May 17
TIMES of TRANSITION
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
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And how about a word of encouragement for those of us waiting on the tarmac for the plane to take off? (This is probably something you have great experience with spiritually and physically.) When you’re pretty sure you’re in the right place and you want to move on but the Lord is moving you yet??
OK, I thought I was having deja vu because I know I’ve read this before. Then I realized that part of this was a re-posting of your January 11th blog entry.
It’s strange because since that time, I’ve already started to see things differently. You can almost smell the transition in the air.. and it’s a beautiful thing.
Thank you again JP.
I gladly join you in “the best of times” looking ahead and not behind. He takes away to establish (Heb. 10:9), the best IS yet to come!
Z
Transition…
I don’t know about you, but ‘transition’ seems to be the time when He is quiet. In my experiance, because He’s already let me know what He wants from me/for me. If I feel I’ve lost my way it’s usually because I let myself get too busy and haven’t spent time in His presence.
If I want to go forward with Christ, I have to slow down.
( “…the race is not to the swift, nor bread to the wise nor riches to men of intelligence…” etc…)
Transition scares me enough to want to run into His arms…it’s the only safe place for me durring a season like this! LOL He’s just…so good.
Thank you Father!
Hi John Paul,
I find decision making on subjects like these challenging! I still have an article you wrote about “geographical transitions” a few years back. I have observed (as many others) that some people are more structured, driven, and decisive as to goals and others are more responsive, flexible and easy going. Do see any patterns or have suggestions for prophetic gifted folks?
P.S. - Looking forward to hearing you in Mechanicsburg this week!
Honestly, “saying yes” is not always that simple, you sometimes don’t know how or why you got there. There are no four steps or keys or whatever for some.
Could someone please explain the Gideon reference? I read the story (and even watched the Veggie Tales version) and I don’t get what JPJ is saying about slaying his future and finding his destiny.
My husband and I have found ourselves in the position of having to find where God wants us to be. Having gone through almost 2 years of dissatisfaction and realizing that perhaps we need to move, we are now faced with the where. We believe we know where that “where” is, however our families are coming against us in a big way. Some have even said that they can’t see how this move could be of God since its taking their loved ones so far away from those who love them. This is causing much division. Can this truly be what God wants for us? Can desiring to be where He wants us, for His Kingdom to come, His Will to be done in our family (my hubby & kids)as it is in Heaven, actually cause persecution? What if we are missing it? My prayer for quite some time has been “Lord, cause my thoughts, will, and desires to line up with Yours”. If I believe in faith that He is answering this prayer, can we be assured that we are making the correct transition even though we face opposition? Strangely, this opposition has made the marriage relationship with my husband much stronger and closer. In a way, we are more “one” now than we were before.
John Paul, life is a constant transition. The Christian life is one of even greater transition, in my opinion, since seeking after God forces the changes. Higher level to higher level. (And I question ever being in a place that God cannot use to further growth, discipline, etc.) Of course choosing to live in the past, is really a choice not to grow or to seek God. Sooo I guess I do embrace change for the blessing it brings. And I look at the past as a way of encourging myself that I have come a long way. It would seem that my favorite line just before God moves in my life is, “There has got to be a better way.” And then I hold on. I think for some change is written in their DNA, so to not move forward brings a kind of boredom that is deadly to the spirit. Also, I am an immigrant so I have never felt at home any where ever, not in this country nor in my native country. This might explain why I am always seeking after God. I just want to go home.
Thank you for the blessing you are to the body of Christ.
I like the times of transition, because I feel a chance of a new begining. I don’t like the times of transition, because it is tiring, because many times it is not peaceful period (at least in my case).
Once I heard that you should choose a place for living according to spiritual journey (God speaking, church you should be in, ministry base) and not physical sense (job proposition, town country you like).
I am still changing a place according to physical propositions and trying to stick spiritual journey into it. Maybe, that is way I lack peace in the transitions.
Does anybody know how to reverse it?
I am trying to reverse it, but somehow physical propositions (college, job oppurtunity) are coming towards me more then spiritual (or maybe i am not seeing them)….
pavel
JP,
I just wanted to really take the time to thank you. You will never know how your ministry has impacted me and my husband’s lives. The Lord has used your ministry to impact our walk with God in a way that no other ministry has. Our OWE of God has consistently increased because of your AWE of Him. Is hard to find a venue to thank you, so I thought I’d use this. Five years ago or so you prophesied over my husband in a service in Boston. We are starting to see your prophecy come to pass. May He bless you and your family with an increasing presence of His glory. Thankful… Sandra
This is my supposition: The changes that occur in our temporal lives are designed to address changes God wants to make in our internal, spiritual and eternal side.
There is evidence to suggest this is true in my life. But since the subject of “transitions” is so broad, I pull-up short on saying it is absolutely how God deals with us all all the time.
I know in myself that I see God creating different circumstances to force me to see some belief system in me. A belief of X that he might want to change. Something that might be right there under the surface. Something that might be right there in plain sight, but never really addressed.
Some might believe that each “transition” is only a challenge to grow and expand on a core belief system God has already placed in them. That the area they expand and grow into is a benign and empty place. Like filling a glass of water.
I am more apt to believe that a Christian has a complete belief system in them that God is constantly working to uproot and translate from darkness to light, hence the “transitions.”
The past. Interesting. I both agree and disagree with this position. When we wind up on a dead end and don’t really know how we got there, looking at the past can be helpful, or distracting, depends on the situation.
But I like the reference to Lots wife. I see a little more into it now. Our longing for what was, can spoil what God is bringing us into. It is that longing or desire to stay or go back that becomes an idol in our lives. Our desires are very dangerous things. We can become attached to things that or of God and make those into idols.
I think this was part of my problem mentioned in my comments on illusions.
Anne,
Maybe he meant when Gideon slayed the bull after his calling. The bull may have symbolized his livelyhood and future.
Many others made choices in faith when called and during the walk.
Abraham had his name and address changed,
Elisha slayed oxen,
Fishermen left the family business,
Tax collector left the tax table,
Pharisee left the religious circle…
We are not always called to quit our jobs and go into a far country. Mark 5.19.
Our ministry is who we are and where we are in Him. Phil 4.11
Not everyone is called to speak to multitudes at a time.
I think most of us are called to minister (to serve or wait on) one on one. It could be at the playground, office, restaurant, waiting rooms, church…
You might be the only bible some people read.
(Please don’t think that I am “There” yet. These things come to me when I start typing.)
God bless you all
David
Well, Anne, in reading what JP said about Gideon, at first I didn’t really get it either…
After giving it thought, the conclusion that I stopped at, was that Gideon had to slay the future that he envisioned, was acustomed to or had coming for him, if he didn’t go into his God given destiny…He had to slay it, before he could get to his destiny. It was like a barrier that had to come down…
God Bless!
Sometimes I feel like the only constants with God are change and transition. As soon as you move along, he is ready to keep the ball rolling. Maybe it had something to do with those that are born of the spirit, and being as wind blown beleivers.
One of the transitions I went through a few years ago is the realization that there are not really just places as ‘wrong places’ because in those that beleive every place is the right place. Even if i step off the map, get into something over my head, God still turns around and uses all things for Good to them that love him and are called to his purposes. Because of this, I dont’ really beleive I am ever in a wrong place, only places that may keep me displaced from time to time, but the love of God magnetizes me and i come flying back to his place.
As for the gideon line i really love that. I didn’t relook the story up, but just in the context of what is written, I know that many times over in life God has had me ‘lay it all down and start over’ and it was a period of years where i felt like i was starting at zero, over and over again. But in those places of selling everything, starting over, leaving school, etc. God was just preparing me, my character, and my obedience, so that when he wanted me to move into the goodness of his blessing, that when he said step away from ‘this blessing’ for the ‘other blessing’ I would obey, knowing that his goodness guides me into his light and destiny far better than any seemingly good conditions i may or may not be in.
I think what Bob Jones said stands in agreement with what You have written JOhn Paul. I think at the beginning of the year he said something about this coming year “the good would be the enemy of the best” if people didn’t clearly see where God was taking them…making as God is taking them into these transitions, its to get away from the good..and get to the best..
and rest assured that in the best.. Jesus is there smiling.
Such a healthy word of encouragement. One that I take as my own. Thank you.
Thanks John, I know I’m in transition and the letter resonated with my spirit greatly. I wept intensely for I want Him to have all of me and I just seem to blow it all the time. Oh that I would burn always for the Master, for the Bridegroom and for those who are invited to to the banqueting table. Help! that the season of testing will result in fruitfulness and not a trip around the old mountain. Let the Spirit and the Bride say Come! Oh come Lord Jesus!
Mr. John Paul Jackson,
Twenty years ago I attended a church called Vineyard Christian Fellowship in Jacksonville, Florida. This is where I received a prophecy from you that God has been revealing over the last 2 years. I wanted to tell you the good news. God is building a ministry through me called The Lord’s Prayer Ministry. I have been praying for a huge ministry of prayer for 8 years! He started building 2 years ago, August. He has also revealed I will be writing a book called, “No One Can Stand Against The Almighty God.” I am continually praising God for my trials. There has been 2 different times that you have given me a prophecy. I asked the Lord one evening before going to bed, “Heavenly Father, what did you mean through John Paul Jackson when he said, “Wow, I’d better not say that because a wise man doesn’t tell everything he knows. Proverbs says this.” The Lord revealed “I gave you the power to heal.” This is a ministry of God for salvation, healing and deliverance.So as God is placing positions, He is also showing miraculous signs and wonders to me as I was orphaned and struggled through education. Praise be to God. We are learning from your lessons. We will be praying for you!! John Paul, I’m most definite that you will hear of this healing. A wise man doesn’t tell everything he knows, Proverbs says that. The ministry that you prophesied over was revealed to several others that this ministry was going to be world wide.
Jeremiah 33:3 Our ministry Verse. “Call unto me, and I will answer thee, and shew thee great and mighty things, which thou knowest not.”- I pray God blesses you and your ministry 10 fold!!!Kathy Gardner - Glen St. Mary, Florida.
Oh, this is good. Yes, geographical transitioning going on here (to Texas panhandle)… almost a year in the making to date… get’n real familiar with the tarmac. The bull deal (Gideon)for you non-ranchers. When you give up your bull (I sold mine a few weeks ago)… it’s like.. quiting your job or cashing in your retirement. It’s a sacrificing of your visible future that goes against your natural common sense. It’s putting your money where your mouth is… laying it on the line… saying ‘Here Lord, me and my future are Yours, do with it what You will.’ But when your steps are ordered by the Lord… there IS NO other choice. WooHoo destiny… here we come!!
God bless you all. Hope to see you again when I get to Texas JPJ.