Times and Seasons: Walking with God Through Transition

There are seasons when God makes the next step incredibly clear. There are other seasons when you can tell something is changing long before you understand what the change means.

I have experienced both.

There have been times when the Lord spoke and I knew what I needed to do. There have also been times when I could sense that one season was ending while the next had not fully taken shape. Those transitions have taught me that walking with God requires more than knowing what He said in the past. We have to abide in Him and learn to recognize what the Holy Spirit is doing now.

Ecclesiastes 3:1 says, “For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven.” Daniel 2:21 tells us that God “changes times and seasons.” Scripture gives us a picture of a God who is not surprised by transition. He knows where He is leading us, what He is forming within us, and what grace He has provided for the season we are in.

The difficulty is that we usually experience a season from the inside. We do not get to stand ten years in the future and look backward with everything neatly explained. We don’t always understand what He is doing, but we can know Him and trust Him as He leads us.

This is one of the places where fellowship with the Holy Spirit becomes incredibly important.

When the Brook Dries Up

I love the account of Elijah at the brook Cherith because Elijah was exactly where God had told him to be.

The Lord told him to hide by the brook during the drought. He would drink from the brook, and God commanded ravens to feed him there. Elijah obeyed, and God provided.

Then something changed.

“And after a while the brook dried up, because there was no rain in the land” (1 Kings 17:7 ESV).

Elijah had not wandered away from God's instruction. The brook was not something Elijah had created for himself. God had sent him there, and God had provided for him there.

Yet the brook still dried up.

Then the word of the Lord came to Elijah again and told him to arise and go to Zarephath (1 Kings 17:8–9).

The drying brook did not mean God had stopped providing. God was changing the way He provided because Elijah was entering another season. God had told Elijah to stay by the brook. Now He was telling him to go to Zarephath.¹

I think we can struggle here because when God has genuinely moved somewhere, we can become attached to the way He moved.

We remember the fruit. We remember the provision. We remember what He spoke. We remember how clearly His grace rested upon something. Because God was in it, we can begin assuming that He intends it to remain exactly as it is.

But God never asked Elijah to build his life around a brook.

He asked Elijah to follow Him.

There are times when staying is faithfulness. There are times when moving is faithfulness. The important thing is not developing a formula that tells us which one applies. It is abiding in Him and becoming familiar with the leadership of His Spirit.

The Rhythms of Grace

The Lord has taught me to call this the rhythms of grace.

By grace, I do not mean ease, comfort, or whether something feels pleasant. Grace is empowerment. I have experienced difficult assignments that carried tremendous grace, while things I naturally wanted did not carry the same empowerment.

That has taught me to ask a different question: What is the Holy Spirit saying and empowering in this season?

Paul tells us, “For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God” (Romans 8:14 ESV). The leading of the Holy Spirit belongs within the life we have with Him. He lives within us. He reveals Jesus. He knows the mind of God and teaches us to recognize what the Father is doing.

This means I do not need God to give me the next ten years before I can walk faithfully with Him today.

I need to recognize the grace for today.

There are seasons when God gives grace to build something. There are seasons when He tells us to stay where we are. There are seasons of preparation when much of what He is doing is happening within us before anyone else can see the fruit of it. There are seasons when He begins opening doors that were previously closed.

The rhythms change, but the Holy Spirit who lives within us does not.

This is why I do not want to live merely from principles about what God did before. I am grateful for every previous season, but I want to abide in His Presence and recognize what He is emphasizing now.

Do Not Rush the Process

One of the dangers of recognizing a new season is trying to arrive before God has finished preparing us.

God can reveal something long before He fulfills it.

David was anointed king while Saul was still sitting on the throne. Joseph received dreams about his future and then walked through years that looked nothing like those dreams. Moses knew that God had placed Israel upon his heart, but there were decades between his first attempt to intervene and the moment God sent him back to Egypt.

God's promise does not make His process unnecessary.

There is a difference between receiving revelation about something and having the grace to walk in its fulfillment.

Sometimes God shows us where He is taking us because the revelation itself becomes part of our preparation. He gives us something to carry in His Presence before He gives us something to build.

If we are always trying to escape preparation, we may resist the very work that will enable us to carry what we have been asking Him for.

Waiting upon God is not wasted time.

We learn to recognize His voice as we spend time with Him, and He changes us as we surrender our lives to Him. Our character is formed as His life works its way into our desires, decisions, relationships, and motivations.

Sometimes we are asking God, “When will You do what You showed me?”

Meanwhile, the Holy Spirit is preparing us to carry it.

When You Know Something Is Changing but Do Not Know What Comes Next

I think this can be one of the most uncomfortable parts of transition.

You know the previous season is changing, but the next season has not become clear enough to name.

We naturally want resolution. We want God to explain what is happening, why it is happening, and where everything is going.

He does not always do that immediately.

Around the end of 2018, I entered a season that lasted approximately six months. My pursuit of God had not changed. I wanted to know Him, become more like Him, and walk in His power. Yet something shifted.

I struggled to discern His voice. Scripture became difficult to read. Prayer became difficult. The awareness of His Presence that had become so precious to me seemed distant.

I asked God whether I had done something wrong, but I did not sense conviction from Him. What I did have was an inward assurance that He was with me and that I needed to keep going.

Before that season, the Lord had taught me something simple that became incredibly important: when I did not hear anything new, I could return to what He had already said.

For me, that meant returning to the Psalms.

Some days I would sit before Him and say, “Lord, I trust You. You love me.” I would turn my attention toward His Presence, worship Him, and abide in the truth I already knew. I worshiped Him because He was worthy, not because worship immediately changed how I felt. I opened Scripture because His Word remained true when my emotions were struggling to recognize it.

My awareness of His Presence had changed. His Presence had not.

I did not understand the season while I was walking through it.

That matters.

Sometimes we look back upon a difficult season, understand something God formed through it, and then retell the story as though we understood everything while it was happening.

I did not.

I had to abide without having the explanation.

You Do Not Have to Manufacture an Answer

One of the lessons I have learned through seasons of transition is that I do not have to pretend to know something God has not made clear.

There is freedom in saying, “I don't know yet.”

When we become uncomfortable with uncertainty, we can begin searching everywhere for an answer. We listen to another sermon, ask another person, look for another prophetic word, and begin interpreting every circumstance as though it contains a hidden message.

God can certainly speak through other people. He can use circumstances. He can bring confirmation in remarkable ways.

When we are afraid of missing God, we can spend so much time looking for someone to tell us what He is saying that we neglect our own time with Him.

The Holy Spirit is capable of leading us.

If I have prayed, searched Scripture, welcomed wise counsel, and still do not have clarity, I do not need to manufacture the voice of God so that I can feel certain again. I can abide in Him. I can worship. I can open the Scriptures. I can enjoy His Presence without demanding that every moment of fellowship produce an answer to my question.

There are times when the most faithful thing we can do is continue walking in what He has already made clear.

If He told you to forgive, forgive. If He told you to stay faithful where you are, stay faithful. If He gave you a responsibility, steward it. If He has already spoken through Scripture, you do not need another prophetic word to make obedience more spiritual.

Sometimes the last thing God said contains the grace we need until He says something more.

Do Not Leave a Season Before You Have Left It

There is another temptation in transition that I have had to learn to recognize.

We can mentally move into the future while our lives are still planted in the present.

Once God begins showing us something about what is coming, it is easy to become more excited about tomorrow than we are faithful with today.

But David still tended sheep after Samuel anointed him.

Joseph still served in Potiphar's house and then in prison while carrying dreams that spoke of something completely different.

There is something available with God today that I do not want to miss because I am consumed with tomorrow.

If this is a season of preparation, I want everything He wants to form in me through preparation. If this is a season of serving, I want to serve well. If this is a season of learning, I want to learn. If He has given me people to love, I do not want to treat them as temporary because I am waiting for something else. If He has told me to stay, I want to abide in His Presence there until He leads me forward.

The future does not become more important simply because God has spoken about it.

Today's obedience is part of how we arrive there.

When the Cloud Moves

Numbers 9 gives us another picture that I love.

The Presence of God rested over the tabernacle in the form of the cloud. When the cloud stayed, Israel stayed. When the cloud lifted, they moved.

Sometimes the cloud remained for two days. Sometimes a month. Sometimes longer.

They could not build their schedule around how long the previous stop had lasted.

“Whether it was two days, or a month, or a longer time, that the cloud continued over the tabernacle, abiding there, the people of Israel remained in camp and did not set out, but when it lifted they set out” (Numbers 9:22 ESV).

There was nothing wrong with yesterday's campsite.

God had led them there.

But when the cloud moved, staying behind would not have honored what God did yesterday. The Presence that had led them into that place was now leading them onward.

I want to live that way.

I want my life to be shaped by His Presence. I do not want ambition to push me ahead of Him, and I do not want familiarity to keep me somewhere when His grace is leading me forward.

That kind of sensitivity is cultivated through fellowship. We learn the movements of the Holy Spirit because we know Him.

Let the Previous Season Be What God Intended It to Be

Some transitions are painful because something we genuinely loved is ending.

A relationship changes. An assignment finishes. A ministry looks different. A door closes. A place that carried tremendous meaning no longer belongs to the future in the same way it belonged to the past.

We do not have to diminish the previous season in order to embrace the next one.

If God met you there, thank Him for it. If people blessed your life there, honor them. If He taught you something there, carry it. If there is grief connected to leaving, grieve without treating grief as evidence that leaving must be wrong.

Gratitude does not require permanence.

The goal was never to preserve every season forever. The goal has always been Jesus.

What Is He Doing Now?

When I eventually came out of that difficult six-month season, I could see things I had not recognized while I was inside it.

My love had matured. My discernment had grown. My ability to hear and understand the Lord had deepened. Looking back, I believe that season prepared me for the vision and significant transitions that followed in 2019.

I understood more afterward than I did while I was living through it.

That has helped me become more patient with seasons I cannot completely explain.

Maybe you are standing beside a brook that seems to be drying up. Maybe the cloud has begun to move. Maybe God has shown you something about the future, but you know you are still in preparation. Maybe you sense change without knowing what the change will become.

Or maybe He has not said anything new at all, and your assignment is simply to continue in what He has already given you.

You may not understand what is changing or know what comes next. You can still enjoy intimacy with Him here. Spend time in His Presence because you love Him, even when you have questions He has not answered. Be faithful with what He has already given you, and allow the Holy Spirit to prepare you for whatever He has ahead.

God changes times and seasons, but He does not change. We can trust Him because we know Him and know that He loves us.

Notes

1. Ryan LeStrange, The Prophetic Anointing (Lake Mary, FL: Charisma House), discussion of Daniel 2:21 and Elijah's transition from Cherith to Zarephath.