Everything that grows changes, and everything that changes must go through a transition. Some transitions occur naturally while others are by choice. Then there are those transitions that are forced upon us. All transitions however, have one thing in common and that is that they’re always stressful. The Bible is full of men and women who went through difficult transitions. 

The Bible tells us of a young man named Joseph who his older brothers attacked one day then sold him to slave merchants. Suddenly Joseph was in a horrible transition by no choice of his own. One day God told Abraham, I want you to leave behind everything that is familiar to you and I want you to go to a land that you know nothing about. Abraham too found himself entering into a difficult transition. On another occasion, an Angel of the Lord appeared to a teenage girl named Mary and told her that she was going to have a child who she should name Emmanuel. And for the next nine months, she went through all sorts of shame and embarrassment. 

Transitions are an unavoidable part of life. The problem is that oftentimes when we’re going through difficult transitions we think that God is punishing us. But nothing can be further from the truth. It’s in life’s transitions, when we’re detached from what is familiar to us, that God is able to do His best work in and through us. The problem is that our tendency is to place our trust in the things we’ve built like our jobs, savings account, insurance policy, or in our friends, parents, spouses or families. But when we find ourselves in a difficult transition, then God has our attention. Now we’re willing to pray, read the Bible, and attend church. And God in his immense grace and wisdom uses this opportunity to do something wonderful that he otherwise would not have been able to do.

When we’re going through the difficult transitions of life our tendency is to resist, control, or manipulate. But if we were to surrender to God’s purpose for our lives what we will discover is that in the transition God is able to do His best work in us and through us as well, because at the end of each transition, which you surrender to God, something wonderful will happen. Joseph saved the nation of Egypt and his entire family. Abraham became known as the Father of Faith and Mary became the mother of Jesus. Because when God leads us into a transition it’s always because he has something better for us. 

“What no eye has seen, what no ear has heard, and what no human mind has conceived” — the things God has prepared for those who love him— 1 Corinthians 2:9 NIV