Everything is going through a transition. During times of transition and change we feel insecure, we feel we have no foundation. Then we need to read that we have an anchor within the veil (Hebrews 6:19). God, who cannot lie, gives us immutable promises, and by these we reach within the veil, and we anchor. We have to hook onto something that is unchangeable.
Our lives are changing. Many people have found that new spiritual levels thrust them into change. One girl said, “I feel like my roots are being pulled up and I’m going to be transplanted someplace.” That is very true; everyone is feeling this. Things are going to change. You are going to change. You are going someplace for the will of God to happen to you, and it is not with a sense of frustration or wandering; you know you are in the will of the Lord.
We are believing for fantastic things, but we must realize that God works in a paradoxical way. He has to work certain changes in us so that we become ready for major changes that He is going to thrust us into. These changes do not come to help people escape; they come to people who have already had a work of God in their heart to prepare them for change. It is as important to be prepared for change as it is to have ministry to move into change.
You are going to change your ways of thinking, your ways of eating. You are going to, even though sometimes you will think, “I don’t like this.” God will turn you back to see the wisdom in the situations and vocations you have been in, and He will show you that there is a way of life you have not even anticipated. You don’t know what can happen to you, you don’t realize how much your life has already changed since you’ve come into the walk.
What is happening to us, why are changes taking place? Because we are getting ready for another change. Nothing is final in itself: God brings you a word, and it does something in your life so that He can bring you another word that will work something else in your life—so that He can bring you another word and work something else in your life! That is why we continue to receive words from the Lord. Each time a word comes we embrace it and change takes place, then we go on to another change. God is not really concerned now, and will not be for hundreds of years, with working a final effect in any of our lives. He is only interested in creating within us by His word a cause that will create what seems to be an effect, but it will be the cause of another cause of another cause! God works through cause and effect.
God works a change in your life: Why? so people can say, “Now you have achieved the ministry you are supposed to have”? No, you will have that ministry and it will create something, and open the door for another word that will create something more God has in mind. So become encouraged with your life, become encouraged with your frustrations. Become encouraged with the fact that He brings one thing and dries it up, so He can bring you into another thing, then He will dry that up.
People complain about that. They say, “I was enjoying reading the Word so much; that last three months were the most beautiful of my life. Now I read and I can’t get anything out of it. What happened to me? I’m losing out with God; I can’t get anything in the Word. Why?” That is not necessarily a bad thing, because you would have continued to read it on the same spiritual level that you were on for three months. The measure of anointing God gave your reading was like a fuse. You absorbed it; you burned down the fuse to the dynamite. Then God had to explode it: all of a sudden the whole thing exploded.
“What happened to me? Why is it all going sour on me?” You are moving along smoothly and suddenly God humbles you so much that you don’t know how in the world to come out of it. “What is He trying to do to me?” you say. He is trying to make you move up to another level. The only way He can do it is bless you, and give you a word, then let the whole thing make a change in your life that literally demands the next step … and the next change after that and the change after that. God is so clever!
I take off my hat to Him! Every morning I want to say, “I salute You, Lord, for Your manifold wisdom.”
He has a man like Elijah come into the court, bristling with the word of the Lord. He says, “There will be no dew or rain in all of Israel except by my word” (I Kings 17:1). He stomps out. Ahab and Jezebel call out the F.B.I. and the C.I.A. to search for him and they take an oath from every country swearing that they have never seen this man, Elijah. For three and a half years they look for that man to break the drought. Where is Elijah? Where on earth is the man?
God told him to go up to the brook Cherith because, “I’ve commanded the ravens to feed you there” (I Kings 17:3, 4). He is taking a vacation, he’s having a sabbatical of sabbaticals. He is sitting beside the little brook flowing full with lovely sparkling water, with nice food to eat: everything is going fine—the ravens delivered food morning and evening. Isn’t that marvelous? He sits there without a care in the world, thinking about the people down below: “I hope God really deals with them.” Then one day Elijah looks out, wondering, “Where are the ravens? I’m getting hungry. They are a little bit late today.” He listens for the ravens and all he can hear is the rumble in his stomach. And when he takes a drink, he discovers the creek is going down, too. “What am I going to do?” Soon there isn’t anything. He sits on the rock awhile.
What would Elijah’s reaction have been if in the midst of that great blessing, the ravens bringing the food and the water flowing, the Lord had said, “Elijah, I want you to go someplace else”? He would have thought, “That wasn’t a word from the Lord, it’s not confirmed. I’m staying right here.” But the Lord dried up the brook and there were no more ravens; Elijah was hungry and thirsty. Then the Lord said, “Elijah?”
“Yes, Sir?”
“I want you to go down to a certain place. I’ve commanded a widow to take care of you there” (I Kings 17:9). He could have shrugged it off, “I’m not going to be a charity case and live off a poor old widow in a famine, not me.” But somehow he didn’t have many objections. That illustrates the change God works, so that He can work a change, so that He can work a change!
He doesn’t really make us go against our will. I have never seen God say, “You are going to go,” then make a person go. He maneuvers a few things, and he is willing! He wouldn’t have thought of arguing with Jonah; but isn’t it surprising how willing Jonah was to do the will of the Lord? He said good-bye to his special submarine (Jonah 2:10) and began to run, pulling the seaweed from his hair, asking, “Which way is Nineveh?” You see now how God works changes, and how much better it is when you are ready to hear the word of the Lord cheerfully. Because changes will work changes, all of them are important to you.
Sometimes God puts things in your heart and you don’t know why. What kind of discipline, what kind of dealings of the Lord make that beautiful Hebrew girl willing to give a stranger a drink and to draw water from a deep well for ten thirsty camels (Genesis 24:18, 19)? What had been worked in the girl’s spirit to make her do such a thing? God had worked it in her because He had a change in mind for her: that change was her marriage to Isaac, which would make her one of the wealthiest women in the world. But first, He made her very humble and ready to serve, so He could make a change in her life.
What kind of a change is God making? “He is humbling me, He has put me here and dried up my brook and taken away the ravens and I’m hungry.” Maybe He wants to direct you to the next step, to the next place! This walk is a walk. There is a constant change of scenery. It is not a treadmill, it is an adventurous pilgrimage into the Kingdom of God. And if we believe there will be changes out there we must be prepared for God to work a successive change, a constant state of change in us here.