just see it, though; we experience it. Sometimes our experience is first, and we go through something that we understand only in retrospect. It is important therefore, if we are to journey with the Lord into new lands, that we build in time to reflect and review where we are and where we have come from. Our road map to faith must be kept up to date and relevant for anyone else coming after us.

Pioneers draw the maps; they seldom enjoy them! Every days' journey into the new is accompanied by a slow and, at times, painful letting go of the old. There is a death process to be worked through in transition. Future fruit comes from the present death (John 12:24).

The Holy Spirit will, if we allow Him, teach us how to be present to the moment with God. there is a God-consciousness that is so compelling that we need never worry again. There is a peace so profound that it is unshakable. There is a rest in God so potent that the enemy fears it! (Rest is a weapon against evil.)

In order to be alive to God in this way, we must surrender to Him and to everything He brings. He allows in His wisdom what He could easily prevent by His power. The dying daily that is Paul's description involves a death-to-self process. Change is the pivotal point of that process. If you enjoy God's life, you cannot fear change. Where He is present, resistance has died.

Death, the understanding of change, liberates us to experience the adventure of new things. We welcome the risk because His life fizzes in our bloodstream. He sparkles with new gifts, new realms, fresh annointing, and different challenges to faith and love.

.....The inevitablity of change is made enjoyable by His presence. As we submit to each process, our appreciateion of the journey grows and our faith increases. Change comes from within. Everything that God does in us comes from the inside to the outside. That is why our inward development is more important than the outward circumstances. If we give the Lord Jesus the ground he requires on the inside of our life, then each present set of external challenges shall diminish, if not disappear...........

Taken from Graham Cooke's Divine Confrontation Pages 214,215