Hurry up and look cute…
Hurry up and heal…
Hurry up and post cute pics
Hurry up and show the world that I look good and am okay… (Shannon Evette)
Why are you rushing your healing process? Take the time you need. You live before an audience of One – Your Creator – God. Not folks on Facebook and Instagram. If you don’t take the time to recover and heal, you will repeat the same cycle. #Healing #Release #RecoverOrRepeat #GetRealBeHealed #SelfWorth #TakeYourTime
I know my purpose. I heard from God. I have a plan. But why do I keep stumbling in executing and manifesting what I KNOW I’m supposed to be doing?
How do we master the in-between season of the transition? What do you do when you struggle to stay focused and keep your mind renewed? What are the setbacks that happen when you set an intention to fully engage and walk out the purpose and vision God gave you?
Crossing over the threshold to a new season brings with it a unique set of challenges. When we begin to close the gap between our current reality and our desired reality, there is bound to be some level of discomfort. For every new level of breakthrough, there has to be a shifting, a re-ordering and an expansion of our lives from within and without.
For every positive change that you desire to manifest in your life from changing your career, writing a book, starting a business, preparing for marriage and so on – expect tension in the transition. The tension comes from the necessity of your entire mindset and belief system having to come into alignment with what you are affirming, stating, and claiming out of your mouth. This is no easy feat because of the very intense resistance you are receiving from your outer circumstances and the intense resistance coming from inside of you – from your fears, limiting beliefs and mindsets.
The biggest resistance often comes when we have checked all of the things off the list, i.e., – #1 Got the Vision , #2 Got The Plan, but then we get to #3– Walk it Out, we start to stumble. You did run well, what hindered you? (Gal. 5:7 KJV)
We get hindered because even though we have a clear vision or picture and we have the plan in place, we have not yet lined up the outer and inner conditions of our lives to match up and support the vision that God has placed in side of us. Thus, the tension in transition – the hindrances and the distractions. Not everything is the devil! A lot of it is just us. Our current lifestyle is not conducive to supporting the dream at the level God has ordained.
There is usually a significant mismatch between our mindset now and the mindset required for our lives to line up to support the vision.
Often we ask God for great and mighty things. We receive a word or revelation about it. We get excited because we KNOW God has revealed this thing to us, yet we do not have the internal capacity and fortitude to maintain and sustain the fullness of it.
We ask for very large sums of money, yet we shun financial literacy and training on money management. We desire a wonderful relationship, yet we hold on to past hurts and keep getting entangled in dead-end relationships. We want a million dollar mansion, but on the inside, in our souls and minds, we are at the level of 10 square foot closet.
Or sometimes on the flip side, you may have already begun to walk in purpose and have enjoyed a degree of progress and you know that you must now up-level to a greater space. You have now OWNED your calling, your purpose and you are responsible to keep on walking it out because people are watching you and they know you can do it. They have seen you do it. That can be quite scary because we don’t want the responsibility of owning the call, owning the purpose and being responsible to show up fully. Walking in purpose brings responsibility. To whom much is given, much is required. (Luke 12:48) It’s done now. It’s out there now. Too late to run tail and hide because it’s too big and too much. Your hide out days are over! You must keep moving forward in spite of feeling like you don’t have it all together.
At the risk of sounding simplistic and common (because I’m sure you’ve heard it a thousand times) yet I will say it here again– what we are asking for is already our’s to receive. It is here. The finished work of Christ, is already completed. We are already complete in Him. We are already complete in His Love. Christ did the work already. We must walk into what God has in store for us and receive it by faith. But How you ask? I’m saying my affirmations, I’m praying, I’m meditating, I’m tithing, I’m serving, I’m going to bible study, I’m working on myself, etc. etc. blahahahaha.
Let me preface this right here. Put a pause button on. I’m still learning myself and everything I write, say, teach and do comes from a place of transparency and a real desire to change me. If I’m writing this, then it is an area that I struggle with, thus the basis for my writing. As I learn, I share!
Back to the point. Three things that will help ease the tension in transition:
His grace is sufficient while you are in transition. Transitions are inevitable. It’s not how bad the transition is, it is how you handle it and your willingness to endure process. You can accelerate or slow down the transition process to the extent in which you relax and trust that He has begun a good work in you and will finish it (Phil. 1:6). And you can determine the speed to the degree that you renew and change your mind on a continual basis. The reality is, you have a choice about how you transition and you are the only one who can make that choice. Choose well!
Until next time,
T.
For more information on walking in emotional wholeness or ending dead-end relationships, order your copy of Get Out of that Dead-End Relationship NOW! A Christian Woman’s Guide on How to Get Real, Healed & Move On TODAY! Available at http://www.amazon.com in paperback or Kindle or for an autographed copy go to www.tonikabreeden.com.
A well-known television minister said: “Complain and Remain or Praise and Be Raised.” Essentially what she is saying is that the more you complain about your circumstances, what you have and don’t have and why God hasn’t moved or done anything is that the longer you will remain stuck in the same position.
However difficult it may be, it is imperative if we call ourselves Christians, that we learn how to guard our mouth and our attitudes while we are waiting on God .We must learn how to maintain an attitude of gratitude and thanksgiving by receiving better understanding of the purpose during this season so that we will praise God in the middle of it and our deliverance comes quicker.
Our God is a performing and perfecting God. He performs all things for us (Ps 57.4) . He perfects the things that concern us (Ps. 138:8). All things are possible with him. (Matt 19:26). He is just simply not in a hurry. God waits for order to be established in our current circumstances before He allows the next development. He allows things to happen in the fullness of time and in due season. He knows exactly what he is doing and He has a higher understanding of your situation than you do therefore He will answer and come through for you in a way that is higher than what you thought if you just believe Him.
While you are waiting in the wilderness, it is better to praise and worship God as well as seek understanding and learn the lessons that the wilderness has to offer. The wilderness is the time between leaving the bondage of your past and entering the Promised Land. The time frames of the wilderness are Step 1) Bondage, Step 2) Wilderness, and Step 3) the Promise Land.
There is no escaping the in-between, transitional season of the Step 2. You cannot get to the Promised Land without going through something called The Wilderness. The Wilderness gets the junk out of you from the bondage while at the same time preparing you to fully enjoy the promises of what you prayed for. You can’t just jump from being a slave to being a free person without going through some changes. A person who moves from the ghetto to living in a mansion within 24 hours still has ghetto ways in them. An athlete who goes from being a nobody to a multi-millionaire overnight, without proper guidance and maturity of character can lose it all in a very short time by lack of self-control or self-mastery.
In Exodus 17:1 AMP it reads “All the congregation of the Israelites moved on from the Wilderness of Sin by stages…” The Israelites were a nation of slaves who went from having masters and being ordered what to do to being a free people roaming about in the Wilderness. They had to be delivered from the slave mentality little by little, bit by bit and they prolonged the process because of their complaining, fear and unbelief. It was more comfortable to be a slave than it was to be free.
The wilderness process of the soul is very crucial to character development. It is a purging and pruning process where the things inside of you that will hurt you in your future destiny are taken away (painful) and the good things that God has placed in you are refined and clarified (painful). John 15: 2 says “Every branch in me that beareth not fruit he taketh away: and every branch that beareth fruit, he purgeth it, that it may bring forth more fruit”
The wilderness experience tends to expose the weakness in your character that you didn’t know about or were hiding from yourself. The wilderness experience also makes you stronger and reveals your gifts and talents as well. This is what God is after so that He can trust that you will give Him the glory when you enter the Promised Land and not yourself. As Christians, some type of suffering is inevitable. Christ suffered and if we claim the name of Christ we too will suffer. No matter how much prosperity, health and wealth, name it and claim it teaching you hear, you cannot get around the necessary soul suffering that it takes to draw you closer to God. Jesus suffered so that he could feel what we feel therefore we suffer so that we too can have compassion and understanding towards others who suffer and not get haughty, judgmental and hard-hearted.
Frankly, your character is what God is more interested in developing while you are in the wilderness than responding to your every cry the minute you suffer while you are going through. By the time you leave the wilderness, you are truly not the same person as you were when you came in. When you entered the wilderness, you thought you had it all together and knew what you were doing. But shortly thereafter, you began to see that you don’t know what you thought you knew and that there are problems, issues, circumstances that are just beyond your limited capacity. None of your schemes, fleshly ideas and cleverness seem to work. Now is the time to really lean and depend on God. This is what is learned in the wilderness experience. Some things you learn in the wilderness you will never learn anywhere else.
In order to truly experience the benefits of the wilderness, learn patience. There is no getting around it. You must learn how to wait on God.
In Isaiah 30: 15 – 18 AMP it reads: “For thus said the Lord God, the Holy One of Israel; In returning [to me] and resting [in me] shall ye be saved; in quietness and confidence shall be your strength: and ye would not. And you said No; for we will speed [our own course] on horses! Therefore you will speed [in flight from your enemies]! You said, We will ride upon swift steeds [doing our own way]!… And therefore the Lord [earnestly] waits [expecting, looking, and longing] to be gracious to you; and therefore He lifts Himself up, that He may have mercy on you and show loving-kindness to you… Blessed are all those who wait for him.
If we are ever going to have any semblance of real peace in our lives, we must learn to rest, lean and wait on God. The other alternative, as shown further in this passage is what we do — we keep forging on in our on strength with our own ideas, going from pillar to post, ripping and running putting out fires here and there never returning to truly rest and wait on God and we get burned and busted every time.
Further down in these verses we see that the Lord is just looking, longing waiting to be gracious to us but just like the Israelites who wanted water and meat and couldn’t wait because their flesh was screaming, we refuse his grace because we gotta have this problem fixed right now. We needed the money yesterday. We need to be healed now. God is just too slow. So the devil uses our lack of self-discipline and patience to beat us down every time.
Secondly, worshiping while in the wilderness is no easy feat. You know it is easy to praise God and smile when all of your bills are paid and you have some change left over. That does not require any faith at all. However, it is extremely difficult to worship God when all hell seems to be breaking loose in your life. It is difficult to go to work and do all you can to keep smiling, doing right and being right when all the wrong things are happening to you and still have the audacity to get up go to church and praise God anyhow. That is an entirely different level of faith and mindset. The natural tendency of the human mind wants to wonder to and fro trying to figure out how to solve a problem all the time. To break this mental habit requires a dedicated effort to focus on God daily in worship, prayer, praise, and bible reading and confessions. This is how you rest in God and obtain that peace that passes all understanding. This is how you break unnatural demonic fears and strongholds in your mind. This is where the true battles of the wilderness are fought. This is true Worship In the Wilderness.
You don't have to live a life that sucks when there's the God-kind.
with Shannon Yvette Tanner
Where Pure and Holy Unions are Celebrated!
ladies loving god by Tonika Breeden 