I know I haven’t written in a while…

I have been in transition.

A word that speaks change and transformation but often gets placed into the box labeled readjustment. This word transition has profound meaning, it means “a going across or over.” The websters dictionary defines transition as “passing from one state, stage, place to another.” This word carries with it far more than just readjusting. Readjusting is how you grab the sides of your pants and wiggle them to there proper place. A transition is not a readjustment.

A transition is a death process.

It is a crossing over. It is a passing from one way a being to another. This life we live is a journey of transitions. If we do not learn to die to old ways of being and cross over into new ways of being we will not succeed at what this life is meant to accomplish. God wishes to grow us to full maturity. We have been growing up our whole lives. If we never learned to walk and talk, where would we be? If we never learned to navigate or conversate, where would we be? Those two questions are similar but vastly different.

So, how do you know that you are in a place of transition?

1. Physical Change: the death of family or friends, job promotion, or a move of some kind.
2. Mental Change: Old ways of thinking and doing are not working anymore.
3. Emotional Change: Everything feels awkward and its harder to keep your emotions under control.
4. Spiritual Change: God is drawing you to place to see a new level of the broken places inside of you that He intends to heal.

Often times the physical change has already happened and everything is different either someone died, you got promoted, or you moved to a new city. The other two areas of our lives are still on autopilot. We are working the mental and emotional system as the old system has been set up and one by one it all starts to crumble as God calls us to the wilderness where He is waiting to show us His goodness and grow something new in and through us. Many of us will not enter the process. Instead, we will fight, kicking and screaming, because we do not understand. We act just like we did as children when it was time to stop eating candy so that we would not ruin our dinner. We pitch a fit and do not quit.

1 Cor. 13:11  When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways.

The truth is some old ways just have to die. We must be transformed and begin to function in new ways for us to mature in Christ. How? We must go through the transition! Let us not draw back but rather enter into the process.

Is it easy? No.

Does it hurt? Yes.

The old way (child in us) will whine, complain, and point fingers of blame but the new way (the growing us) will see what that child is saying and then take it to the Father and ask for the new way to come. When you do this you will  watch God do His work in you. He will do what you can’t do for yourself.

He will transform you!

When we choose to partner with God in transition, then God works in us transformation! – Tweet That!

A transition is about learning to follow Jesus regardless of our current circumstances. It’s about keeping your loyalty to Christ and not to yourself. You give up the seat and let Christ rule and reign in your heart.

Luke 9:23-24

And He was saying to them all, “If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross daily and follow Me. “For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake, he is the one who will save it.

How do I know? I know because this year I have been in the process of  transition. I moved into a new position at my church. My friends Tim & Kathy passed away. My Grammy who taught me how to be a traveler in this life passed away.  My daughter got married and moved out. My son is in his last year of elementary. I have endured heartbreak and the ache of sin called my pride, my anger, my self-centeredness. I have experienced doubt, fear, and sadness.  I am not yet through the transition in my life but one thing I do – I am hanging on to Jesus and His promises as every one of the areas of transition have been turned over and rummaged through.

I have one question for you:

Jesus is the steady One when the world starts to shake… 

What are you hanging on too?

Thanks for Listening,

Starla