Lisa's Blog: Heart Ache Continued

My brother sent me a link for John Paul Jackon's 'Coffee Talk' a few weeks ago. He is doing a series on transition, which is totally what we're going through right now. He says there are 3 phases to transition; desire, discipline, and delight. As I read part one on desire I felt the Holy Spirit touching me, encouraging me and comforting me. This article pin-pointed exactly what Drew and I have been going through and experiencing in the last few months. To read it in words was very liberating for me! 'Transition' has been very difficult and even confusing because you're feeling two very opposite emotions at once.

I'd like to share the article with you. I hope it'll encourage anyone else going through transition right now or just give you better understanding of what we're going through right now. I'm looking forward to reading the next two parts on discipline and delight! Here's the link......http://blog.streamsministries.com/2008/06/09/three-phases-of-transition/

As the years have passed in my life and ministry I have gone through several times of “transition” I have noticed three distinct phases to transition, Desire, Discipline, and Delight. I’ll address the first, Desire, below and the other two in the next posts.

DESIRE
The first phase, Desire requires a very intense time of mental and spiritual reorientation. Here you experience one of two types of deep felt emotion, either elation or sorrow, as the reorientation becomes more defined.

Some, at first, experience elation only and with it a false sense of euphoria. I say “false” because at this time you sense the excitement of the future and seldom consider that hardship will eventually be mixed with destiny. You just want to get there - now - and like a bad penny, you cast any flickering thought that there might be a coming cost to your newfound destiny aside.

Some will experience sorrow because you are being directed to leave a place you have come to love. Others will have sorrow with the leaving of family. This might mean cutting the strings they have to you and/or you have to them. That cutting is often emotional and painful, but you cannot become a leader if strings of control are attached to you. In addition, you cannot follow the wind of the Holy Spirit if you are anchored to your friends or your family.

At this juncture in transition, it is as if God is taking you away from the desire of your heart and that departure often creates a spiritual quandary. So the Lord begins the process of making you uncomfortable where you are. Some might say, “He stirs the nest.”

Sometimes one feels both sets of emotions within minutes of each other as your desire for the location, job, or career to another location, job, or career.

One thing you can count on - when God orders you to go through a time of transition, regardless which emotion you have, God is bound to make you restless and uncomfortable to insure you become willing to leave where you are so you can become what He has created you to be. He is simply waiting for our “yes” to His direction and for our desire to become His desire. It is here that He gives us the “desires of our heart.”

Blessings,John Paul Jackson

On that note here are some more of our dear family that we will miss.

The Aunties:

Auntie AJ