ARE YOU REALLY STARTING OVER?

Estimated reading time: 10 minutes

Here you are, you thought you were going a certain way, only for unpleasant circumstances to spring up forcing you to start over! Everything goes wrong and you start from scratch. The career you thought you had, is gone, and the business is in shambles. Now you are forced to pick up the pieces and start over. But are you truly starting over? Before we can go any further, let us look at the definition of starting over. According to Cambridge Dictionary, starting over is defined as having to begin something again, and sometimes in a whole new way. In such a situation, it is very easy for you to think you are back to square one. But often that is not the case.

When what God did is at war with what God is doing!
Conclusion

When you hit rock bottom, you have lessons and experiences learned. So, although it looks like all is lost, it actually isn’t. In fact, it may look like things are falling apart while in the proper sense, they are actually falling in place. When we pray to God asking Him for revival and restoration or even a breakthrough, the first thing that God does is eliminate the things that are not beneficial in the extra spaces we want to go. And in most cases, it involves a lot of letting go and peeling off. The process is obviously very uncomfortable and painful.

Maybe you prayed to God, asking Him for freshness in your life, something new, and asking Him to take you to a new level. And now it seems like you have lost everything and you have to start over. Obviously, you do not expect to go to a new place looking and thinking the same way. God will have to refine you and make you reflect Him more on that new level, thus the changes you are experiencing.

When what God did is at war with what God is doing!

What do you do when God is trying to kill the same thing He gave you before so that He can give you the new, now? Are you praying for God to revive something He is trying to kill? Maybe, just maybe, God is getting you to elevate, yet you think you are starting over. In Business, products and services go through a life cycle. Where there is the introduction phase, growth, maturity, then the decline phase. Whenever a product gets to the decline stage, the company has to look for ways to help it adapt to the environment so that it does not become obsolete. This is called Brand revitalization. Business jargon defines brand revitalization as a market strategy adopted when a product reaches the maturity stage and profits have fallen drastically to win the equity sources back.

Could it be, God is also doing the same thing to you? Could He be revitalizing you to get you to step into the person He created you to be? And therefore ensuring longevity on your end? After all, no one likes short-lived success.

In the same way, a product has a life cycle, I believe we have a life cycle in our spiritual journey and life. And some things and opportunities are beneficial to us in certain seasons but are not in others. And that is why we go through seasons where we think we are starting over. But what if I told you that you are not starting over? But God is shaking the ground you are on so that He can have you build on the right foundation.

Also, God will waste no season in your life. So, everything you have experienced, every skill you have learned, He will use in your next. He might not use the skills you expect, but trust that He will. It does not matter how off where He is taking you seem. He knows how He will integrate your past with your now. God’s ways are higher than our ways. This means that how He views things is not how we view things. And what we consider as losses God deems as redirection.

So then, what is God doing when you find yourself starting over?

To get you to align with His will

God will redirect you by making you start over. This could mean you losing your job, your business, or in severe cases experiencing health challenges that lead you to pause, reflect and make changes. Sometimes what we do is go and do and forget that rest and stillness are important too. God will bring some shaking in your life so that He can redirect you to the path He has for you. And even though it looks like you are going backward, maybe God is launching you. And therefore He is taking off all the dead weight. By doing so you will advance farther than you would have, had you held on to the things He is trying to get you to leave?

You could have been walking on a path that seems good. And God could tell you it is not good for you. The Bible even tells us that there is a way that seems good to human beings, but in the end, it leads to destruction. Just because it is a great path, it does not mean that it is a God path. Are you on the path God wants you on? Or are you on a path that you think is good for you? Who led you on that path? Was it God or society? Did you allow God to lead you, or was it your background? Could it have been your insecurity that led you to choose your path because you did not think you had what it takes to pursue the path you know God wanted for you?

God sees things differently than we do. And therefore, He will take us on paths that make little sense at the moment, but when we lean in, it will make sense. God wants you to become fully who He created you to be. He knows that when you walk in your purpose, that is where you will find fulfillment and be the most effective. Therefore, He will allow you to get into situations where it feels like you are starting over to realign you. Could it be that God wants you to reinvent yourself?

To position you for greater!

God often reveals our best selves in the wilderness and the shaking. So, is God leading you through unknown territories? Is God challenging your beliefs and asking you to rely on Him in ways you hadn’t before? Could God be removing all the things you had placed your hope in? Maybe you have lost the job and career that brought you joy. Maybe the opportunity you thought would change your life fell through and now you do not know what’s next for you. Whatever the case may be, I want you to know that God would never bring you this far just to leave you here. He always has greater for you. And sometimes things will fall apart, leading you to start over so that they can finally fall in place.

Do you believe that the plan God has for you is greater than what you could have envisioned for yourself? Anytime God wants to reveal to you your true self, He will shake the ground you are on to realign you to His will. God does not want you to live a mediocre life.

God has good and perfect thoughts for your life. He wants to introduce you to a version of yourself that you have not met yet. God wants to do exceedingly, abundantly above and beyond all that you could ever ask, think or imagine. God has greater for you. Higher is waiting and that is why you might feel like you are starting over.

So then, how can you position yourself?

The first thing is to yield to God.

In His redirection, He wants you to trust in His Goodness and His leading. I will not lie. It is difficult to trust God when you are going through something that you have no control over. But when God is redirecting you, He wants you to trust Him. He is taking you through a path that requires you to gain a new revelation of Him. Mary and Martha knew Jesus as the healer, but it was not until they lost Lazarus that they experienced Him as the Resurrection. God has a lot of mysteries that He wants us to experience in Him. And sometimes that requires walking through the valley of the shadow of death to experience them. We can only learn some lessons in the wilderness.

Yielding to God and submitting to the process are the best keys to use. As you yield to God, you will worry less because you recognize He has got you. Moses had to yield to God when He called him to deliver the Israelites. God knew that although it looked like He was redirecting Moses, He knew Moses could handle it. God knows that you have what it takes. It might not look like it, but He already placed the gift in you.

Jeremiah felt inadequate, but God reminded him He called him when he was in his mother’s womb. That redirection is only realignment to what God knew you could do all along. And as you yield to Him, He will reveal to you who you really are

When you submit to the process, you allow God’s work to be perfected inside you. And when God does that, your true self will emerge.

The second thing is to use what you currently have.

Yes, it might look like you have nothing, but God says that He will multiply what you have. Just like the widow who had the little oil she had multiplied. So although it looks like you are starting over, you have previous experiences that you can use now. What is in your jar? Remember, you are not running on empty. And the experiences you have will quicken the process and even lead to your effectiveness.

What do you have in your hand? Start from there. Maybe you can sing. Why not start singing. As you use what you have, God will reveal to you what is next. Maybe God has given you a good job but you feel inadequate. Start with what you know.

Conclusion

God wants you to be flexible and let go so that He can do what He wants to do in your life. He has a plan and purpose in your life and it will require a new you. So allow Him to take the things off that He wants. Allow Him to teach you different aspects of Him that you do not know and let Him lead you as you follow. And although it might look like you are losing, He is just setting you up for the greatest season of your life. When you yield, you will in the future look back and be proud of the person you have become. I want to encourage you to embrace this season and watch what God will do as you surrender. Remember this, sometimes it is in the falling apart that things actually fall in place.

The skills you have now, God will use in your next season. You are not really starting over because God wastes nothing. He knows how to use everything you have been through and turn it for your good. The thing you feel you have lost now, God will restore in greater magnitude than you would expect. Yes, you might feel like all your effort was in vain.

But I promise you when you hold on you realize God was only setting the stage for you. He allowed you to gain that knowledge, so He knows where to unleash it. Who knows these skills might be what God uses to open doors for you that you would otherwise have never walked through. Yield to the process and allow God to perfect you. Let patience have its perfect works so that in the end you may lack nothing. God is working it all out in the background. Hold on.

ARE YOU REALLY STARTING OVER?

When what God did is at war with what God is doing!