WARNING: Don’t Try to Go Back!

This week has been tough! Partly I think because after the intensity of a focused fast ends, it can often be a challenge to connect with what is next – but also this time I think it’s been because of the ever-increasing uncertainty of the season that we’re in.

Since lock-down has been gradually easing, it is harder than ever to know what is certain and what is not. In some ways it seems like nothing is certain – and when that happens the temptation to return to the last period of certainty can feel overwhelming. Even though for months God has been loudly and clearly declaring to “forget the former things” and to look to the new, the pressure to ‘go back to normal’ has felt almost irresistible – it is taking great conscious effort not to give in.

So that probably explains why God’s word in prayer early this morning seemed so emphatic – almost stern in its warning. I was in the middle of a study that was going really well: revelation was flowing, I was feeling richly fed, and suddenly I heard these words interrupt my study:

“The old is dead. Don’t try to resurrect that which I told to die!” (accompanied by a picture of the fig tree that Jesus cursed in Mark 11:12-20) “I am doing something new (to which I saw a picture of a tree stump with a new shoot growing out of the side, like in Isaiah 11:1-3)

Then He spoke again, essentially saying the same thing but using a different analogy:
“Do not try to prop up an institution that I have ordained to crumble into pieces…” (Matt 24:2) “… but do look to build the new out of the faithful remnant that remain” (like the burnt stones in Nehemiah 4:2-3, noting that scoffers always reject the new, but they are not of God).

Then He spoke a third time, still on the same lines
“Don’t try to return to your previous caterpillar state – that is no longer who you are” (referring to the picture God gave me at the beginning of lockdown from 2 Cor 3:18). “You are now a butterfly and need to learn how to behave appropriately” (Eph 4:2-3)

For God to repeat the same command three times to me is not the way He and I typically communicate: I felt a bit overwhelmed by the emphatic importance of His warning. We can’t – we mustn’t try – to go back! There was such a weight on what He was saying, and I noticed that each time His word to me started with “Don’t TRY“. The sense I got was that it may be possible for us to seem to replicate what we used to know – but if we do, it will be utterly fruitless. Returning to what was familiar might be comfortable but there will be categorically no life to it. God’s ordained life and blessing is absolutely NOT on what was.

It’s scary, it’s daunting, and it’s absolutely uncomfortable – but there is no going back, for those who seek His life.

And as if I needed any further confirmation, God then spoke Joshua 1:2 through this morning’s message from the apostle our church connects to (Steve Uppal, at about 17.30 mins on this link) – “Moses My servant is dead; now therefore arise [to take his place], cross over this Jordan, you and all this people, into the land which I am giving to them, to the sons of Israel.”

It’s a verse that God has spoken to me often over the last season. His message could not be more clear: The old was anointed in its season, but now it’s dead. We mustn’t try to go back. We have to accept it is gone, leave it behind and move on, without looking back or longing for it above what God is calling us into. That way idolatry lies.

Lord, help us to resist that temptation to recreate the old – help us to keep our eyes fixed on you and trust you as a newlywed bride following her Beloved wherever He leads, even to a land not yet sown (Jer 2:2).

Amen.