Embrace The Change.

Embrace The Change
Written by: Reggie G

The changing of the seasons is a beautiful and necessary part of life. Every season has its own distinct challenges and blessings. While understanding the need for each season can be very helpful, it offers little comfort when you are in the midst of a challenge. As we go through life we find ourselves in different seasons forcing us to adapt, or to be more blunt, change. If we are being honest, change can be scary and that’s why seasons in our life can feel overwhelming sometimes.

Relationships are no different. Our relationships are not immune to the flow of seasons. In many cases we embrace the flow of seasons in our relationships because it’s usually a sign of growth. Sometimes that growth leads to a severing of the relationship and sometimes it leads to a deeper connection. As a Christian, I’ve learned that my life has entered into a relationship with Jesus. My attempts at being pleasing in His sight are no different than in any loving relationship. My actions are motivated purely from a position of love and not from a feeling of obligation.

Recently I’ve found myself in a season that has been a source of discomfort. When I first began to walk in this relationship with Jesus things always seemed to progress in a positive direction. In truth, my life didn’t change overnight. At the moment of my conversion however, somehow I knew that life would never be the same again. In the beginning I still did a lot of the same things I was doing before my conversion. The only thing that changed was that I was reading my Bible more and beginning to think about things a little differently than I did previously. Looking back, I know the real change had already begun even if it didn’t seem to happen overnight. Over the course of many years God continued to mold and shape me into the person I am today.

Recently, I had begun to feel as though my relationship with Jesus was completely falling apart. Now, with everything that God had been doing to this point you might be thinking “how can I feel that way with all that God has done in my life?”. The truth is that I was looking at my walk with Jesus in the beginning stages of our relationship and comparing them to where our relationship is now. As I was able to see a stark difference from then until now, sometimes it became discouraging. For those of you who can relate to this feeling, the bad news is this, it’s true. Your relationship with Jesus has changed. That’s the cold hard truth. Things are different, but, different doesn’t necessarily mean bad.

One thing we know about Jesus is that while there will always be some hard truths to swallow, He will always come with good news. So, here’s the good news. You are in a new season. I know, I know, that doesn’t exactly sound like good news but keep reading. As we discussed briefly, every relationship has to grow and as it grows it will go through different seasons. For those of us with children you know that your relationship with your new born child will be different from your relationship with them as a toddler. Just as it will be different when they are teens and adults. We don’t view this change in our relationship with our children as bad, but rather a necessary part of growth. So why then do we view it as bad when it applies to our relationship with Jesus? Fear of change maybe? Fear of the idea that if things are different then I must be doing something wrong.

Let’s be clear, turning your back on Jesus to follow a life of sin will definitely change your relationship with Jesus in a significant way, and that WOULD be bad. However, falling victim to temptation or not keeping some rituals that you created early in your relationship doesn’t have to mean that things are bad. We should look to Jesus to help us overcome our temptations as well as give us understanding of why things look different in this season of our life. As someone who is working through this struggle with the help of Jesus I want you to know, you are not alone.

During a recent time of prayer and fasting, someone said this verse and it jumped out at me. “Forget about what’s happened; don’t keep going over old history. Be alert, be present. I’m about to do something brand-new. It’s bursting out! Don’t you see it? There it is! I’m making a road through the desert, rivers in the badlands.” (Isaiah‬ ‭43‬:‭18-19MSG) If that wasn’t enough, the very next day it was the verse of the day in the Bible app, which was all the confirmation I needed. Jesus was telling me I don’t need to be stuck looking for some feeling from my past because I was moving into something new. He’s creating new life within me as we move forward into the next season of our relationship. I didn’t have to judge today’s successes by my past successes. It’s ok to look on my past with fondness and see how far Jesus has brought me as long as I remember that my past is exactly that, past.

So, let’s move into this new season of our relationship with Jesus with joy, excitement, and anticipation of the new things He will do. “When I was a child, I spoke and thought and reasoned as a child. But when I grew up, I put away childish things.” (‭‭1 Corinthians‬ ‭13‬:‭11‬ ‭NLT‬‬)