The Patterns that effect us

The Hidden Pattern in Every Major Transition God Brings You Through

There is a pattern in Scripture that I have begun to see more and more clearly.

It is not hidden because God concealed it. It is hidden because it appears so often that we can read straight through it without recognizing what we are seeing.

Abraham went through it. Joseph went through it. Moses went through it. Jacob went through it. Ruth went through it. David went through it. Paul experienced dimensions of it.

Different generations. Different callings. Different circumstances.

Yet again and again, I see four movements appearing in the great transitions God brings His people through:

Disruption. Wilderness. Wrestling. Resolution.

And I believe one of the reasons transition becomes so confusing is that we often misidentify the phase we are in.

We are trying to escape the wilderness when God is using it to form us.

We are rebuking the disruption when God is using it to detach us.

We are asking God to remove the wrestling when He is using it to expose the final thing we have not surrendered.

And sometimes we are praying for the resolution while resisting the very transformation necessary to carry it.

This is what I have come to understand:

When God brings us through a major transition, His first concern is not necessarily changing our circumstances. His first concern is changing us.

The circumstances are often simply the environment in which the transformation takes place.

There is an interesting theme woven through Scripture around identity and transition.

Abram becomes Abraham.

Sarai becomes Sarah.

Jacob becomes Israel.

Hoshea becomes Joshua.

Simon is given the name Peter.

Joseph receives an Egyptian name when Pharaoh elevates him into governmental authority.

In biblical culture, names carried tremendous significance. They spoke of identity, character, calling and destiny.

God was saying something.

The person entering the next season could not remain exactly the person who had lived in the previous one.

And that is where transition becomes painful.

We want God to change our season.

God often wants to change the person entering the season.

The First Phase: Disruption

Most transitions begin with something being disturbed.

Something moves.

Something closes.

Something ends.

Something that once felt secure suddenly becomes uncertain.

A relationship changes. A door closes. A position disappears. A plan collapses. A familiar environment no longer fits. Something we expected to continue suddenly stops.

And because disruption often feels like loss, our immediate conclusion may be:

Something has gone wrong.

But sometimes what feels like something going wrong is actually the first movement of God taking us somewhere new.

Abraham experienced this when God said:

“Go from your country, your people and your father’s household to the land I will show you.”

Think about what God was asking.

Leave what you know.

Leave what is familiar.

Leave the environment that has defined your life.

And where are we going?

God did not initially give Abraham an address.

He gave him a command:

Go.

Moses experienced disruption differently.

For forty years he lived within the world of Pharaoh’s household. Then one act changed everything. After killing the Egyptian who was beating a Hebrew, Moses fled into Midian.

The palace disappeared.

His position disappeared.

The future he had known disappeared.

Joseph experienced an even more violent disruption.

At seventeen years old, he went from being his father’s favored son to being stripped of his robe, thrown into a pit and sold into slavery.

In one day, everything familiar disappeared.

But the pit was not the conclusion of Joseph’s story.

Midian was not the conclusion of Moses’ story.

Leaving Ur and Haran was not the conclusion of Abraham’s story.

They were beginnings disguised as endings.

I have discovered that sometimes God allows disruption because something from the old season cannot accompany us into the new one.

There are things we lean upon without realizing how deeply we depend upon them.

Position.

People.

Recognition.

Money.

Predictability.

Our own understanding.

Our ability to control outcomes.

Even ministry itself can become something we lean upon more heavily than we lean upon God.

So when disruption comes, I have learned to change the question.

Instead of only asking:

“God, why is this happening?”

I also need to ask:

“Lord, what have I been leaning upon that You are teaching me to release?”

Because disruption often loosens our grip on yesterday.

The Second Phase: Wilderness

Then comes the part almost nobody enjoys.

The space between what was and what will be.

The wilderness.

The wilderness is difficult because there is often no obvious movement.

The old season is over.

But the new season has not arrived.

You have obeyed God, but nothing appears to be happening.

You know there is something ahead, but you cannot touch it yet.

And perhaps the greatest temptation in the wilderness is believing that nothing important is taking place.

Moses spent forty years shepherding sheep in Midian.

Forty years.

The man who had lived in Pharaoh’s household disappeared into obscurity.

No platform.

No crowds.

No miracles.

No Red Sea.

Just sheep.

Day after day.

Year after year.

But Midian was not wasted time.

Moses was learning something.

The prince was becoming a shepherd.

He was learning patience.

He was learning obscurity.

He was learning dependence.

He was even becoming familiar with the wilderness through which he would later lead an entire nation.

God was preparing Moses for his assignment when Moses probably thought his assignment had passed him by.

Joseph experienced the same hidden formation.

Before Joseph governed Egypt, he governed Potiphar’s household.

Before Pharaoh trusted him with a nation, Joseph learned to be trustworthy in another man’s house.

Then even that was taken from him.

He was falsely accused and imprisoned.

But Joseph continued serving.

Even in prison he became responsible.

Even when nobody appeared to be watching, God was developing governmental capacity inside him.

Joseph had received dreams about leadership at seventeen.

But revelation of destiny is not the same thing as readiness for destiny.

That distinction matters.

God may show you something long before you possess the character necessary to carry it.

Jacob experienced his wilderness under Laban.

Jacob had spent much of his life using cleverness to produce outcomes.

He manipulated.

He maneuvered.

He deceived.

Then God allowed Jacob to meet someone who could outmaneuver him.

Laban changed his wages repeatedly. He deceived him. He manipulated circumstances.

Suddenly Jacob’s old methods were no longer enough.

The wilderness was exposing the limitations of Jacob’s strength.

And that is what wilderness seasons often do.

They bring us to the end of what previously worked.

I believe some people reading this are in exactly this place.

You are doing what you know to do.

You are obeying.

You are praying.

You are remaining faithful.

And yet things are not moving at the speed you expected.

The temptation is to ask continually:

“When will this season end?”

But perhaps Heaven is asking another question:

“Who are you becoming while you wait?”

Because the wilderness is not empty space between two important seasons.

The wilderness is one of the important seasons.

God builds things in obscurity that cannot be built under applause.

He forms roots before He exposes fruit.

He develops character before increasing authority.

Never despise what God teaches you when nobody is watching.

The Third Phase: Wrestling

Then I see another pattern.

Often, just when transition appears to be approaching resolution, there comes a confrontation.

A wrestling.

Jacob shows us this perhaps more clearly than anyone.

After years with Laban, Jacob was finally going home.

He had survived the wilderness.

He had family.

He had possessions.

He had increased.

Surely the difficult part was finished.

Then he heard that Esau was approaching with four hundred men.

Everything Jacob had feared came rushing back.

So Jacob did what Jacob knew how to do.

He strategized.

He divided his household.

He arranged gifts.

He calculated possibilities.

And then, at the ford of the Jabbok, Jacob was left alone.

There he wrestled through the night with a mysterious divine figure.

And eventually came the question:

“What is your name?”

God was not lacking information.

Jacob had to say it.

“Jacob.”

The heel-grabber.

The supplanter.

The man who had spent his life grasping, manipulating and trying to secure blessing through his own ability.

Jacob had to acknowledge Jacob.

And only then came the declaration:

“Your name shall no longer be Jacob, but Israel.”

There is something incredibly powerful here.

We cannot fully receive the new identity while protecting the old one.

There comes a moment when God touches the place where our natural strength has been operating.

Jacob walked away limping.

He had encountered God, and he never walked the same again.

I do not see the limp primarily as punishment.

I see it as a memorial.

Every step reminded Jacob:

You encountered God there.

You surrendered there.

You stopped depending entirely upon yourself there.

Some encounters with God leave marks.

There are things I have walked through that changed the way I walk.

And perhaps that is exactly what they were supposed to do.

The wrestling phase asks questions deeper than:

“How can I solve this?”

It asks:

“What in me must finally surrender?”

My reputation?

My need to be understood?

My need to control the outcome?

My insistence that God accomplish His purpose my way?

My old identity?

My self-reliance?

There comes a place where technique cannot carry us further.

We must surrender.

And surrender is often the doorway into the next phase.

The Fourth Phase: Resolution

Then comes resolution.

But resolution does not always look like what we imagined.

Joseph’s transition is astonishing.

One morning he is a prisoner.

Then Pharaoh summons him.

Joseph shaves, changes his clothes and stands before the ruler of Egypt.

Before the day is finished, Pharaoh places his signet ring on Joseph’s hand and gives him authority over Egypt.

Suddenly everything changes.

But Joseph is no longer the seventeen-year-old boy announcing his dreams to his brothers.

The pit changed him.

Potiphar’s house changed him.

The false accusation changed him.

The prison changed him.

Waiting changed him.

The man standing before Pharaoh had been prepared to carry what the boy dreaming in Canaan could never have carried.

Joseph later named his sons Manasseh and Ephraim.

Manasseh spoke of God causing him to forget the pain associated with his former trouble.

Ephraim testified that God had made him fruitful in the land of his affliction.

I love that.

God did not simply rescue Joseph from affliction.

He made him fruitful in the very place connected with his suffering.

That is redemption.

Resolution does not pretend the wilderness never happened.

Resolution reveals what God was producing through it.

And this is why I believe we misunderstand promotion if we simply think of it as reward.

The resolution is not merely a reward for surviving.

It is often a responsibility entrusted to someone who has been transformed.

The Joseph who entered the pit could not yet govern Egypt.

The Moses who walked out of Pharaoh’s palace was not yet ready to lead Israel.

Jacob could not father a nation while remaining entirely Jacob.

God had to prepare the person for the promise.

But It Is a Pattern, Not a Formula

I need to say something important.

I would never turn these four phases into a rigid formula.

God cannot be reduced to four steps.

And not every story ends with visible earthly triumph.

John the Baptist fulfilled his calling and died in prison.

Jeremiah obeyed God faithfully and saw much of his message rejected during his lifetime.

Many of the heroes of Hebrews 11 died without seeing everything they had believed for fulfilled on earth.

So resolution cannot simply mean:

“Eventually everything will become comfortable.”

That is not biblical Christianity.

Sometimes resolution is visible fruit.

Sometimes it is fulfilled assignment.

Sometimes it is the realization that eternity will reveal what history could not.

But I believe this remains true:

God wastes nothing surrendered to Him.

The disruption is not wasted.

The wilderness is not wasted.

The wrestling is not wasted.

Even scars can preach.

So I ask myself:

Where am I?

If I am in disruption, perhaps I need to stop desperately rebuilding what God is asking me to release.

If I am in wilderness, perhaps I need to stop measuring God’s activity by visible movement.

If I am wrestling, perhaps I need to stop trying to win and begin asking what God wants surrendered.

And if I am entering resolution, I must never forget what God taught me on the road there.

Carry the testimony.

Remember the pit.

Remember Midian.

Remember Laban.

Remember Jabbok.

Not with bitterness.

With gratitude.

Because somebody coming behind you is standing in the place you once thought would destroy you.

They need to hear that God was there.

Jacob entered that night afraid.

Esau was approaching.

Four hundred men were coming.

Jacob could not see tomorrow.

He wrestled in darkness.

Then the sun rose.

Jacob emerged with a new name and a limp.

And shortly afterward, the brother he feared would kill him ran toward him, embraced him, fell upon his neck and kissed him.

Jacob spent the night preparing for war.

God had prepared reconciliation.

How often have I done the same?

I imagined what tomorrow would contain while God was already working in places I could not see.

That is why I want to tell someone today:

Do not judge your entire story by the phase you are standing in.

The pit is not the palace.

Midian is not the Exodus.

Jabbok is not the Promised Land.

And the wilderness is not evidence that God has forgotten your name.

Perhaps He is forming in you the person who can carry the next one.

The transition itself is not an interruption to your story.

It is part of your story.

God is not waiting until transition finishes before He begins working.

He is working now.

In the disruption.

In the silence.

In the delay.

In the wrestling.

In the surrender.

He is removing what cannot remain.

He is forming what does not yet exist.

He is exposing what must be surrendered.

He is preparing you to carry what you once only prayed for.

So whatever phase you are in, do not run from God’s hands.

Let Him work.

Let Him strip away what has become an idol.

Let Him build what only wilderness can build.

Let Him confront what only wrestling can expose.

And when morning comes, do not be afraid if you walk differently.

Jacob did.

But the man who limped away from Jabbok was carrying something far greater than the man who walked into it.

He entered the night as Jacob.

He came out as Israel.

Sometimes that is what transition was about all along.

Not merely getting you somewhere new.

But making you new before you arrive.

Let Him finish what He started.

Peter Nash