Getting In God's Order

The original series was 13 lessons long, but I felt that God wanted me to add a lesson to talk about change and growth--because that is a part of how God works in our lives. Just when we think we know what God's order is for our life and what His plan for us is, the ground rules might see to change. That can be confusing if we don't understand how God leads us and how He works in our lives.

Most of the time, He works through "process." He moves us, little by little, step by step, from where we are right now to where He wants us to be. He could force us there all in one big step if He wanted to, but He knows that would be too overwhelming for most of us. So He brings us through a process of change and transformation. He builds His character in us, a little at a time. He changes the ways we think and look at things, little by little, until it better lines up with His perspective. Likewise, the desires of our change as we grow in Him, until we naturally find ourselves longing for the things that please Him and distaining the things that He hates.

In a similar manner, God takes us through a process as He moves us into our destiny and calling. He may start us at one place (or on one set of tasks) and later on move us on to something else. We have to be careful that we don't mistake the "first place" He brings us to as the "end target" or "final goal." We don't want to cling so tightly to one aspect of our journey that we refuse to move on with God to the next one. We need to be careful not to mistake one of the steps in journey that God laid out for us as the "end goal." If we do that, we can get stuck there and miss going with God where He is trying to lead us.

Let's look at an example from the life of Abraham. God was training and raising Abraham up to be the "father of a great nations," to be the one from whom God would raise up a special people for Himself. It was a very great calling, and one of the things God required from Abraham was unquestioning obedience. So God took Abraham through a step of testing his resolve to obey God. In Genesis 22:2, God told Abraham: "Take your son, your only son, Isaac, whom you love, and go to the region of Moriah. Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains I will tell you about."

Abraham was probably shocked that God would ask this of him, but he was determined to obey God. Verse 3 tells us that he set out "early the next morning" to do what God told him to do. He was determined to obey God, even though that obedience would be very costly to him. This was one step in the process that God was taking him through.

What would have happened if Abraham got so stuck on that step? What if he stayed there longer than God wanted him to be there? We all know how Abraham bound his son's hands and place him on the altar and took a knife and was about to slay him. We also know that at the last second, God sent an angel to stop him. Genesis 22:11-12 tells the story this way: But the angel of the Lord called out to him from heaven, "Abraham! Abraham!"

"Here I am," he replied.

"Do not lay a hand on the boy," he said. "Do not do anything to him. Now I know that you fear God, because you have not withheld from Me your son, your only son." (NIV)

The history of the Jewish people would have played out very differently if Abraham stubbornly stuck to that previous step. Can you imagine him telling the angel, "No! God told me to sacrifice my son, and I am going to do precisely that..." then plunging the dagger into the boy's heart?

We need to be aware that wherever we are in our journey, we haven't "arrived" yet...we are still in process. That means we are still growing and maturing. It also means that, from time to time, God might change the "jobs" He gives us to do.

Look at the life of David. His growth process took him through several vastly different jobs. He started as a shepherd, then he became an armor bearer, then a soldier, then a fugitive and finally a king (with some other steps in along the way). What if David got stuck on being a shepherd. What if he refused to fight Goliath because he said, "God called me to take care of my father's sheep"?

Many times we "get comfortable" in a given step. We know how to do it well and we have become good at it. Then it comes time to lay it down and move on to the next step, and that can be rather traumatic for us. Let me give you an example from my own life. Back in the early 1990s, God called me to be an intercessor. At first I wasn't comfortable with that, but as I grew in my gifting, I got to love my calling. I loved drawing into the Lord's presence, being in deep intimacy with Him, hearing His heart and then praying in His authority. I could do it for hours and hours. In fact, it seemed like a "bad day" to me if I did not get at least 2 hours to spend in my prayer closet. I never dreamed that this was just a "step" in the journey God had for me, I thought I'd arrived at my destination and calling, and I liked it.

Then they started having renewal meetings at a church in San Francisco. The meetings went 6 nights a week and I attended almost every one of them. God met and touched me there in amazing ways and His presence seemed so tangible in the meetings. The first few weeks were mostly just me and God. They would pray for me and God's presence would come on me and I would "soak" for hours. Soaking was "me and God time" where no one else mattered. Being with Him in that context was not all that different than pulling away with Him in my prayer closet.

But then things began to change. God began moving me into the next step, which was ministering to people and praying for them (face to face at the renewal meetings) instead of interceding for them from my prayer closet. My prayers began to take on a strong prophetic tone as God began moving me into the "next step" of the prophetic. I did not think of it that way, I just prayed whatever I felt led to pray and wasn't even aware of the prophetic impact on the part of the person I was praying for. But person after person would come up to me afterwards and ask me how I knew to pray about such-and-such. Or they would say, "you just repeated back to me my whole last week's prayer closet prayers when you prayed for me...have you been ease dropping on me?"

At first I thought it was neat, but then I noticed that this "ministry praying" for other people was cutting seriously into my prayer closet time. For a while I tried to do both...spend 2 hours in my prayer closet, work all day, catch a quick dinner, be at the renewal meeting at 7 PM and not go home until after 2 AM. But the only way to maintain that type of schedule was to not sleep... and I couldn't sustain that for very long. I thought about not praying for people at the meetings anymore, so I could soak and get my "prayer closet time" in with God at the meetings.

That was when God spoke to me about it. He said He was moving me out of the prayer closet into face-to-face ministry. He told me to keep ministering to people at the meetings and not to worry if I could not make it to my prayer closet. I wasn't very comfortable with His instructions at first, because I really loved and valued my prayer closet time. But over time, I got to love the face-to-face ministry even more than I loved the prayer closet time. It was so neat to watch the way God would meet His people as I prayed for them.

God used those renewal ministry prayer times to begin developing and brining out the prophetic in me. Later on He would move me to another step where I would prophesy directly instead of "praying prophetically over people." But the point of the story is that we can get so comfortable in one step that we don't want to move on to the next one. But once we get established on the next step, we will probably like it even better than we liked the last one. All the same, don't get too comfortable there, because God will most likely eventually move you on to yet another step.

So what does that mean to you, as you try to find your place/calling in God's kingdom order? It means that where ever you are, you probably haven't "arrived" yet. So don't get so "set in your ways" that you are unwilling to move to the next step with God. Remember that He designed you and He planned your journey, and it will be perfect for you. But the steps, the transitions, may seem be a bit uncomfortable at first. Don't spend your time/energy longing for the "old ways." Instead, recognize that God is going to take you through a series of changes as He grows and matures you and prepares you for your destiny. Don't be afraid of those times when He brings change, because it is a part of His design and plan.