Embracing Your Season of Change: The Purpose of Change

One of the greatest examples of going through a season of change is the story of the exodus of the Israelites out of Egypt. The angel of the Lord appeared to Moses in flames of fire from within a bush. The Lord revealed many things to Moses in that conversation including the reason he ultimately wanted to bring the Israelites out of slavery. In Exodus 3:12, God says, “I will be with you. And this will be the sign to you that it is I who have sent you: When you have brought the people out of Egypt, you will worship God on this mountain.”

The first reason God brings us through seasons of change is to bring us to a greater place of worship. We should idolize (worship, venerate, love excessively) God.

As I was having lunch the other day with a very successful businessman, he made a very interesting comment to me while I ate my order of onion rings. This gentleman, before retiring, had worked thirty one years with the same company. In today’s marketplace, not many people work that long for one company. He commented on how his longevity with his company gave him a unique ability to look back on his life and identify his seasons of significant change. He then told me that one of the keys to success is being able to recognize your seasons of change and make the right decisions as you evaluate what is taking place in your life. He also commented on how so many people ignore these seasons of change, and how it later comes back to hurt them in some major way.

Many times, a certain event in our lives can springboard us into a major season of change. Events of change can include marriages, births, deaths, job or career changes, church changes, graduations, salvations, divorces, moves and new relationships. I call these events “God moments” because I believe God uses them to get our attention.

God used the incident of death to get the attention of Moses. When Moses was forty years old, he decided to visit his fellow Israelites. During his visit, he saw one of the Israelites being mistreated by an Egyptian, so he went to his defense and killed the Egyptian. Moses thought that this event would cause the Israelites to recognize that God was using him to rescue them, but they did not. The following day, Moses came upon two Israelites fighting and tried to reconcile them. But the man who was mistreating the other pushed Moses aside and said, “Who made you ruler and judge over us? Do you plan to kill me as you killed the Egyptian yesterday?” When Moses heard this, he fled to Midian, where he settled as a foreigner and had two sons. (Acts 7:23-29).

Forty years went by before Moses had his burning bush experience in the desert near Mount Sinai. Wow, what a season of change! In a moment, God uses an event of death to trigger Moses’ refining process. While in the desert, Moses learned that God would not use the strength of man to deliver his people. As a wanderer, he learned humility. As the adopted son of privilege of pharaoh’s daughter, he became a foreigner so he could find a new sense of identity from God. While in the desert, he had two sons to learn how to lead the Israelites as a loving father.

As the angel of the Lord spoke to Moses in the burning bush, he was afraid to look and trembled with fear. Then the angel of the Lord told Moses to take off his sandals because the place he was standing, which was in God’s presence, was holy ground. Trembling with fear and taking off sandals are two signs of worship. It was the beginning of a relationship where Moses would learn to speak with God face to face as if talking to a close friend. As God initiated change in Moses’ life, it all began with teaching him how to worship. God would only use a man of worship to lead his people to the place of worship.