THERE’S A NEW CHAPTER DAWNING AFTER YOUR BATTLE SEASON…

When you have been through the most difficult battle and greatest warfare season of your life, endured the deepest, most painful betrayals of your life, faced the most insidious assignments, principalities, powers, every demonic force that could ever rise up against you, all in one season, it is difficult to see beyond that moment.

It is difficult to see that there's anything good that could happen after that.

In fact, the enemy reinforces in that season that this is where it comes to an end. This is where everything falls apart, fails, where you're lost, and where the enemy won. Where the promises of God die and do not come to fruition.

But I want to give you a word of encouragement.

For the last two weeks, the Lord keeps showing me the picture of Jacob wrestling the angel of the Lord until daybreak.

“Then Jacob was left alone; and a Man wrestled with him until the breaking of day. Now when He saw that He did not prevail against him, He touched the socket of his hip; and the socket of Jacob’s hip was out of joint as He wrestled with him. And He said, ‘Let Me go, for the day breaks.’ But he said, ‘I will not let You go unless You bless me!’ So He said to him, ‘What is your name?’ He said, ‘Jacob.’ And He said, ‘Your name shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel; for you have struggled with God and with men, and have prevailed.’ –Genesis 32:24-28

Penuel was a place of transition. A place where Jacob knew he needed to move past the place that he'd been living in– constantly under the shadow of his old identity and what he'd been known as, and all the years of pain working for Laban, and deceiving his brother.

He knew that he needed to come to a place of violent showdown against his past and that was Penuel– a place where the angel of the Lord wrestled him until daybreak.

This has been a season that you have battled God and man. Let me break this down for you.

This has been a season that God has brought you to that brook, Jabbok. He's brought you to a place of transition. He's brought you to a moment of decision where He's been asking you,

“What do you want? Do you want to stay where you've been, or do you want to move into this next phase of promise and blessing that I have for you?”

You're not wrestling God in the way you imagine. You are wrestling for WHO YOU REALLY ARE. But it has been a place of EXCHANGE and contending.

It’s been a place of dealing with your “stuff,” where's been drawing out all the pain of the past and all the things that have been around you.

He's been saying,

“Do you want my inheritance or do you want your own? Do you want the generational bondage that you've been carrying, or do you want my blessing, my kingdom, my power, and my destiny upon your life? What do you want?”

I've been in this wrestle myself, and so many others too, where we have come to the end of ourselves, and we have been battling and wrestling the promise so long in the dark.

It has been the battle of all battles. It's been a battle of the mind. It's been a battle coming up against principalities and powers that are not wanting you to step into the fullness of your calling and who you're called to be, and it's been a battle for that place of destiny and legacy and stepping into that leveling up that God has.

It's been a place of such intense pressure and stretching beyond anything that you've been through in your whole entire life.

And it's popped your hip out. You feel broken, beat down, and trying to figure this out saying, ‘this can't be God. I'm walking with a limp now.’

No, you've been prevailing to BREAK PAST THE BARRIERS you inherited, and patterns and cycles you have been living in.

You came to place of such rock bottom that it’s like you died to yourself and you have fallen in a heap saying, ‘Ok God, I give up. God, I can't keep living in the fruit of my yesterday. I can't keep living in the dysfunction and the patterns and the cycles I've been living in. I need what You have for me. I need Your promises to come to pass…

I’m tired of seeing robbery at every single turn. I'm tired of experiencing this Jezebel spirit over and over and over again. I am tired of the warfare. I'm tired of the familiar spirits. I'm tired of Leviathan. I'm tired of the Python spirit. I'm tired of the witchcraft and the fogginess constantly robbing my days and my destiny and my family, my marriage, and every area of my life.’

And you've come to a place of contention. You've come to a place of a breaking point where the Lord has met you and given you a choice– what and whom will you serve?

Most level off here. Most choose comfort but in this wrestle moment, you have chosen what is better.

You've chosen Him.

And I know you feel like you're faulty and broken after the battle but yet you've chosen what is needful. You've chosen what He has for you, and you're now breaking into a new dawn and a new day.

Let me say this over you– there is a new chapter after Jezebel. There is a new chapter after all of the warfare you've been facing.

Remember, the angel said, “you've been wrestling with God and MAN.” That's why this season has been a battling-with-man season. A season of intense relational warfare.

Because you've been battling the dynamics around you that have been set up by the enemy. You've been battling the dysfunctions that have been around you since you were born– what you inherited, what you've carried, the whole world that you've known.

You've been battling the narcissism, the constant gaslighting, the hidden-in-plain-sight dynamics of the enemy that keeps coming to rob you at every single side.

This is where the Lord has been revealing the snakes in the grass, what's been hiding in close proximity to you that you haven't been able to see.

This is where the Lord has has been showing you that you can't keep casting your pearls the way you have.

You can't keep fearing man the way you have. Where it silences you, shuts you down, causes you to run from your calling.

No, there's a new day dawning over you.

There is a new day and a new chapter after the warfare you've been in and you're about to step into that.

And this is for those who are battle weary– the battle is about to become breakthrough.

The battleground is about to be the place that you look back on and say, ‘that was the greatest season of blessing in my life…

That right there, that mess where I hit rock bottom, where everything looked like it was robbed from my life. When my marriage came under fire, when my kids came under fire, where my finances were depleted, where every single person around me was slandering me, cursing me, and accusing me, and I was at complete rock bottom, and I felt like a failure and a mess.

And in the midst of that wrestle, in the midst of that battle, God chose to birth a new thing in me and through me, and a new day dawned that I didn't even expect.

I didn't know it was coming. All of a sudden the sun came up, and I realised that I was out of the dark night of the soul and I was in a new chapter and a new day I did not see coming.’

And that is how the Lord works. And that's exactly what He's been doing in you.

Isaiah 43:19 says, "See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland." God is making a way where there has been no way. He is doing a new thing in you even now.”

Then, a new voice comes out of you. A new fresh oil and anointing begins to pour out of your spirit that sets captives free, because you weren't looking for it.

You weren't trying to be the next thing but the battle commissioned you. The battle readied you and launched you.

And you are about to leave the wilderness full of the power of the Spirit!

The wilderness did not break you, it EMPOWERED you!

Now, you are coming out the other side ready to move in a dimension of the Spirit you have never walked in before.

So this is a word of hope and encouragement for so many waking up today saying, ‘when will the battle end?’

There's something about being on your knees before the Lord, the posture of worship, where you're just in surrender and you're like, ‘God, I don't get this. This has been fierce. But I surrender.’

And suddenly you wake up and you're on the other side.

One more thing– Get ready.

Get ready because He's about to use you. When you've been through the fire, you no longer care about your reputation, you don't care about prominence, you don't care about your agenda. You don't care about building your own empires anymore.

Suddenly, that fierceness that you got during the battle causes you to want to break others free. It causes you to want to break ground in difficult places. It causes you to have a distaste towards anything you see the enemy has got his slimy hands on.

You're about to step into a season of setting captives free and leading people into their new day.

You've contended with God and man and prevailed. Because of that, God is now about to use you mightily.

Prophesy now with me:

‘I'm coming out of the battle season into a new chapter!’