Re-Orienting To Victory!
On Friday morning, as the core team sought the Lord together before the meeting, we felt there was a cloak of heaviness/weariness/hope deferred on many from the past season. And we sensed the Lord said He wanted to remove that so that He might reposition us for the new season. We weren’t sure exactly how the Lord would do this so we agreed to enter into worship and see how the Lord would lead.
Tabitha brought us into a powerful time of worship as she began to sing spontaneously about the Lord restoring our souls, turning our mourning into dancing and turning our sadness into joy. Together we sang in declaration that we are letting go of the old and not looking back; a new day is dawning. During this worship, the Lord reminded Stephanie of a past experience and as she shared it with the core, there was a witness she was to share it with the whole group.
"A few years ago," Stephainie began, "I woke up one morning and heard the Lord say, “Re-orient yourself towards victory”. And I felt a strong impression that I needed to rearrange the furniture in my bedroom, particularly my bed. For the previous 10 years, my bedroom furniture had been in the exact same position and for good reason. Because of the way the doors, closets and windows are set in my bedroom , there is one logical place for the bed to be!
As I lay there wondering if this idea was the product of an overtired mind, the Lord spoke clearly to me again. “Stephanie,” He said ,” I want you to understand that the season that is coming will be completely different than the last season. I am about to display Myself as the Mighty God in a way that you and much of the Church have never experienced. So the reason I want you to shift around your bedroom is so that every morning the first thing you see is a brand new perspective. That way you will have a constant, daily reminder that nothing is ever going to be the same again.”
A few weeks later, I was spending some time meditating on Joshua and the children of Israel crossing over into the Promised Land. And suddenly the Lord asked me an interesting question: “Stephanie, how different do you think I appeared to a slave in the midst of 400 years of bondage in Egypt versus to the children of Israel who posessed the Promised Land?” After I thought about it for a while, I realized the answer was that He probably appeared vastly different. For the slave in Egypt, who was crying out day and night to God for deliverance, it would be a pretty big stretch to see God as a Mighty God. But not so for a 20-year-old who marched 7 times around Jericho and then saw the walls – big thick chariot-racing-on-top-sized walls - instantly disappear.
Now we know that God really wasn’t different, because He is eternal and His character and nature are unchanging. So it wasn’t that He was “less mighty” when the children of Israel were in bondage than when they were in triumphant victory. He only appeared to be so when viewed through the prism of their experiences.
I think this is a good analogy of where we are at in the Church right now. Theologically we know that God is the Mighty One, the Sovereign King. And yet it seems like our enemy has succeeded to destroy far more often than God has succeeded to deliver. Our hearts echo with the cry of Habakkuk thousands of years ago – Oh Lord, we have heard of your fame, we have heard of your deeds… Yet few of us have experienced the demonstrations of God’s might in our own personal lives or ministries in any tangible or lasting ways.
But, just as the day came when finally the children of Israel passed from a season of desert wandering to a season of victorious possessing, something in our spirits is telling us it’s time now, that His kingdom IS coming and we must prepare ourselves for a dramatic shift. So how then do we re-orient ourselves for victory?
First we need to close the doors of the old season. At a time of transition in my life, I received this picture from the Lord. I saw a huge hallway and on the left there was a line of open doors and on the right was a line of doors that were all firmly shut. And God said to me, “You have to be willing to completely close all the old doors before I can open any of the new doors. Because if you don’t, the enemy will try to run from the old open doors and into the new season. (As He said this I saw in my mind’s eye something like a little lizard trying to crawl across the hallway from one side to the next). So you must close all the old doors before I can open any of the new ones.”
Secondly, we have to know that the burden of changing or being delivered isn’t on us – we don’t have to labour or strive to fix ourselves. In our modern world we are so surrounded by information and analysis – personality tests, self-help books - that we have all identified our problems and maybe even the roots of them (“it’s because my mother dropped me when I was 2” etc). And while we may be more familiar with the causes of our bondages, still we are powerless to free ourselves, because that power belongs to the Lord alone. So it’s not about us trying harder or striving for some “big experience” to change us. In fact, sometimes we can even hinder the movement of God in our hearts and lives because we have a framework or expectation already set of how God has to change or deliver us.
Some of us have a long history of hurts, bad experiences and/or failures. And we may think that the only way we are going to be able to move on with God is to work through all that messy past. And yet the amount of time and effort that would take can make it seem impossible/overwhelming. It’s like having a shoelace that is such a tangled mess of knots you don’t know if you have the time or energy to undo it.
But what if there was another solution? What if, instead of untangling the knots, you just cut the shoelace off and bought a new one? And what if that’s what God wants to do with our past? Not to work through all the junk, but to just supernaturally cut it off and give us a fresh new start?
“Forget the former things;
do not dwell on the past.
See, I am doing a new thing!
Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?
I am making a way in the desert
and streams in the wasteland. Isaiah 43:18-19
God wants to re-orient us towards victory! “To re-orient” literally means “to cause to turn to or face the east again”. The east is where the sun rises – where the new day begins. And the east is also where, we know, Jesus will split the sky when He returns as our victorious King.
So what does the Lord require of us? Simply a commitment to reposition our hearts – to forget the former things and to close the doors of the past. God is asking us to turn our backs to the pain and sorrow, the disappointments and failures and hope deferred of the past season and to stand in faith, fixing our eyes on Jesus, trusting that the Mighty One will do all that He has promised.
And as we choose to do this, we will position ourselves for a release of the joy of the Lord that is meant to be our strength. Joy is not an emotion – another word for happiness. Joy is a spiritual force that is unleashed by the revelation of the sovereignty of God. It comes from knowing that no matter what we face, God is in control – He is the King and we are in His hand. And there is no power of the enemy that can remove us from His hand. So when we face hardship, we know that God is permitting it as part of His plan to shape, refine, discipline and train us. When we understand this, then we can “count it all joy” when we suffer trials and tribulations."
As Stephanie shared this, there was a corporate witness that God was challenging us with this question: " Are we willing to “re-orient ourselves towards victory?” In answer to this call, we stood together and physically turned to face the east and one by one, we each declared that we choose to turn away from the disappointment of the past and to re-orient ourselves towards victory, towards our Glorious and soon-coming King!
If this call resonates in your heart then you too can choose to re-orient yourself towards victory right now. Simply face the east and make this declaration “I {put your name} choose today to re-orient myself towards victory. I choose to close all the old doors and to turn my back on the disappointments and failures of the past season. Lord I turn my face with expectancy towards the east and I ask you to give me a greater revelation of you as the Glorious Ruling King. And as I do this, I believe that you will restore unto me the joy of my salvation, that spiritual force that comes from knowing that in every circumstance of My life You are sovereign. In Jesus name, Amen!”
