Hi everyone. I just want to share with you some principles the Lord taught me about transition, because the Church is in a transition phase now.,We’re going from the Age of Pentecost to the Age of Tabernacles. We’re moving from the House of Saul to the House of David. There’s a lot of transition going on. We’ve been speaking about coming out of Babylon, coming out as Lot came out of Sodom.
It is a time of transition; a moving from one place to another place and the Lord taught me a little while back that transition is not an instant miracle. You don’t leave Egypt and end up immediately in the Promised Land. You don’t leave one chapter and immediately another chapter starts. There’s always a bridge of transition that exists and it’s during this time that people really struggle. They struggle with their faith; they struggle with understanding what’s happening; they struggle with fitting what they’re experiencing into God’s promise to them - understanding how the physical manifestation of what is going on in their lives is fitting into God’s plan and purpose and the scriptures He’s given them. There’s a lot of confusion that can happen on that Bridge of Transition, so I want to share with you the Stages of Transition that the Lord taught me, because they’ve helped me immeasurably.
You can take this template of the Bridge of Transition and lay it over any situation where you’re going through transition and you’ll be able to identify certain points and certain principles that will give you understanding and when we have understanding it brings peace to our hearts. It’s when we don’t know what’s going on and are asking if God has left us and what is happening. Have I missed God and all these kind of questions bombard us. Sometimes when we look at what’s happening around us, it seems the exact opposite of what we thought we were about to step into, or there seems to be some kind of unexplained delay in the manifestation of a promise. There’s been a door before you, you knock on it, it opens and you step through, but it’s not like you put your foot down on solid ground on the other side. What you put your foot onto is a bridge of transition and so I really sense it’s very important for me to share these things with you, because when we have understanding of the times that we’re in, when we understand that we’re in transition, then we know what to do, like the sons of Issachar.
So what the Lord shared with me is that there are 3 Stages of transition: The 1st thing when you step onto the Bridge of Transition is Disorientation, the 2nd step is Recalibration, the 3rd step is Re-orientation and the 4th step is as you step off the Transition Bridge and it’s called Manifestation. So I am going to go through each one of those stages, explain what they mean; explain what one experiences and if you will take these principles, it’s almost like a blueprint for Transition that the Lord showed me. You can fit it into any situation. You can fit it into the Israelites leaving Egypt, you can fit it into the Israelites entering the Promised Land, you can fit it into Lot being called to leave Sodom. You can fit it into any situation where a person experienced transition. You can fit it into the life of David from the time he was anointed King to the time when he actually took the throne as King. It wasn’t an instant manifestation. There was a bridge of transition.
Sometimes transition bridges are long, lasting many years, and sometimes they are short, but I have found in my experience and in every situation I have studied in the Word of God, that those 3 Stages on the bridge - Disorientation, Recalibration and Re-orientation, all happen before the manifestation of the next season in God or the manifestation of the promise of God or the entering into of the inheritance that God has given you.
Disorientation:
The Dictionary says that disorientation means
- a loss of one’s sense of direction, position or relation with one’s surrounding
- mental confusion or impaired awareness, especially regarding place, time or personal identity.
It’s almost like when you take a rose bush and you loosen its roots, because you’re going to transplant it somewhere else. You loosen the roots. You pull it out of the soil where it has been growing. There might still be a bit of soil clinging to the roots, but the rose bush is then moved and is facing in a different direction. The sun comes up in a different place. It might even be put in a temporary gardening bag until it is transplanted into its new position, but its whole sense of how the sun comes up in the morning - which way I’m facing, where am I planted, that is the sense of confusion and disorientation we go through in the 1st Stage of transition.
Now why would God want us to go through this? God disorients us because He’s detaching us from an old chapter and He’s moving us towards a new chapter. We are no longer where we were before. We’re not connected to where or who we were connected before, emotionally or physically or whatever sense it applies to your situation. He detaches us in stages until we are completely detached. It might not be only one step of disorientation you take. As you begin to walk over that bridge, there’s a stage of disorientation where you become more and more detached from an old chapter.
We see this in the experience of the Israelites as God was preparing to take them out of Egypt. First of all God started the plagues and the Israelites experienced the water turn into blood. Then there was a stage where He set a division and He separated them from the Egyptians. At that point, they began the transition bridge. They weren’t out of Egypt yet, but they had taken a step or God had brought them into a place where He was beginning to detach them from the old chapter - the chapter of being enslaved to the Egyptians, the chapter of almost being married to Egypt, in a sense. They later went through a stage where there was light in their houses; they were eating of the whole lamb with their shoes on their feet and their loins girded as the Angel of Death was passing over, but the first stage was when God brought a separation.
You see the same thing with Lot. There was a disorientation, there was a detaching from the people of Sodom. The Angels pulled him into the house and they shut the door and struck the men with blindness so that they could not enter. So Lot was now in his own house, in Sodom, but he was separated from the men of Sodom. God was busy detaching him outwardly from Sodom and the place he’d been rooted in for so long, but the detachment had to come within his own heart as well and there was a lot of struggling going on in Lot’s heart. There was a lot of questioning. Is this the right thing? Lot was hesitating and asking, “What about my daughters who are engaged to men of Sodom?” There was a weighing up of the cost of separating from Sodom. In disorientation, when we enter that first stage of transition, there is a sense of loss. You’re in a group of friends, but you don’t seem to have a rapport with them anymore or your friends haven’t contacted you any more or you’re just feeling you’re on a different page. You just feeling disconnected somehow within - or even physically, geographically, as in the case of Lot and of the Israelites as they were preparing to be brought out of Egypt.
It can just be a sense within, spiritually, that there’s nobody around you with whom you can even share the things that the Lord is sharing with you. He’s disorientating you from an old chapter and there is a sense of loneliness. Confusion can come, because your compass isn’t working the way it used to when you were in the old chapter. Your spiritual compass; your spiritual ruler that you use to measure things with, doesn’t seem to be measuring right anymore and you begin to question yourself. If you can remember this principle, that disorientation is the 1st Stage of the transition bridge, that will quiet your heart. One just needs to trust God and understand that He is detaching you from an old chapter and moving you into a new chapter. So, it’s not a time to be afraid; it’s a time to work with the Lord; a time to understand that you’re leaving something or someone or a chapter behind and you’re moving into the promise of God and the fulfilment of what He said He will bring you into. To do that, you have to be disoriented or detached from the old chapter.
We see it even with a simple thing like night and day. In order for a new day to start in God, which begins in the evening, the light of the old day begins to fade. The sun goes behind the horizon and it’s more difficult to see clearly. You lose the ability to see clearly in stages. It gets darker and darker and eventually you can’t see at all. Now the thing is, when God gives us a promise about something He’s going to do, the new day He initiates, begins at night and it’s during the watches of the night that our faith is tested because we are disorientated. There’s a sense of darkness around us, because we can’t see in the spirit clearly what’s going on and so this is the time when the enemy can really attack you and cause you to give up on the promise of God, but that’s when we must hold on. When God said “Let there be light”, there was evening and then there was morning, the first day and so we need to remember when God decrees anything over our life, there’s evening and then there’s morning and the light manifests in the morning. What God said in the evening, manifests in the morning. That’s why disorientation is the first stage of transition.
Recalibration:
- to check and adjust or determine by comparison with the standard, like the calibrating of a thermometer.
- to adjust or mark something, so that it can be used in an accurate and exact way to standardise, by determining the deviation from a standard, so as to ascertain the proper correction factors.
- to adjust precisely for a particular function.
When the Israelites were being re-calibrated, it was the stage when there was light in the Israelite’s houses. Light always represents revelation. There was nothing you could see outside. There was a thick darkness in Egypt, but there was light in the houses of God’s people and as God transitions His people from the Kingdom of Saul to the Kingdom of David, from the Era of Pentecost to the Era of Tabernacles, from the Church Age to the Kingdom Age, there is a re-calibration that happens and it’s a calibration which starts first by determining the deviation from the standard, from God’s plan and God’s purpose for His Bride; for His Church, your life and your destiny and then to institute the proper correction factors. He’s doing it to adjust you precisely for a particular function.
Remember, one of the meanings of re-calibrate is ‘to adjust precisely for a particular function’. God made you for a particular purpose. When He had you in mind, He spoke a word that you would manifest in the earth through your life and He needs to make precise adjustments for the particular function, the particular place He’s determined for you to stand in, in the Kingdom. That’s why the disorientation has to happen first - because He cannot re-calibrate you according to His standard, His thoughts and His purposes for you and for your place in the Kingdom, if you are still rooted in the old chapter. You have to be detached from the old chapter in a sense, in order for Him to re-calibrate and sometimes this can be a period of great soul searching, a period where you’re struggling and wrestling with the Word.
God was re-calibrating Jacob at Peni’el when he wrestled with Him all night and God changed his name to Israel, because God had a purpose for him. It’s during the re-calibration where our new name is manifested. It’s almost like a factory reset, where there is restoration of a device, such as a Smartphone or Tablet, to the state in which it left the factory. We are restored to Heaven’s blueprint for us in this process of recalibration and the best way for it to happen with the least pain is to surrender; to allow God to work with your heart; to allow God to make His precise adjustments; to trust the Potter as He has you on that potter’s wheel and He’s scraping and He’s taking off bits and He’s reshaping and He’s prodding. We have to allow Him, because we want to be restored to Heaven’s blueprint for us. We came from God. When we’re born again we’re born with a certain spiritual DNA, but bits gets lost or damaged along the way and re-calibration to Heaven’s blueprint for our lives has to occur during transition.
The Israelites were disorientated during the plagues and detached and they were separated in stages from Egypt. They were re-calibrated by the light in their houses when everything else was in darkness. Again when the Israelites went from the wilderness to the Promised Land, they needed to be circumcised and to celebrate Passover (which was the recalibration to heaven’s standard) before they were released in the Promised Land to possess it.
Recalibrating involves Heaven’s map for you; Heaven’s travel plans for you. So, whatever process of transition you’re going through, look back and identify whether there’s been a period of disorientation and when there’s been a period of recalibration, and as you fit this template over your life, it brings understanding as to what God’s been doing in your life and that brings peace.
John the Baptist was the Transition Bridge between the Old Testament and the manifestation of Christ. Those who were disciples of John were walking the Transition Bridge. They were disorientated from the old order of religion. They were recalibrated by John who called them to repentance. Then they were reorientated by John pointing, “Behold the Lamb of God” . Then they stepped off and received the manifestation, which was the Kingdom of God.
Reorientation:
- the act of figuring out again where you are in relationship to your environment or changing direction. If you’re lost in the woods a compass and a map are good for re-orientation. Re-orientation is often related to location, figuring out where you are and pointing yourself in the right direction. For instance a football player who gets spun around on the field may need a quick orientation so that he doesn’t run the wrong way, but re-orientation is also about re-thinking and maybe changing the way you approach something like an idea or a project.
So reorientation is a sense of increasing light and increased understanding. A lot of the recalibrating happens on a subconscious level. You’re just aware that God is really working in your life and it’s uncomfortable and you feel no sense of productivity. You just feel like you’re stuck; God’s putting His finger on everything all the time in your life. He’s not letting you get away with anything - there is some understanding coming, but you’re just not moving. Reorientation is the first process of moving in the right direction.
It’s the last step on the transition bridge and often with that, God will present a map that He’s given you before in a previous season, but this time there’s a lot more detail on the map. Suddenly you’re starting to understand stuff that you didn’t see before. Suddenly puzzle pieces are fitting together. Suddenly you’re getting a much bigger picture of what God meant when He said such and such. It’s a sense of growing certainty about which way you’re facing.
If you think of an arrow that’s been formed and sharpened and put in the quiver; then an arrow is then put in the bow, but the first thing that happens after that, is that it’s pulled backwards. That’s where you get the disorientation, “This is movement in the wrong direction, what’s happening with me?” and when it’s pulled backwards, once it’s at its greatest backwards pull; at the greatest stretch and the greatest pressure from behind from the bowstring, then the archer adjusts the angle of pointing of the arrow, in order to aim at the target bulls eye. That’s recalibration - minute precise adjustments in the hand of the archer. Then at that point where the arrow is pointed exactly at the centre of the target, there’s a reorientation. Suddenly there’s a stillness as the archer stops moving the arrow and becomes very still. Reorientation is that small second before release, when suddenly you see, “Ah, this is where I’m headed! This is where I’m going! I get the whole picture!” and there is a huge amount of potential energy in the bowstring behind you, the dunamis power of God. Then there is that release straight to the target.
So, whichever way you look at it, these 3 stages of transition will fit into many scenarios. You get the polished stone in the slingshot, disorientated, placed into the sling and swung round and round and round and really not seeing anything going on, but what’s happening in the disorientation, it’s detaching from the old chapter. There’s a scripture that says of David, “The life of my Lord is bound up in a living bundle with the Lord your God and your enemies will He sling out as out of the centre of a sling”. The time of disorientation is the time of detaching of your enemies that have tried to cling to you from the old chapter and the more you’re going round and round in that slingshot, the more the enemies are detached, but you’re bound up in a living bundle with the Lord your God and then He releases you to your target, a polished stone.
So reorientation is seeing the right direction, understanding the map. There’s a lot of revelation and light that comes with that. As the Israelites ate the whole lamb with the blood on the doorposts and their shoes on their feet and their loins girded, they knew what was happening; they were leaving. The night they were leaving, they knew where they were going, they knew what they had to do and they left at the appointed moment.
Manifestation:
- a physical, visible, presentation of what is known internally.
- a materialisation, an unveiling and bringing to light of what was previously unseen and hidden.
So just briefly: the transition bridge is Disorientation, Recalibration, Reorientation and then Manifestation. I really pray that this has blessed you today and that it will help you in understanding and wisdom and trusting God with what He is doing with your life. He is taking you from one chapter to another. He is taking the Bride out of one season and into the next season. He’s taking the Church out of one season and into the next season and we’re all going through these kind of things, but let us trust the Lord. He knows what He’s doing. Those who are led by the Spirit of God are the sons of God.
Selah
Christine
freshoil@polka.co.za
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