A New Normal!
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Posted By: Nardra V. Daniels on October 04, 2011 Change does not come easy! It comes in every area of life: economics, families, housing, jobs, ministry and churches. We may shout, laugh, dance, rejoice, and speak like we’re already there, but the reality for many of us is that we simply…do not embrace change, which is our “normal.” Many people have accepted a defeatist mentality. Sometimes thinking that where you are, is always where you are going to be, or thinking that where you are, can never change or improve! We have a God who is a God of change: He promotes change… He teaches us about change. He is always changing something! If he can change things, he can certainly change you and your circumstance! We are living in a time that is different from any other times that we have ever seen before. We have seen and experienced God’s move and have become familiar with God operating in a particular way. Many younger people have not seen or experienced what we old heads have… so they have a different perspective because they are coming from a different place and time. They have yet to experience God in a way that we have. Yet for many of us, we are approaching today’s battles and life situations with yesterday’s methodology. For example, many of us, after 15 years of being married to one spouse, and having married another, are still reacting to the current spouse as if they were the former one. We are still locked into how things were rather than how they are! Oftentimes God will give us new situations and we will ruin it with old methods! We leave an old church, a former employer, detach from old friends, with all its pettiness, strife, confusion, and go somewhere else and without realizing it, recreate that same mess in the new place, even though we hated it when we were involved in it! Women who resented how their mothers raised them, yet when the heat is on, begin to talk and act just like their mothers! Young boys hated when their fathers beat up their mothers. Now they themselves are dating females and the minute things start going wrong, they want to fight, slap, hurt them. It is very difficult to break free from where we came from! You can be in a new place with an old attitude! You must change this old attitude and methodology or you’ll ruin what you have …trying to rely on past experiences and methods! Life is full of change. Jobs change, people change, houses change, cars change, people die, people are born, people get sick, get better, get married, get divorced, and on and on! Grace for Change The church is an amazing place with a body of believers. We are the ones that tell people to come there and that our God can do anything! That they can be healed and their life will be better. So here they come just as they are-some rich, some broke, some prostitutes, some addicts, some with degrees, some illiterate, wearing suits, shorts and jeans. Yet, if we attempt to use old methodology rather than embracing new level changes and methods, we will only reproduce religious church-goers rather than Kingdom, authoritative people! God wants to impact people’s lives with Kingdom change! He wants to teach them how to move through this world and be mature, people of integrity and authority, faithful and loving. He also wants to show people very basic things that may not necessarily be categorized as great sin, but just may be things in their lives that “are besetting.” Things such as how to hold a job, how to get up in the morning and be on time, how to respect others or simply how to just be quiet! Everything is not considered a major sin, but may be weights that consistently sets one back. All of us must learn not to define ourselves by what we were, but to define who we are right now! We must recalibrate ourselves to create a “new normal” by opening up, recalibrating ourselves and being who we are…right now. No longer calling what we’re going through as just…changes, but calling it a “new normal.” Long before God bring you into your destiny, He will talk to you about where he is taking you. He talked to David while he’s still a shepherd boy shoveling sheep droppings, He talked to him about where he would take him…to be King! He ordains him first, then sends him back to shoveling sheep droppings. The reason: to prepare him to break any old cycles and methodologies, lest he pollute where he was going with the systems of his past. God is trying to get us ready for a new dimension, little by little to get us to let go of where we’ve been. He wants to make us pregnant with purpose… “I have indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt. I have heard them crying out because of their slave drivers, and I am concerned about their suffering. 8 So I have come down to rescue them from the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land into a good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey.” He is trying to break a cycle of destructive behavior and update our files so that we won’t come into this new promised land and start building systems that has worked for you in the past but may not necessarily work with where you are right now. He is bringing new systems, new structure, activities and people. Former things are passed away. He does “new things.” You have to be open to it; ready for it; willing to take responsibility. Be thankful for small progress God’s tutorial plan will help us to change effectively. He teaches us what traits/skills to keep, what to throw away. When you stay with old systems, you get familiar with it. Even though things and times get better, some stay with the old system, refusing to change. Things are just not like they used to be. During slavery, people got used to that old Jim Crow slave system. A system of lack, poverty, victimization, ignorance! Things such as using old wood-burning stoves that only heat at best-one room, which stayed cold and drafty, cooking outside on a cast-iron wash pot, having furniture made up of crates, boxes and barrels, wearing worn and tattered clothes, settling for “real ice boxes” and accepting & submitting to mistreatment as if a badge of honor! Even though things did get better…and in many situations people considered things like having running water, toilets, good solid furniture, stoves, refrigerators, good food, appropriate heating system…..and being respected, as only achievable by those that were “of more value than they had been told they were.” For some people they won’t allow anyone love them. They are used to being mistreated and settle for living in an old system that is familiar for them. When offered peace, they refuse. Their mind immediately runs to a problem to think about because they don’t think they even deserve peace or value. They have embraced a system of dysfunction. They cannot imagine another system, a better system. We must get rid of that system, or miss what God’s about to do next. Many people confess that prayer changes things. The first thing it changes is YOU! How you think, how you view your life. Gods wants you to change. Sometimes we get so attached to the way in which we’re looking at something, that we have a hard time seeing it in a new light. A fundamental change in approach or underlying assumption – a paradigm shift – is what’s needed to move us beyond the rut we’re stuck in and get us headed in the right direction where you enter readily, without hesitation and experience a God-controlled environment. We must let go of the past and breathe in change. If you enjoyed this article, Join HBCU CONNECT today for similar content and opportunities via email! |
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Nardra V. Daniels
Senior Managing Partner, RHEMA Career Management Winston-Salem State University class of 1973 Member Since March 2006 |
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