4 Unique Characteristics of God’s Redirection.

Estimated reading time: 14 minutes

Have you ever wondered what it feels like when God is redirecting you? Maybe you have heard this term, God’s redirection for a while now and are wondering what God’s redirection looks like, feels like, and how you can discern it. And that’s why today I felt led to talk about it. So I would like to invite you to read on.

 

As we start off this topic, let’s define the term God’s redirection.

God’s redirection, simply put, is when God steers you off the path you were on and onto another path. Often the new path is unfamiliar to you or even something that’s never been done before. When God redirects you, He sets you on a path that you have never walked on before. It usually involves you letting go of your comfort zone and embracing the new path that God has for you.

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God’s redirection is usually uncomfortable, as it requires you to say yes to something that you don’t have a blueprint of. It requires that you embrace walking in blind faith. And it requires you to shift from the familiar to the unfamiliar. Because it is uncomfortable, it is very easy to miss it. Often, we mislabel the season because we don’t understand it. So to better understand what God’s redirection looks like, let’s look at some characteristics:

Characteristics of God’s redirection.

Promise

Before God can redirect you, HE will first give you a promise of what your new season will be like. Now we obviously know that the fulfillment of the promise does not just happen, for there is usually a process to it. But God will give you a promise as something to anchor on when the going gets tough.

The promise is usually a way of God telling you that the end will be great and that it will be worth it. Before God redirected Abraham, He gave him promise after promise of what his future would look like. It was the same for Joseph. God gave him a promise before redirecting him. God showed Joseph that his brothers and father would bow to him.

Obviously, this was good. And since Joseph was already trusted by his father Jacob, it made sense. He must have thought that it would happen to him in his homeland, but we obviously know that that wasn’t the case. Joseph experienced shifts and God’s redirection before the fulfillment of the promise. That’s why the promise is very important. It is to anchor you when you feel like quitting because things are tough. 

Some of the ways God can give you the promise is.

• Through a dream-God gave Joseph the promise through a dream. Read Genesis 37. God could speak to you through a dream and show you your future. The dream could be simple or elaborate. He could very well give you all the details concerning your future. Or just give you glimpses here and there into your future. The dream will be so clear. The cool thing about God is that He will confirm what He is telling you either through another dream or through a scripture. 
• God could also give you a promise through a vision or by speaking to you like He did Abraham. In this case, your inner knower will be so aware of what God is saying. There will be no doubt that it is God speaking. When God wants to pass a message along to you He will and He might do so through a vision. 
• He can give you a promise through the word of God. How this happens is that scripture will speak to you so clearly. Or will become so clear as if it jumped off through the pages of the Bible. You will see scripture in a different way. You will find yourself relating to scripture like you never have before. Again, God will confirm this time and time again. This can happen by you seeing the same scripture over and over again. Have you ever experienced this, where after studying a certain scripture you almost start seeing it everywhere? Suddenly everyone starts talking about the same scripture, and people you listen to start talking and preaching about the same scripture. Or even you start seeing numbers or phrases related to such scriptures. That’s usually God speaking to you. When God is speaking, He will make it so clear in such a way you will not be able to miss Him. He does this to get your attention and to eliminate confusion because God is not the author of confusion. 
• Sometimes God could use people that you trust to give you the promise. That is where a word of knowledge is given to someone to tell you. An example would be when God sent Samuel to anoint David as the next king of Israel. At the time, David was not aware of what God wanted of him. He thought that all he would be was a shepherd boy because that’s what he was used to. But God had other plans for him. God again could use the same method to give you a promise for your future. It could be your parent, pastor, friend, or even a stranger. God will send anyone He sees fit. But again the disclaimer here is that God will always confirm His promise. Don’t just go off on one word. Wait for confirmation 

The thing about confirmation is that God might use a different method altogether. So an example would be if God spoke to you through a dream, He might then confirm through a vision. In all these, though you must ensure that you test every word that you think comes from God. 

How to test if a word comes from God.

• It aligns with the word of God. God will never contradict the Bible. Every dream, vision, or encounter you have with  God will always align with His word. He will never contradict His word. 
• Every promise will align with God’s character. God’s promise will never contradict His character. And again this points back to the Bible. This is why it’s important for you to stay hidden in God’s word. Because when God gives you a word you will be able to know that it is Him. 
• God’s promise will be in line with the witness of the Holy Spirit. Again, God will never contradict His Spirit.

The path might be unorthodox, but that does not mean it is not God. If it aligns with God’s character, His Word, and the Holy Spirit, then you can trust that it is from God. This is why a relationship with God is important. And to give you an example, let’s look at Peter in the New Testament. God gave Peter a vision where He showed him that everything He created was clean before sending Him to Cornelius’ house. If Peter did not have a relationship with God, he would have discredited the vision coming from God because the Jews were not allowed to commune with the Gentiles. 

In Isaiah, God tells us that He is doing a new thing. And this new thing usually stems from a redirection. And when we are not sensitive we might miss God’s leading because we are so focused on the ways He moved before. We should not trust the ways THAT God moved before more than we trust in God. Spend time with God so that you can be sensitive enough to hear Him speak to you. 

Lifting off of grace for the current season. 

When God redirects you, He first lifts off the grace for your current season. This will be something as simple as lacking the morale for the things you used to do before. It’s something that just happens gradually. One moment you feel tired of the mundane. The things that used to bring you joy in your current season, suddenly don’t. You find it hard to do simple tasks that you used to enjoy before. Your desires change. 

Sometimes the lifting off of grace could look like you missed out on opportunities that used to come easy to you. Suddenly you find yourself struggling to get opportunities that used to come easily to you. Or worse yet, doors start shutting on you. Have you experienced that? Where doors start shutting on you. People start quitting on you and you can’t seem to understand. Or if you are in school you start failing in courses that you used to pass in. Or maybe you start experiencing rejection in places where God’s favor used to rest on. Have you found yourself struggling twice as hard to get half of the things you used to get before?

 You know, it’s especially difficult to embrace God’s redirection when you’ve invested so much into your current season. An example would be having studied for something for 5+ years and just before you reap the benefits you feel God leading you down another path. Has this ever happened to you? Have you been feeling God leading you down a path that’s different from what you have been doing? If this is you, you might find yourself feeling guilty because of the investment you have made in your current season. You might feel like you have wasted all those years and resources. You might even feel left behind. Can you imagine having to start over again in a whole other field? To help you process this, let’s look at a Biblical example. 

The story of Abraham.

Abraham was 75 years old when God told him to leave his family and go to the land that God would show him. 

When reading this story we only see Abraham’s faith which is amazing by the way. But for a second can you imagine having to leave behind your comfort zone for something new? Abraham had become accustomed to his ways. He had built a life for himself and his family for 75 years. He surely was comfortable.

Let’s not forget that he was wealthy too. He had planned his life, and I think he was living his best life. And now, here was God asking him to leave everything to follow him. And the interesting part is, that God did not tell him where he was going. All He did was give him the promises of what would happen when he followed him. 

Maybe like Abraham, God has asked you to leave what you know and follow him in a land you have no clue. As humans, we are creatures of habits. And it’s very difficult to shift to something new. That’s why before God can redirect you and me, He first lifts off grace for the current season. For Abraham, God did not need to lift the grace because he easily said yes but for others He does. 

Discomfort and shaking.

As the grace lifts off, and we fail to take notice, God will shake the ground we are on. He might start off by allowing people to misunderstand you. Or even turn their backs on you. When God gave Joseph the dream, it brought so much commotion. This ended up with the brothers selling him into slavery because of their jealousy. Joseph’s foundation was shaken. He went from being in his father’s safety net to go to a foreign land. Not only that he went from being favored to being ordinary and worse a slave. Can you imagine that? You might not have experienced something as dire as he did. But maybe your ground has been shaken and you are experiencing discomfort.

Discomfort can come in different ways. It could be that you have lost a job you have been in for a while. This covid season, we have seen people lose jobs and income sources that they have been relying on for years. There have been shifts in how we do things and it has led to our grounds being shaken and things that seemed solid suddenly disintegrating in ways we never thought possible. Or maybe you have been unable to get a job after graduating yet you thought that your course was rock solid. Or maybe it is a relationship that you held so dear that has come to an end.

Still, maybe your brook has dried up. Your safety net is no longer safe and you are uncomfortable because you don’t know how you are going to survive. Whatever the case may be, God might bring discomfort, it will come so that the shaking can lead to God’s redirection. 

It’s funny how oftentimes we mislabel God’s redirection as warfare. It’s not always that shaking and discomfort stem from the devil. When God is doing a new thing, He will challenge our old ways and this is uncomfortable. That’s His way of showing us that there is something new and better that He is doing. Not many people understood Jesus. It’s not because they did not want to. It’s because they were so stuck in their old ways thinking that that’s the only legitimate God’s way.

They did not think that God would bring about a new covenant that challenged their old ways. It’s easy to judge them, but the truth of the matter is that as human beings, we are so limited in our thinking that we rarely see when God is moving. This is why it is important to have a relationship with God and be sensitive enough to know when He is moving. You cannot rely on other people to hear God for you. You have to have a personal relationship with Him so that you can have experiential knowledge with Him. 

Transition.

God’s redirection will lead you to the messy in-between. This is the space where you are no longer where you used to be but also you are yet to get to your promised land. The messy in-between is such a scary place. This is because it will require you to have faith and total reliance on God. In this place, you will be so unsure of yourself. You will even doubt yourself and the promise.

Your faith will be challenged and so will your promise. Before David became king, he lived in caves hiding from King Saul. At the time this was happening, he must have gone through moments where he doubted that he was on the right path. He must have questioned whether God was with him. This is what happens in those moments. You find yourself questioning whether you are on the right path. But this is where you will need to hold on to the promise because He who promised is faithful to fulfill His promise. God watches over His word to perform it and He is not a man THAT He should lie. 

Conclusion.

God’s redirection is not always pretty. In fact often times it is uncomfortable and it requires us to crucify our flesh so that we can embrace it. The transition is usually scary and His redirection is too. But you have to remember that you are not alone, He is with you. And He who began a good work in you will bring it to completion. Do not be scared of God’s redirection.

Trust His Heart and His intentions for you. He will never bring you this far just to leave you. He is with you through it all. And as long as it has not worked out for your good, it means that He is not done with you yet. God is doing a new thing in your life. And it will not look like you think. He has higher waiting for you on the other side. But it will require you to let go of your past completely and embrace the new as it will require a new you altogether. Allow God to redirect you as He wills. If you want to read more about God’s redirection check out my other posts here and here.

• WHAT TO DO WHEN GOD REDIRECTS YOU!
• EMBRACE THE NEW PATH: LET GO OF THE OLD.
• About Radiantly Resurging.
• 8 PRACTICAL KEYS TO HELP YOU GAIN CLARITY
• HOW TO DISCERN THE SEASON YOU ARE IN.

Don’t forget to comment down below and tell me which one of the 4 characteristics spoke to you the most and why. Until next time, remain blessed!