God wants to bring the change inside first of all, so all transitions, God expects us to be willing to change on the inside. So if you're going through a transition right now, there will be a challenge to re-think what you believe and what's going on, and look at what's going on in your life, and God's got His own way of getting that to come up into your attention - which I'll explain in a moment. Then the third one is, He calls us to be courageous. So for example when Joshua was going through transition, God called him: be strong and of a good courage, don't be afraid, don't be dismayed, I'm with you. He called him to position himself emotionally, with courage in his heart. Now courage doesn't mean that you don't feel fear. You can be terrified, and still be courageous; so to be courageous means you draw on the strength of God, and no matter how you feel, you face that fear, you face that difficult situation, you face that challenge, and you stand believing God to help you through it - then you come through it.
So God three times says: be strong, be courageous. Why? Because in transition, it requires you have inner strength and courage, because it takes courage to change. Many people don't change because they don't have courage to face the pain, don't have courage to face their fears, don't have courage to face the difficulties, the issues that were never faced before. Someone sent me a text this week. They said: Christianity's not for wimps. It isn't, because God calls us to courageously face things that most other people don't want to face; to face what's in our heart, to face how we react, the face how we deal with life, and to grow. It's a wonderful thing, absolutely wonderful. So transitions; when God's taking us through a transition, the first evidences of it are that there's pressure comes on your life, or that there's lack in some area, or something goes exactly how you didn't expect it, or didn't want it to go. So during transition, there's all sorts of uncertainties, and things are not quite - we can't quite predict how they'll go, and we love to predict how things will go.
So there are what I'd call transition giants. In a season of transition in your life, there are some giants to face. So for example if you're a young person going to university, and you leave home and you go to live in some other city, a big city, and then go to study there, there will be some giants you will face. There will be challenges you've not faced before, just because you're in transition. After you've been there a while, you've kind of got to work it all out; or the giants have overcome you. So if you're facing a change in any part of your life, there will be some giants to overcome. We're going to see them, and we'll see them manifest in the lives of Israel in just a moment, but let me just give you them. So one of the giants is bitterness and resentment and offence. That's a giant to overcome, because in transition or change it's easy to become offended and resentful and bitter. Another giant to overcome is a giant of fear; because fear causes us to try and control, or hold together our world, and manipulate everything around us, so we feel safe. That's a giant.
Another giant is the giant of complaining; what we do with our voice, what we give voice to. Will we give voice to heaven? Will we give voice to fear and negativity and unbelief? What will we give voice to? Of course another problem that comes, or challenge that comes, is that we just go off on a wrong track, and we do something in order to try and control our world that gives birth to an Ishmael. Now when you look in the Middle East right now, all that fighting over there came about because in transition, someone had his own idea how to solve the problem and help God out. That was Abraham, and so Abraham, instead of believing God, and holding onto the promise of God, had a change in plan, took hold of Hagar, had a child through her and all the Arabs were birthed. All the conflict in the Middle East was birthed, because one man didn't handle transition well. Think about that. I wonder what turmoil is generated in our lives because we didn't handle our transitions too well. Other people get affected you know.