Prophetically I believe we are in a Kairos moment as a Body of believers and as Individuals in particular, where God is stirring men to make bold moves and transition into unfamiliar territories of the next phase of God’s agenda for our lives. Recently, I was a delegate at the Annual General Conference of Africa’s most influential network of legal Practitioners- The Nigerian Bar Association. The conference had the phrase “Bold Transitions” for its theme.
Reflecting deeply on the theme, I came into the conclusion that God is a God of not just Transitions but of Bold Transitions, The very grand entrance of God as encapsulated in the Book of Beginnings was a pictorial representation of a being who announced the Transition of a world from a soup of nothingness, a bottomless emptiness, an inky blackness, an empty waste, a formless mass cloaked in darkness into a magnificent Laser Beam of flawless Light! Goodness! That was a bold transition. When you said “Yes” to the saving Power and Lordship of Christ, that ‘transaction’ was a bold transition from the dead-end alleys and dark dungeons of the devil into the glorious kingdom of the Son of God. What a Joy!
[The Father] has delivered and drawn us to Himself out of the control and the dominion of darkness and has transferred us into the kingdom of the Son of His love. — Colossians1:13 AMP
God is always in the business of causing Transitions in specific seasons of our lives. He said to the children of Israel through Moses;
You have roamed around this mountain country long enough; TURN northward. — Deuteronomy 2:3 AMP
As a child of God, a bold transition is an upward call to move into the next phase of God’s purposes and will for your life. It’s a new wave that births the current move of God in your life, producing a life of true excellence, fulfillment, and glory. Whatever level of influence and accomplishment you currently have in your life, the Lord, like he told John the beloved, is calling you to come up higher. Sometimes God closes a season and calls you to make a bold transition into an arena far greater than what you have experienced hitherto. Still, the comfort and security of what has been and what you are used to, the cultural infiltration of how you have planned the trajectory of your life, fear, and the uncertainty of the unknown keep us grounded in a dispensation that God has been calling for a bold transition from for a long time. God has moved on from some of the issues you have built tents and terbanacled around, move with Him.
In Luke 24: 1–11, Mary Magdalene, Joanna, and Mary the Mother of James came to see the Tomb of Jesus bringing spices, thinking He was still dead, then the angel in shining garments made a very profound statement that is highly instructive for us,
Why do you seek the living among the dead? — Luke 24:5
Some folks are still bringing spices- ideas, energies, and resources into endeavors, relationships, and activities that are dead, seeking the living among the dead. Yes, He told you to get into that endeavor, just as it happened that Jesus died, but He’s no longer dead. God has moved to the next dimension of resurrection, and you don’t camp around the grave bringing your spices when resurrection has already happened! Can you see the next thing He is doing in your life by leaving the old?
Don’t stay in the sepulchre of dead experiences, dead relationships, dead environments, and dead activities. His Word has already gone ahead of You; can you remember? Look at the next verse,
He is not here, but is risen! REMEMBER how He SPOKE to you when He was still in Galilee. — Luke 24: 6
His Word must precede every bold transition, He spoke to you, do you remember? What are you doing about the Word? Jesus had spoken about his resurrection, He was going to rise again, but they already got used to the sepulchre, thinking He would remain dead! Can you remember what the Lord has said to you concerning the ministry, that career move, that habit, that deeper fellowship with Him? Can you remember that specific word that was so strong in your heart but you seem to have forgotten; hence you seek the living amongst the dead? When God is finished with something, there is no amount of glue (spices) that can hold it together. You must tune into His frequency and ready your heart and mind for what He wants to do in and through your Life!
Whenever God wants to usher you into a season of Bold Transitions, you begin to experience an unusual urgency to get into the place of prayer! It’s a significant marker that a new season is imminent. The sound of an abundance of rain is only a signification of an impending transition, not the transition itself (the manifestation). If a believer will not stay in the place of prayer, what he will hear is the sound of abundance, but his life will never experience the rain.
So Ahab went up to eat and drink. And Elijah went up to the top of Carmel; then he bowed down on the ground, and put his face between his knees, — 1Kings18:42
This posture is an unusual picture of an ardent, heartfelt, burning, importunate praying. Others may be eating and drinking like Ahab, but you who have heard must continue instant in the place of prayer. Once prayer is fervent and consistent, it causes the emergence of a cloud and rain of fulfilment of that which was spoken to you.
Then it came to pass the seventh time, that he said, “There is a cloud, as small as a man’s hand, rising out of the sea!” So he said, “Go up, say to Ahab, “Prepare your chariot, and go down before the rain stops you.”— 1Kings 18:44
If the clouds are full of rain, They empty themselves upon the earth — Ecclesiastes 11:3
Remember that which was spoken and enter into prayer with it, that’s how you load the clouds.
The Holy Spirit had been promised, they heard it. But the promise never came to pass until the disciples entered the Upper Room in prayer on the basis of that which had been spoken. Only then was there a colossal downpour of the Presence and Person of the Holy Spirit, and He is still with us till date.
Until the Spirit is poured upon us from on high, And the wilderness becomes a fruitful field, And the fruitful field is counted as a forest. — Isaiah 32:15
A bold transition could mean it’s time to change your environment — what you have become accustomed to in opposition to the present promptings of the Spirit in your heart.
Now the LORD had said to Abram: “Get out of your country, From your family And from your father’s house, To a land that I will show you. — Genesis 12:1
When God speaks this way, never allow the opinions of others and the perception of men distract you from obeying the leading of the Spirit. Make a bold transition from the flesh with its passions to the hallowed place of the spirit.
Whatever Bold Transition the Lord has instructed you to get into, with reckless abandon, cultivate it in the place of prayer and walk in its fullness with Grace and Power. That could just be the hope of a generation.
Have a remarkable week.
Michael D.Olaniyi
@mdolaniyi