LEADINGS FOR SEASONS

Well hello there!

I know, I know, sorry abeg. I know I’ve been MIA these past weeks, not having a gadget has placed me at the disadvantage of being unable to access the blog, I’ll try to do better from hereon, sorry please.

Welcome to today’s gist.

Sometime last month, I was reading the book of Ezekiel and I learned something profound that I’ve been meaning to share. In Ezekiel 40, the prophet begins to give an +account of an experience he had: the hand of the Lord came upon him and took him to the Temple in Jerusalem. Now at the time of this encounter, the physical temple had been destroyed in the Babylonian siege and the children of Israel had been taken into exile. When the prophet arrives at the, new and yet un-built, temple, he meets a man standing in front of the temple with a measuring line in his hand. From Chapter 40 to Chapter 48, the man with the measuring line walks with Ezekiel and gives him the measurement of the entire temple, from the outer court to the Most Holy place, including the measurement and prescription for how the items to be used for sacrifice are to be made and how sacrifices are to be offered, nothing is left to conjecture.

As I read this account, the question in my mind was “shebi these people loss the instructions wey Moses give for the making of the sacrificial things and the measurement wey Solomon use build the temple? Why dem need new measurements?” And as I thought on this, I remembered that earlier in the book of Ezekiel, God had complained about the reckless abandon with which the people of Israel had desecrated the temple and violated the terms of their covenant with Him; God had also gone on to speak of a time when Israel would be restored again to Him, when their hearts will burn for Him again and they would come before Him in sincere worship and I then understood that it was for this new dispensation that God was giving Ezekiel instructions concerning the temple and religious practices because the ordinances from the previous covenant would not exactly be suitable for this new covenant and relationship God intended to have with Israel based on it.

As I continued to think on this, I realized something: for every new season God takes us into and every new dealing He intends to have with us, He gives us instructions that are peculiar to the new season and necessary to navigate the new times, but sometimes we are too in love with the instructions and dealings God has had with us in previous seasons that we are unable to fully lay hold on the things He’s wanting to do with us in this new season, we get so caught up in the euphoria of the experiences we’ve had before and we are unwittingly unwilling to learn from God about the things we need to for the new season.

You see those instructions God gave you in the past season? They were very effective and necessary for that season, but they may, probably are, not necessary for the new dealings God intends to have with you and if you attempt to take them into the new season, the chances are very likely that you will crash and burn at the worst or, at the very best, struggle to do God’s will because you’re trying to do new things with old methods, just like trying to use an Abacus to calculate trigonometry, it will be an extremely stressful and mostly futile endeavor, one that you’d be better off for not having engaged in.

So what do we now do? God tells us in Isaiah 43:18, we must forget the past and not consider the former things. Is God telling you to disregard or invalidate what He’s done with and in you before? NO! What He however is saying is that you cannot take hold of the new if your hands are still occupied with the former; like Paul, we must forget the past and continue to press forward(Philippins 3:13) –don’t become so caught up in what God has done that you neglect what He’s doing.

We’re getting into a new year, and for many of us this would probably indicate our entrance into a new season, and God is telling you today that those strategies that worked in the last season, there’s no need to experiment on whether they are valid for the new, He who knows what you need to succeed in this new season has mapped out the line of action and for as long as you journey with Him in this season and don’t try to play religious smartness with Him, you will get to receive the keys needed to unlock aspects of your new season. The way to go is to simply forget the past and keep your gaze on Him and what He’s telling you, not on what you think is the way to go after all scriptures tells us that the end of the way that seems right to a man is destruction(Proverbs 14:12).

May God help us to truly let Him lead us in each season.

TUNES AND THOUGHTS: ‘Follow follow’ by T. Y. Bello and Godswill Oyor is a song that has resonated with me in recent times; it’s a call to follow God’s leading per time and to move only when He says so. God doesn’t owe you an explanation, but you owe Him your obedience so follow as He leads. I pray this song blesses you as it has blessed me.

Well that is that about that as far as that is concerned, see you next week.

 

Love,

Achenyo.

 

PS. It’s 22 days to my father’s 70^th birthday, please continue to keep him in your prayers.

PSS. It’s my dearest friend Israel’s birthday today, do say a prayer for him whenever you read this.