A couple of weeks ago I brought a message just about the wilderness; a couple of messages on Wilderness Wisdom. How many found that was a help for you? It was a help for me [laughs] and wisdom, when we're going through a journey or a season of transition and change. The wilderness that we spoke about was an experience that the people of God had in the Old Testament. It was an experience we'd call a transition experience. Transition is where you move from one thing to another, you move from one place to another place, you move from one job to another job. You move from one experience to another experience, or you move from one assignment in God, to another assignment; you move from one situation God's got you in through into another situation. There are many examples of it.
So transitions are natural. We have natural transitions - seasons, right now we're in a changing season, and it's absolutely wonderful, but it's quite unpredictable and you get weather that changes. You have all kinds of things. You get equinox winds. It's an interesting time, I love these changes in season, particularly love the season right now - and so we have natural seasons like that. We also have seasons in our life; you change from being a baby; then you've got to get up and you've got to go to school. It's a change - very uncomfortable going to school for the first time, then you have to go to high school and it's very uncomfortable. You leave school and go out, perhaps university training, go off to university. I remember it was very uncomfortable for me making that transition, and I've observed with natural transitions they're never easy. They always have challenge.
I just was reading something that said that in the process of giving birth to a child, the period of labour is the period of transition. From growing the child within the womb, to the child being manifested and born into the world, is a transition and it's got of course birth pains. So we see natural transitions around. What escapes us sometimes is that God also transitions us from one experience with Him to another, and your Christian life, if you were living your Christian life, walking with God, I can tell you now, if you're walking with God what will happen is you will find yourself quite frequently in transitions, changes. It's part of walking with God, because He's continually moving us on. You don't just get saved, and that's the end of it. He journeys you, because He has an assignment for your life, and He wants to develop you, or mature you, or prepare you for that assignment. So for example, if we have one level of job, and then we want to go to another level of job, we must qualify for it. You don't get promoted without some kind of success in the level you're at.
So in the Bible there are many transitions. The Bible speaks of transitions all the way through, and transitions are very uncertain times. They have their challenges, and have their difficulties, but there are some things are absolutely certain, and that is, that there's a process and God loves us to embrace the process of the transition and learn what we can, because it's your chance to prepare yourself for the next season. There are many believers who totally frustrate God's destiny for their life, not because they didn't believe or hope or have some kind of plan. It's just when God was trying to change them, they wouldn't transition. They wouldn't transition; and I want to show you - we're going to go back into that arena of looking at the wilderness journey, but I want you to see it from the point of view of transition. I want you to be thinking it from the point of view of God shifting them from one thing to another, and what He was requiring of them was to embrace the process of transition, and let God change them in the middle of it.
As we look at this particular transition [Mike retiring, looking for a new leader], you'll see some challenges. Now here's an interesting thing about transition. When God's taking us through transition, He usually informs us, usually let's us know. As a church we've probably had prophetic word about two years ago, God was going to bring some changes. Don't we love the prophetic word? Love the idea of it. It's just the reality of it's a little uncomfortable wouldn't you say? Very uncomfortable. It's one of the most difficult times I've had during this transition, but that's okay. The second thing is, that in transition, God requires of us that we change the old ways we thought; the old mindsets we've had, the old ways of doing things. In order to be different, or to move into new things, you've got to change; so it's change usually the way I think. Most people think that life will go better for them if something outside them happens, when I win the Lottery, or have a breakthrough or something.