When Your Dream is In Limbo: 3 Keys to Keeping Hope Alive for the Remainder of 2013 – Part 2

Let’s face the facts.  This time last year as we were finishing out last two months of 2012, we were already beginning to think about what 2013 would look like.  We received prophecies.  We prayed, praised and worshipped.   We began to make confessions.  We began to declare and decree what would happen in 2013.

But alas, it is now November.  The year is far spent.  No doubt 2013 was a year that brought both challenges and blessings.  Not everything we had hoped for has materialized.  We thought for sure that we would be at a certain point, but we are not.  There are dreams and visions still yet un-manifested and unrealized.  We made significant shifts and progress in some areas, but in others we sit in the exact same position that we did in 2012.  What happened, Beloved?  Are you still in limbo?  Are you still waiting?   What hindered you?

Let’s pick up our discussion that began back in August (see When Your Dream is in Limbo – Part 1).  In Part I, we defined what Limbo is:

A region or condition of oblivion or neglect; a state or place of confinement; an imaginary place for lost, forgotten or unwanted persons or things; an unknown intermediate place or condition between two extremes; a region on the border of hell.

 Another way of looking at being in Limbo is also to view it as a season of Transition or Wilderness.  (see other posts regarding Wilderness Seasons and Transitions) We also looked at the first 3 keys to surviving being in Limbo so that we do not lose our minds, faint give up and turn back around: 1) Learning to Be Complete, Content and Rested in Christ; 2) Learning to Have Confident Expectation and 3) Let Him Continually Redeem and Regulate Your Mind while in Limbo.

To survive the remainder of this year without becoming overwhelmed at the prospects of what 2014 could potentially bring and to still keep hope that God will do what He said He would do, let’s look at a few more things.

Have the ROOTS [of your being] firmly and deeply planted [in Him, fixed and founded in Him], being continually built up in Him… (Col 2:7, AMP)

Let Him Help you Master and Maintain Your Deliverance while you are in Limbo. You don’t want to lose the valuable lessons and deliverances you learned before the limbo season started.  During the first part of this limbo season, God has rooted something things in you – such as a greater deeper root in Him, greater security in Him, being grounded in Him and His love.  Then there is a brief season of rest.  Then you may transition to a second valley which could be triggered by external circumstances and situations.

This second part of the wilderness experience or transition limbo focuses on rooting out, or purging out the stuff that accumulated in the first wilderness, i.e., mostly negative thought patterns, hurts and wounds not fully addressed or dealt with that accumulated in the first wilderness that would flare up and cause issues in the Promised Land. Note the process. In Wilderness/Limbo #1, God allows situations to develop for you to become dependent on Him and not the opinions of others and thus causing you to be ROOTED IN HIM.  In Wilderness/Limbo #2, God allows circumstances to force you to see your heart again and exposes things in you that need to be ROOTED OUT.  God waits for us to be rooted in Him, so that we could hang on when he begins to root stuff out of us.  We wouldn’t be able to survive the Rooting Out Process if He did it the other way around.  We must be rooted in Him to survive the purging process without giving up on God.  It would kill us.  So God, rich in grace and mercy, left the same character flaws in place while He rooted us in Him , and then when we have established enough root in a certain area, He initiates another purging through to take us through another process.

Thought purging and mindset pattern purging is extremely difficult without the grace and power of the Holy Spirit.  It is a mammoth battle — one not to be taken lightly.  You have to be rooted in Christ before you are in a position to handle this battle with any degree of deliverance or victory.  A key feature of this purging process is the intensity in which the thought patterns assert themselves in circumstances and situations once you are aware of them, repented of them, and actually attempt to focus on what you are thinking about and the right thoughts.  If you are trying to determine if you are in this season, let this be a clue.  THIS IS WARFARE!

Being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus. (Phil 1:6, NIV)

Learn to Focus -Not Force.  Focus on what God is forming and working in you and your life this at time as we close out 2013.  Do not try to force what or where you think should be.   Let God do His work. He is the creator.  You are His Workmanship.  There is no use in getting anxious about it now.  This could be a potentially great season of your life if you let it.  Don’t worry about what someone else could do or may do or what could potentially happen.  We must trust God.  God is forming a deeper level of humility, grace, discretion, prudence and wisdom in us.  We are being tested in a variety of ways in how to conduct ourselves, how to handle business/financial/personal/family pressures, how to give encouragement to others in the midst of going through ourselves, and how to conduct ourselves in a way that generates trust and respect.  We are being tested in our ability to keep our mouths shut.  We are being forced to humble ourselves in ways never done before.  We are being forced by circumstances to realize a deeper dependency upon Christ that we did not have before.

LOOKING unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith…(Heb 12: 2, KJV)

Look to Christ – Not Yourself & Not the Other Person or Persons.  Realize that as you look to Christ,  and cast the cares of your relationships on Him, that His timing for your deliverance will occur: 1) when you are not looking and sweating about it and; 2) when you are so focused on Him that the situation doesn’t bother you anymore.  Right now, we are still struggling, still learning how to daily cast cares, and how to daily stop re-running and re-hashing the same issues in our minds.  We are still struggling with trying to figure out how someone else is thinking and feeling.  We are still learning how to let it go, how to forgive, how to trust God with our ISSUES.  If we don’t stop looking out our own inadequacies and other people, it could keep is in a Perpetual Limbo, going about in the same old circles this time in 2014.  Beloved, let this not be your testimony!

Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God (Phil 4:6, NIV)

Learn to Calm Down –  Christ is Here.  Remember that greater is He that lives in you than he that is in the world (1 John 4:4, KJV).  Christ is in your situation because He dwells in you.  You have the Mind of Christ.  No need to get emotionally depleted because you can’t figure it out and 2013 still looks the opposite from what have believed for.  Christ is right there in the midst of it so you can calm down right now. He is the Prince of Peace and He dwells within YOU.  Peace is the absence of all strife or fighting from within and without.  He is working.  He does all things well (Mark 7:37). If you have been earnestly seeking Him and praying, God is there!  Your motives have been purified. In 2013, you have been doing best you know how in your present situation.  God sees. He has not forgotten you.

I do not consider, brethren, that I have captured and made it my own [yet]; but one thing I do [it is my one aspiration]: FORGETTING WHAT LIES BEHIND and straining forward to what lies ahead..(Phil 3:13, AMP)

Learn to Finally Let Go of the Past in Limbo.  You just can’t drag it with you where you are going.  Let go of unrealistic expectations and your will.  Let them off the hook for what they did to you.  God is your validation and vindication.  For some people in your past, they must stay away from you at a long distance and do not need re-entry into your life at all, because they are emotionally and spiritually toxic for you.  It is totally understandable, healthy and expected for you to disconnect and not engage with such people but still be able to forgive them and pray for them from a far.  It does not mean you are being hard and cold.  It means you are setting healthy boundaries to protect your own life.  Jesus did not die a dishonorable death on the cross to bring you abundant life for you to allow dishonorable people to mess up your life.  Keep your boundaries intact as you move forward in 2013, let them go, don’t think about what happened, and keep it moving.

Until Next Time,

Lady TB

Image source: http://www.saharamet.org/desert/sahara/photos.html

Settle It In Your Soul: YOU Have Been Made Whole

“And You are Complete in Him…” Col 2:10

Complete: having all necessary parts, elements, or steps; fully carried out; total; absolute. Whole: mentally or emotionally sound; having all proper parts or components; constituting an undivided unit; unbroken, complete or total.

To be complete in Christ is a very interesting and somewhat challenging statement to comprehend, yet here it is, in the Holy Scripture.  Paul wrote that we are Complete in Jesus Christ.  Completeness is another word for Wholeness.  You cannot be Whole but yet be incomplete.  You cannot be Complete yet lack wholeness.  We receive and walk in this Completeness and Wholeness when we receive and accept Christ.  But then we think, how in the world can I be complete, when I can clearly see that I have some major issues going on?  I see how I act and behave.  I know the thoughts that I think.   I know what I am struggling with.  But this verse still sits here, loud and clear, with the proclamation that in Christ I am Complete.

What exactly does this mean? It means that without Christ I am indeed a broken, hot and incomplete mess.  It means that with Christ living on the inside of me, I am restored to Completeness with him.  In Him I live, In Him I move and have my being (Acts 17:28).  It means that when I abide in him and He abides in me that my life will be fruitful.  Otherwise, my life will be nothing (John 15:4-5).

For me to walk out this completeness on a daily basis requires several key things. But right now we are going to focus on this one issue: BELIEF.  I must BELIEVE in my heart and mind I am indeed complete in Him.  I must make it part of my conscious and subconscious reality that I am a Complete and Whole Child of God, that I am not a falling apart person barely hanging on at the end of my rope.  It is about perception.  It is about remembering where God brought me from.  It is about deliberately canceling, crucifying and capturing the negative lies, thoughts, words, etc that the enemy puts in my head about myself.

What sense does it make to profess being complete in Christ, to walk around claiming wholeness but then turn around and self-sabotage by beating yourself up over every mistake, over your past, over the all consequences that are still yet unfolding?  What sense does it make to engage in self-flogging?  Why do we beat up ourselves and allow the lies and wrong thinking to overtake us?  We undermine our completeness every time we do this.  We give satan a chance to laugh and snicker at us because he is the one who starts it.  We take the bait, run with it in our imagination and he sits back and laughs.  He did very little work other than plant the thought. We did all the beating ourselves.

Once the mental and emotional self-flogging episode is finished, we are now broken again, picking up the pieces and wondering how we got here yet again.  Christ looks on us with pity and love, waiting for us to step back into the Wholeness and Completeness that he took the flogging for us to walk in.  He looks at us in love while we engage in destructive behavior and waits.

Wholeness and Completeness at its core is a fundamental belief that you are rooted, grounded, fixed and founded in the Love of God.  No matter what you have been through, no matter what you have done if you have received, believed and confessed Jesus Christ into your heart, you have been MADE WHOLE.  Yes, it is a process to walk out in the natural as your soul and your body catches up with your spirit.  Yes, it is a process for your mind and emotions to undo and unlearn the lies that you have believed and walked in.  Yes, it is a process to re-train your brain to righteousness, completeness, and dependency upon Christ living in you instead of relying on yourself.  However, it is absolutely imperative and crucial to know deep in your heart that you are seated in heavenly places with Christ (Eph. 2:6), that you are saved and that you are hidden in Him.  You are Complete.

Think about this.  An apple seed has all of the components necessary to grow and develop into a full-fledged apple tree capable of producing hundreds of apples.  The seed is very tiny and looks like nothing.  But it is Complete.  The seed is whole.  It is not a full grown tree.  It needs to be placed in the proper environment for it to grow into the fullness of the apple tree.  Because it is in seed form does not mean that it is worthless. It does not mean that it is broken or messed up or that something is wrong with it.   It has to go through its process.

A furry caterpillar crawling on the ground is a complete worm.  It has all of the genetic coding within it necessary for it to turn into a complete butterfly.  But right now it looks like a creepy worm.  But inside it is a complete beautiful butterfly.  We do not denigrate the little worm because it is not a fully formed butterfly.  The caterpillar is not going around hurting itself and complaining because it cannot behave or function like a butterfly. It has to go through its process.

It is the same way for us.  Just because we are still in the seed state or the caterpillar state doesn’t mean we are not whole or that we are incomplete.  We are still in process.  We are still working out our own soul salvation.  We are still growing in him.  He that has begun a good work in his will complete it (Phil 1:6).  Our God is a perfecting and performing God.  He perfects the things that concern us. He performs all things for us (Ps 138:8, Ps. 57:2).

We have yet to arrive into the Fullness and Completeness of our Destiny in Christ.  There is no time to waste on complaining and self-sabotaging ourselves through unbelief and unruly thinking.  This must become a settled, established issue if we expect to complete our process.   We can settle this issue by confessing the Word of wholeness and completeness over our lives daily; 2) by spending time daily in prayer and reflection and; 3) by being in healthy fellowship and relationship with others (no isolation).  These three things help solidify and establish wholeness, completeness and connection which are vital for any human being to move through his or her process.  Any aspect of these things missing will perpetuate the cycle of brokenness over time.  Settle these issues.  Settle Your Heart.  Settle it in Your Soul — You have been made Whole!