The ProcessSample

Day 2: The Process : On day 2, we’re moving from receiving the promise to looking at the process of it coming to fruition! We all want a word from God, but there is a process between receiving that word from God and the fulfillment of it. If you cannot understand the process or why you are going through it, you will give up. The process starts the moment you experience your first disappointment. “I received this promise, and now what? I was expecting something different!” Have you experienced something similar? We could also describe the process as a transition. Some transitions are caused by you. Others are caused by people around you, by circumstances, by God, or even by the devil who is trying to attack you and lead you to a transition in the wrong direction. Remember that our ultimate transition on earth is the one described in Genesis 1:26 when God said: “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness ...” All of us are in the continuing process and transition of being transformed into the image and likeness of God. Everything in our character, lifestyles, and our issues that do not fit this image and likeness of God needs to be transformed so that we become more like Him. Many people describe the season they are going through as a transition process. Being in transition most of the time causes stress and pressure. It is a time of pruning and learning to trust. Learning to walk in faith and not lean on your own understanding is part of the transition (Prov. 3:5-6). Transition can be wonderful and ugly at the same time, a blessing and burden rolled into one. To let go of the old and move into the new is the most difficult part. It is a time when what worked in the old season will not work in the new season. Sometimes you will be forced to leave the old season behind. It is the season that is familiar to you, where you know how to survive, how to celebrate. In a way, the old season represents all that we know. We know how to live our lives and how to navigate that old season. When we have to leave that behind, there is a feeling of excitement, mourning, and letting go of the past. We will need to trust God in this time. He is the architect. He has a plan for us in the middle of the mess; if we only let Him in and continue to trust Him, He will bring about what He has planned for us. That will be a journey of discovery for us as well. We will discover who we are, how God created us, and His plan for us. But that cannot happen without a process, without a transition. Without letting go. We seem to think we can just go from one mountaintop to the next but forget there is a valley in-between. The process is needed to bring us from the promise—which may seem quite abstract when we first receive it—to the fulfillment of that promise in our life Are you in the middle of a transition currently? What is it? Are you allowing God to guide you through this transition, or are you doing it on your own accord?