Sorry it has been a few days since my last post. Transition is a process it is seldom instantaneous and I have been in a process of transition, one of many I have experienced over thirty years of ministry. Some of them have been easy, others have been difficult and some, like this one, have taken a long time, five years to be exact.

I’ve discovered that the longer and/or the more difficult the transition, the greater the impact to others on the other side. It’s as if God is saying, “Justice is served if difficulty precedes victory.”

Personally, I am at the end of a five-year period of transition. Two years through the dark night of the spirit, one year to reorient and recover and two years to pull the change off. So for those of you who are “on the tarmac waiting for the plane to take off,” I have great empathy and remember “tribulation works patience in us.” UGH!

I’ve seen that often when the transition takes a prolonged length of time it is so two things can come into alignment; the first is preparation and the second is timing. Preparation also has two facets; your preparation and the preparation of those who you will impact and who will impact you. For either party most of the time preparation is not educational acquisition, but spiritual acquisition.

The second, timing, comes into play as God’s purpose for taking you where He is taking you – be it geographical or otherwise - and your preparation converge. The result of this convergence hallmarks the end of transition and the beginning of hope and fruitfulness. Proverbs tells us that he who rules his spirit is greater than he who takes a city. Sometimes we have to learn to rule ourselves before we can have rule where we are going.

I do have something very important to say about the process of transition, especially when it takes a long time for convergence to happen. Always leave the place where you are better than when you arrived. This is part of the reason God placed you where you are, even if it is temporary step on your road to your destiny. It is your part in God’s original mandate of subduing the Earth and learning to rule. Leave it better off for knowing you.

There are prophetic buzz words for transition and when you hear them you’d better understand that on the other side of that buzz word life as you know it will be irrevocably altered. Some of those buzz words are, “new thing,” “cocoon,” “different path,” “your chosen to…,” “change, change, change,” and “you’ve not gone this way before.” Perhaps you have some buzz words for transition that you’ve heard?

I have noticed three phases to transition, I’ll write about them next post.

Blessings,
John Paul

I see the analogy between “Transition” and Gideon giving God his future puzzled some of you. Here are the core elements of the analogy. Gideon underwent an enormous transition – from coward to hero in just a matter of weeks. More than a dozen times in the Biblical account of Gideon he refers to himself as being afraid and went on to state he was the least in all of his clan and in all of Israel.

In fact, as the story opens we find Gideon hiding behind the walls of the wine press grinding the little grain that the Mideonites had not taken. How did Gideon give God his future? He did it when he sacrificed the second bull of the herd. You see the first bull was already offered to the Lord. The second bull was to propagate the herd and produce new calves, thus the size of the herd would increase. If you kill the second bull, in effect you kill your future.

Gideon’s transition was to learn to trust the Lord and not fear the future. This is the first step in any transition, learning to trust and not fear. For those who love change it is easy, for the more stable ones who do not like change, this becomes more difficult. Keep in mind that all of us, at some point in our lives do not like change. If you have not discovered your own resistance to change, just wait, it is coming.

I agree, saying yes to God’s direction is not always that simple. Most of the time we are saying yes to a future that we have no clue as to what it will look like. The key here is to recognize that what we are seeing or perceiving actually is God’s direction for our life and say yes to what we know. I repeat, “Say yes to what you know is from God.”

You will know it is God’s plan by the peace you feel. Until you have that peace you have no responsibility to say yes. The most important sign that the next step is God’s plan for you is this deep seeded peace. Keep in mind peace does not equate to knowing all the answers. It does equate to the realization that after the transition all will be better.

Transition is a good topic because I suspect that as this year progresses, many of you will experience the most intense time of transition you have faced up to this point in your life and you’ll need to know this topic well.

Blessings,
John Paul

Transition is a difficult time for, most of us. To some it signals the chance for things to get worse. For others, it heralds that times are going to become better. There is one thing about transition, it signals it is time for us to change places. It is important to be where God wants us to be. I have often stated that God will move Heaven and Earth to get you where He wants you to be - if you are where He wants you to be. Transition changes who we impact, who impacts us and eventually how we decide what we decide.

One cannot make “right choices” from “wrong places.” When we step into a job, church, town, state or even a nation where God has not sent us we lose something. Perhaps it is just a little loss of God’s hedge of protection. One might say, “God’s greatest blessings can be found where He want us to be.” Perhaps we lose a little of ours spiritual perception and decision making ability, because we do not have the fullness of His insight with us. Perhaps we simply fail to recognize forces that might come against us, because we are a little less spiritually intuitive.

What do we do when we find we are not where God wants us? The answer? Godly sorrow and repentance for resisting His plan for our lives. God will take you where He wants, you just have to say yes and go - when He says and not overreact. What if one has a history of wrong choices? Then there are two things to remember: First, Godly sorrow and repentance erases the past. Second, and very important things to remember is not take the past with you into the future! Leave it there. God wants to be able to start all over with you. Let Him.

The balance of 2008 will be the “best of times and the worst of times” for many of you. For those who do not take the past with them it will become the best of times. For those who live in the past, and take it with them it could be the worst of times. Lot’s wife looked back to the past and it cost her dearly. Look to the future and what God’s desire for your life might actually be. Give the Lord your future, you could be a Gideon who had to slay his future to get to his destiny.

Join me in the “best of times” with the Lord. I’ll talk more about “Transition” in my next posting.

Blessings,
John Paul

In reading some of your responses it is evident that some of you have been deeply hurt and disillusioned. To reiterate, disillusionment is good in this sense, it is the end of the belief in something that does not exist and therefore will not lead you to your destiny. However, there is another form of a lie that God loves us too much to let go on and that is “delusion.”

Illusions come from our own conclusions as we assess our surroundings or circumstances. They are formed by faulty conclusions as we errantly perceive we are headed towards a destination or a direction we envision when are not actually headed there. Therefore illusions are of our own making and tend to be focused more on what the future might be than about the present.

Delusions resemble illusions, but there are subtle differences. Delusions may springboard off of things others say about us or what we think about ourselves. Delusions occur when we think we are someplace but we are not really there, or we see ourselves as having abilities that we actually do not have. In either case, delusions are more about our thoughts of the present than about the future.

Delusions are more painful and subsequently more difficult to recover from. Disillusionment is caused by expectations that do not happen, but delusions are beliefs and those beliefs are rooted deeply within us. You might say illusions are skin deep and delusions go clear to the bone.

No one really wants to think they have been deluded in their thinking, yet I have to bring this up because it is part of the healing process – it is the final ending of a belief in something that does not exist. Until we admit where we have been we will never get to where we will be. We will remain mired in the muck of circumstances and situations that we create and the lie continues. We will live in despair or hopelessness until this lie is broken. Once broken, the spiritual shift will begin and slowly, as new fruit blossoms, our circumstances and situations change and life becomes vastly different!

After the posting on Illusions, one of the Partner’s of this ministry recently wrote to me and stated something that is quite enlightening, and with editorial license I will paraphrase.

“Despair and disillusionment or despair and delusion are a deadly cocktail when one is going through a crisis in their life…the depth of which can keep one from finishing their destiny in God…”D’s” on God’s report card are not “F’s”…He merely points out the things that need improvement and may delay our future until changes are made.

Trust is a hard thing for me & what I’ve lived thru the last 20 yrs on my own…especially when people who are the closest to you lie…cheat & steal in one form or another…then you find yourself in the position of having to make a hard decisions. Overall what you will find is 80% of the time human error is in play, people may have meant well of how they handled things but the result is the same…changes have to be made.”

If you need a jump start, I have a free “Declarative Prayer” on my website that you can copy and pray daily. The Lord gave me this prayer and it really helped me a few years ago. I believe it will really help you as well. It is at the top right of the page under “News.” Scriptures says that the truth sets us free, isn’t it time to believe God has a pure truth about your life and what He created you be become and do.

Blessings,
John Paul

Have you ever been disillusioned? Walking with God is saturated in as much mystery as it is in knowledge. In neither case do we ever experience or understand it all. About the time we think we have a handle on any issue, God obliterates that handle and we crash back to Earth to regroup and find a fuller, more complete meaning to His ways. Sometime the crash is so hard we are grateful to walk away alive.

God has to allow this to happen to end our illusions - like when we think that we think like Him. Illusions are limitations we form from unrealistic expectations. These become a limitation, because we expect God will do things in certain ways. Without knowing it these illusions actually limit our understanding of God.

For those of you, who like me, have asked God to let you deeply know Him, we have in effect asked for all of our illusions to be broken – whew - that is painful. I do not think God enjoys our pain, but He loves us too much to allow our life to be shaped by choices we make from illusions.

I’ll admit I do not like my illusions coming to an end. Here I am thinking I am ready to “lock and load” and instead I “crash and burn.” It is humbling and sometimes humiliating, my self-worth is often shattered, and I want to crawl into some hole and spend the rest of my life there. Here, in the crash and burn of disillusionment He reminds us once again that His ways are far above ours.

One cannot be disillusioned without having an illusion. Illusions are mirages, and are never real, though we act like they are. It is for this reason He has to allow the crash. It ends our way of errant thinking, and starts an entirely new, and more accurate way of thinking. One that will lead us to our life’s purpose.

The reason the crash is so painful is that in our mind, illusions are perfect and because we understand that which is perfect we are one step closer to perfection ourselves. Further, in illusions we have a sense of control and power after all we understand some facet of the mystery of God. With the crash, our utopian illusion has reached its end and we are faced with the uncertainty of what we are yet to know, and yet to understand. In one moment of time, God reveals just how high His ways are above ours.

Actually this is a great moment. Truth can now make its way into our lives and we are free to find it as we search for it with all our hearts. I have found that I am never too old to have an illusion and to be disillusioned. I have also found that wisdom awaits us on the other side.

Perhaps something or somebody has disillusioned you. You may even feel God has. If so, then it is good that perception came to an end. God wants to reveal the truth so the rest of your life can be built on something tangible and not the illusion you built and you thought you could trust.

There is no illusion in Him to be disillusioned with. He is absolute in all His ways.

Blessings,
John Paul

I purposefully did not write a treatise about DNA and Sin in my last posting, one reason being I am not ready to write more deeply on the topic, yet I did want to plant the seed of thought about a potential consequence of prolonged, unaddressed sin in our lives. The verb of sin is not just about our own lives. I prefer, especially in this context, to focus on more positive and hopeful aspects of our spiritual life. There is so much to hope in, have faith in and trust in, that I love to look at the light of God’s purposes. Fear of failure is not a strong link to God – love is a strong link, in fact it is a bond.

I am a firm believer that all dark aspects of spirituality have an equal or greater origination in God’s grand design. Satan does not create; there is only one creator – God. Therefore, if curses can be passed down to the third and forth generations, then surely the passing down of blessings was God’s original intent. It could well be that DNA carries a Holy seed of light, passed down by Godly parents through the DNA. I believe it is more than patterned learning that brings our children back to the Lord when they struggle with their faith.

I am growing attached to the thought that the Apostle Paul was really on to something when he penned, “For the unbelieving husband is sanctified by the wife, and the unbelieving wife is sanctified by the husband: else were your children unclean; but now are they holy” (I Corinthians 7:14). Yes, each has to make their own choices as to their belief in God, but perhaps clean DNA allows for clearer thinking? Perhaps this is what Luke meant when he wrote, “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and you will be saved, you and your household.” (Acts 16:31).

Notice it was not just the children who were saved; it was also the husband and/or the wife. Indicating there is something that happens just by being around the light or presence of God in others. Is this DNA change as well? Like some of you, I have an adopted son, is this true for adopted children as well? Surely the spirit of adoptions includes the above verse.

I absolutely believe we are “procreated” again at salvation, and we have God’s DNA. However, I believe the wonderful provision of transformation rids us of a few genes that are flawed through the bloodline. Wouldn’t it be awful to be saved, but not changed, having to live like we always lived, but still going to heaven? As children of God there must be a DNA adjustment as we grow in Christ. And I agree, we do have God’s DNA inside us! Yes, He is the building block in each of our lives!

The thought, “from one of those,” on circumcision is very interesting. Yes we do change the anatomy with circumcision and I do see the parallel thought of our nature being circumcised. Very interesting.

It is clear there is growing evidence that there is a level of memory stored at the cellular level. Organ transplant patient’s craving food they never liked before, being moved by music they were never touched by before, Wearing styles of clothing they never wore before – all were likes and dislikes of the donor who gave the organ.

What if love of righteousness is stored in our cells as well? Oh well, thoughts and musings that are worth the thinking about – at least it worth it to me and my family.

Blessings,
John Paul

The curse of sin and the act of sin are as different as apples and apple pie. To be born from the apple tree does not mean one will become the pie. In other words, one can be born with a certain tendency and never have the problem or commit the act that their father did or their bloodline had.

Sin itself is not passed down through the DNA – because sin is a verb – it is an action. But continued and repeated acting on a destructive or deteriorating tendency may eventually destabilize the family DNA.

For example, it is proven that certain problems, especially addictive tendencies, such as alcoholism, or drug addictions are passed down from generation to generation.

What I am saying above in no way removes the responsibility for the choices each one of us makes. Each of us has to answer to God for those choices. I do not believe sin is passed down, again sin can only be charged to the one who committed the action, but the curse resulting from the sin may well be and that curse might well be a shift in the very structure of the descendants DNA.

We are not forced by DNA to do anything, but I still ask is there a tendency toward certain sinful actions that are passed down? Can prolonged or continual sin actually damage our DNA and in so damaging cause that DNA to be passed down to the next generation?

Thus all the more need for “TRANSFORMATION” and the life that follows that transformation. The essential need for transformation after salvation cannot and must not be under estimated! There is more to salvation than being reconciled to the Father and it is found in the life of Jesus (Romans 5:10).

In my next posting I’ll look at blessings and DNA.

Blessings,
John Paul