Group 2 – Transition
The transitions of birth and death draw a great deal of our culture’s attention. Between the two, there are many other transitions which may go smoothly, or not.
The fall as a man gets out of the bathtub, can leave him crippled for life. The transition from single to married is often one of the most sophisticated and glamorous transitions in life.
As we transition from brokenness to wholeness, the transitions are complex, involving more than we can see or imagine, and the implications of that process will mark our lives to the end of our days.
Here are strategies for preparing for exceptional transitions.
Prayer Strategies
Strategy #1
Has this ever happened in your home?
A big, fun event is scheduled – a vacation you planned, or someone’s party you are invited to. The family has comfortably looked forward to it for weeks.
In the car on the way there, someone says something, and there is a robust blow up. When you arrive, everyone is emotionally a mess, having to pretend to be happy.
Hold that picture.
When God met with Solomon the first time, Solomon said, “I am but a little child: I know not how to go out or come in.” He well understood that the middle of a project is often less confusing or vulnerable, but the beginnings and the endings are a challenge.
There is an abundance of transitions in an event like this. Going through security to get on the plane is a transition. So is going back home to your family when you are a radically different person than you left, and they are not ready for that.
My plan is to highlight different facets of transitions in the coming emails to you, with suggestions of how to pray into each one.
For this first assignment, let’s simply focus on airline travel although not all are flying in. People are coming from overseas and from across the nation. Departures and arrivals have all sorts of opportunities for God or the devil to invade in the mechanics, with widely divergent emotional and spiritual results.
The first portrait of God we have is God the Traveler, and the first portrait of the devil we have is of him getting his wings clipped and being consigned to eating dirt for the rest of his life.
You ought to be able to leverage some prayers from THAT!
In addition, you will find an email attachment with a list of Biblical people. I encourage you to print off a copy or two or three, and have them available for further prayer times. Partner with the Holy Spirit by drifting through the list of names, considering their transitions, and waiting for an Elbow.
The Christian Church celebrates two huge transitions – Jesus’ birth, and His death/resurrection. And well we should. But Scripture probably has 10,000 transitions recorded and each has grist for the mill of our prayers.
The Spirit will draw your attention to the transitions that resonate with your spirit. I personally love the shame to dignity stories. Ruth, the foreign, barren, impoverished, widow, suddenly is a property owner, married to the local 1% guy, pregnant and in the center of all that is important in town. And every bit of that was done in the spotlight of a tiny town where everyone knows everything.
Contrast that transition with Elizabeth, who got pregnant and hid for months to savor her new life, all by herself.
Piles of ideas and prayer ammo in contrasting those two.
And that may not be your deal. But there ARE stories for YOUR journey. The Spirit knows what you can pray that will come with passion and fire because of the intersection of your design and your journey and whatever makes you come alive in that list, is needed by one or more people coming to the event.
So pray your Elbows with passion, once or a dozen times if the fire is there, knowing God will absolutely deliver that gift of a well oiled transition, to the right person.
Lean into the airport bit until you get your next strategy paper from me, while you also search out the nuggets that the Spirit highlights from the name list.
Click here to download "Bible Women and Men" list as a PDF file.
Strategy #2
The first transition we prayed into was the air travel.
Now ground travel.
When I drive in, I come up Interstate 85 and turn on Highway 74 at Kings Mountain.
The physical and spiritual boundary when we enter Cleveland County is remarkably intense. I am pretty sensitive to territorial boundaries, but that one is a slap in the face to the most non-discerning.
When I came in, we picked up a cluster of critters who were obviously waiting for me, and they stuck with us the whole scouting trip.
I found it quite amusing but I have some tough hide. Clearly the local bad boys are fully up to speed on our event, and there is no red carpet laid out there.
A goodly percentage of the people coming, have significant vulnerabilities. THAT IS WHY THEY ARE COMING TO THIS EVENT!
They need and want help.
And I don’t want them to get mugged at the boundary to the county, ten minutes before they get anywhere near the venue.
God has a wide variety of tools He can use and has used in other places and times. Never mind the process – I am quite leery of coaching God on how to do stuff. He has lots of experience in strategy.
Let’s simply pray that each person will hit that boundary in the most productive way possible.
For some, it will be zipping through, invisible and untouched.
Others will be bathed in glory as they pass by.
Others will be slapped silly and it will get their dander up and put them in fighting mode.
God knows how each person should come in.
We anticipate having a Friday night gathering, as well as the Saturday event, so for many, it will be a double entry. Cover both.
As part of your strategy, go to the app, listen to the audio from September 30th on Subordination of Covenants and be sure NO ONE comes under the wrong covenant just by entering.
Strategy #3
OK team. This is the biggest transition of all. Think through your life for examples of it being done well or poorly.
That is the transition from soul to spirit in the first 15 minutes of the event.
People will mostly be in soul mode coming in, finding the place, finding the room, etc. Then they will choose a place, spread out, and start visiting with people.
All good. All legit.
I will come on a few minutes early and begin talking from the platform, engaging people to pull their attention to the front, then start to pull their focus from themselves to the Kingdom.
This is the toughest time for most speakers.
And there are almost invariably two people who are standing up excitedly talking to each other loudly, utterly unaware that I am on the microphone and everyone is looking at them.
I don’t know how people become so self-absorbed that they can be that clueless, but there are at least two clueless wonders at most of my events.
So, why don’tcha deal with them for me, in intercession.
I would love to have a smooth transition from the scattered, excited noise to a focused spiritual reverence.
Copyright by Arthur Burk