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How God speaks to us thru transitions

So, I’ve been in a place of personal transition and it has spilled over to this blog. It’s not a huge change in life; it’s not prompted by need or crisis – I’m just blessed to have some strong leaders who have come alongside me at work and freed me up to re-focus. And so it’s a season of asking q…
By Seth Barnes
So, I’ve been in a place of personal transition and it has spilled over to this blog. It’s not a huge change in life; it’s not prompted by need or crisis – I’m just blessed to have some strong leaders who have come alongside me at work and freed me up to re-focus. And so it’s a season of asking questions about purpose and methods.
 
My purpose in life is to help others discover how to live the abundant life that Jesus came to bring. The purpose of this blog is to help us all navigate through the tricky
cultural waters of an affluent society that has a corrosive effect in
our spiritual lives. I needed to take a break and somehow assess if reality is in alignment with purpose. And in your responses, you, the members of this blog community, have been wonderfully helpful and encouraging. Again, let me say thank you. I’ve got some things brewing about re-purposing the blog I’ll share tomorrow. [I intend to cut back some and I’d like to help some of you step up some, particularly those of you who are called to help broken people find healing. If you’re at all interested, please let me know.]
 
But this morning the Lord showed me a few things about the purpose of transitions that I’ll pass along. When a transition like the one I’m going through comes, God usually wants to speak through it. He wants to jolt us out of the status quo so that, like a pilot, we can run through a series of checks to help ascertain what may need to change. Here are four checks I’m going through at present. Consider applying them to your own transition.
1. Circumstance-check. Let’s say you got fired or laid off at work. You can either cuss out your boss for not appreciating your talent, or you can ask yourself what you could have done differently. Many of us need to “manage up” better – we need to become more accountable and communicate better to the people to whom we’re accountable. What do they want and need from us? We have more in our control than we may realize. Often the lesson God is trying to communicate with a circumstance-check is to take responsibility and stop being a victim.

2. Discipline-check. Part of my issue was, I was going through a dry patch in my life and needed to know if God was calling me to “power through it” or to rest.  As it turns out, it was both. Your encouragement did wonders for my spirit. But regardless, I don’t get to walk away from something God has called me to – rest is necessary, but after resting, we often need to just redouble our efforts if God’s call hasn’t changed. Young people especially need to learn what it means to practice self-denial and commitment when they’ve got an assignment from him. It’s a generational blind spot that afflicts millions.
3. Comfort-check. Some of us were getting to a place of comfort with this blog. Earlier I compared the blog to the Cheers bar – and that kind of comfortable place is a good thing; it’s isn’t what I’m talking about. If God has used the blog to help you grow, then probably he wants you to use that place of greater maturity to minister in faith more. God wants us to depend on him, yet we want to rely on ourselves. And so we are forever creating comfort zones that exclude him. As an act of grace, he prompts a transition that, while making us uncomfortable, increases our dependence on him. To miss this point is to miss the dance of faith that God gives to us as a gift.
4. Focus-check.  Are we in alignment with our purpose and call? When I met Charles Kaye, he was a successful hedge fund manager trying to bring his life into alignment with his call as a missionary to Nicaragua. It required a hard transition, but he and his family are so much more fulfilled now that they sold their farm in Charlottesville and moved. More of us need to schedule a fire sale for the things that are holding us back from our life’s purpose.
 
If you’re in a place like me, I hope you’ll take the time to go through these checks on the instrument panel of your life. Recognize that often God is looking for us to seek him more intently. And recognize that he usually wants to give us more of three things: relationship, information, and wisdom. The paradox is that as we seek him for wisdom or for more data, we often discover that what he really wants is greater depth in our relationship with him.

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