TO THOSE WALKING WITH A LIMP…

It’s been a season of costly obedience and private battles for so many.

Even as I type those words, I know this is hitting a deep sore point with people who have been crying out to the Lord with the deepest anguish.

“Costly, costly,” many are saying. It's where the ship looks like it's run aground. Where the old vision dies, and yet the battle rages against your life, and you don’t understand it. “Why am I such a threat when everything in my hands has been taken from me?”

It’s where God leads you out from everything you have known, and yet, it doesn’t feel like victory just yet, just a series of steps of obedience that don’t quite add up.

Daily and weekly slander, betrayals, and persecution warring against your home, marriage, and children.

What people don't talk about with transition seasons is that they are the most vulnerable and costly seasons you could ever go through because God has untethered you from everything that you've attached your worth and identity to: mindsets, the assignments, and your alignments.

There have been so many doors closing and finality to so much you were doing for years, and now you don't really know where you're going next, and you're in a place of extreme vulnerability, and there are two processes taking place at the same time.

The first process

God is detoxing you from what you've walked through, and He's getting you ready for what's ahead.

It's a time of deep deliverance and healing. It's also a time where it feels like you have to fight to step into the new mantle that God has for you.

It's one of those seasons where you're wrestling with the angel of the Lord until daybreak [Genesis 32:22-31]. You're wrestling for your destiny. You're wrestling for your call.

Why? Because there is such a pull to fall asleep. There's such a pull to sink back into apathy and to give up. It's a mental and emotional battle.

The second process

The enemy is constantly trying to feed that discomfort. He's trying to lead you into what is comfortable. He's trying to numb you and desensitize you so that you run back to what is familiar and comfortable.

He also wages war on your mind and everything that matters to you.

It's where you're suddenly rehearsing everything that didn't go well in the past. All the things that you did wrong are constantly before your eyes. You're in failure mode. You're looking back at what didn't come to pass, the promises that weren't fulfilled, the things you could have done better. They're constantly before you.

So there's the voice of the Holy Spirit saying, “Come on, there's more for you. Step into this.” And there's also the wrestle of having to defeat the dogs of doom in your mind that are trying to pull you back.

And within that time, it feels like the deepest private battles of anguish that people will never see. It's the deepest cost of pain and suffering that people just don't ever get to know about, and they never will.

It's those places where it's just you and the Lord. And it feels like even your closest friends and confidants, the people you would love to have around you, God somehow doesn't allow them to soften the blow of this deep and painful moment.

It's like Jacob wrestling the angel of the Lord until daybreak. He had to do it alone.

Jacob Wrestles with God [Genesis 32:22-31]

22 The same night he arose and took his two wives, his two female servants, and his eleven children,[a] and crossed the ford of the Jabbok. 23 He took them and sent them across the stream, and everything else that he had. 24 And Jacob was left alone. And a man wrestled with him until the breaking of the day. 25 When the man saw that he did not prevail against Jacob, he touched his hip socket, and Jacob's hip was put out of joint as he wrestled with him. 26 Then he said, “Let me go, for the day has broken.” But Jacob said, “I will not let you go unless you bless me.” 27 And he said to him, “What is your name?” And he said, “Jacob.” 28 Then he said, “Your name shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel,[b] for you have striven with God and with men, and have prevailed.” 29 Then Jacob asked him, “Please tell me your name.” But he said, “Why is it that you ask my name?” And there he blessed him. 30 So Jacob called the name of the place Peniel,[c] saying, “For I have seen God face to face, and yet my life has been delivered.” 31 The sun rose upon him as he passed Penuel, limping because of his hip.

I'm reminded a lot in this season of how I've been through so many of these transition moments. In fact, many years ago, before we came out here to America, I was in a lot of physical pain, so I went to a chiropractor, and he said, “It doesn't make sense, but your hip is out of joint.” My hip was actually dislocated, and I didn't understand what was going on.

In that season, I had so many voices of doubt from people warring against us, telling us not to leave Australia. And we were in so much conflict about it.

And then a friend sent me a word: “Nate, you're walking with a limp right now. But that's actually the safest place to be in these moments.”

It's where we don't realize it, but it's actually a strength that we are in a place of deep brokenness, so that we don't enter into a new season relying on our own understanding as we have in the past.

These last few weeks, I just kept thinking about this - God is looking for people who walk with a limp in this season, people who are not wise in their own understanding.

Because we've built empires on our understanding. We've built empires and dysfunction based on what we were confident in. And look what that's done to the Body of Christ.

I wonder if this is a moment that God is allowing us to walk with a limp because it is the safest place we can be. It's the place where we run to His presence because we have no one else to run to. It's the place where our private obedience eventually turns into public victories, but it starts with painful, dark nights of the soul moments, where it's just you at the feet of Jesus.

And I just want to encourage so many out there right now who may be reading this and are asking, “What season am I in?”

I want to say this to you: if you feel the deepest depths of brokenness in this season, don't always write it off as the enemy. What if God is actually doing deep deliverance, healing, and leading you somewhere new?

Because you know the story of Jacob, God used that moment to shift everything for him. God used that moment to lead him into a new beginning, a new day, and a new dawning. And I believe that's what He's doing for so many right now.

But I hear the Lord saying, “Don’t allow the enemy to rob or hijack this moment.”

This is a moment where God is resetting you. But don't allow the enemy to make you fall into condemnation and fear.

I keep seeing this picture before my eyes of people watching a TV screen on repeat. So many have been in rehearsal mode over the pains of the past. The very thing God is trying to heal and deliver you from now is what you keep rehearsing from your past season. You haven't quite let it go, or known how to let it go.

It's that tension between, “This is what I've come from, and this is where I'm going, but I don't know how to release this.”

I keep hearing the Lord say, “Let it go. Stop looking back. Stop looking back. Stop looking back.”

Right now, if you're reading this and this is the pain point for you and you don't know how to reconcile what you've come from, just pray…

“God, I surrender my yesterday. I'm going to stop rehearsing the pain of my past. I'm going to stop rehearsing my failures, the things that went wrong, the things I don't understand. I'm going to stop rehearsing what I'm grieving and what I've had to let go.”

So again, God is looking for people who are walking with a limp right now, those who've walked through the fire, those who've been through the furnace. And God is going to lead you out; you won’t even smell like smoke. You're not going to carry or be tainted by the things of the past anymore.

And I believe in the next few months, God is raising up a new breed out of the ashes of what is crumbling down. There is a changing of the guard. But the changing of the guard looks like “the wrestle,” first.

In Daniel 2:21, it says that God raises up kings and deposes them.

I believe we are in that moment. But the very place of commissioning isn't what you expected. Your commissioning is this wrestle. Your commissioning is this struggle where God wants you to defeat the battle of the mind that keeps holding you in thoughts and mindsets tethering you back to the old thing.

Release them to Him right now in the mighty name of Jesus. That battle against your mind, surrender it to Him.

This is a moment where you're going to have to slay the oxen of those old mindsets. You're going to have to slay the oxen of those old expectations that keep lingering around you and tormenting you.

God has His best days ahead for you. Keep allowing yourself to be set apart. Keep choosing those private moments of obedience to the Lord that no one understands, where you look foolish, where you look unpopular for doing what God has called you to do. It doesn't make sense, and people don't understand you right now, yet all of heaven is cheering you on.

Lastly, I shared this on social media a few days ago titled, These Four Things Happen to You when God is Leveling You Up. Let me share this with you as I feel this connects with the word above…

Firstly, it looks like you are leveling down. Things fall apart. Systems. Rhythms. Mindsets. Securities. Opportunities. Doors shut. Relationships change. God purges what is holding you back. It feels like you are dying to yourself, and now He gets to take the wheel.

The enemy hits your mind from every angle. You step into a fight of all fights in your head, where anxiety and fears are surfacing that feel like nonstop torment. You have to make the decision to cave in and crumble or to fight with the Word of God to fortify the susceptible areas of your heart.

The slander and chatter increase. This is the enemy's attempt to discourage you before your breakthrough by recruiting people to character-assassinate you and tear you down til you crash out and give up.

And lastly, the enemy tries to deplete you. In your finances. In your health. He wants to sabotage what you have been working hard on over the years and steal your joy by stealing your fruit.

If you are going through these, then God is leveling you up, and all of hell is afraid of who you are becoming.

Refuse to partner with the false narrative!