There is a question I have learned to ask myself, and I want to ask it of you this week. Who actually owns your life? Not on paper. Not in the way you would answer if someone asked you politely over coffee. I mean underneath all of that. In the place where decisions that shape your experience are really made. In the place where you react before you think, where you reach before you choose, where you become someone you did not entirely intend to be. Who is holding the controlling shares in there?
The people of God were never meant to be a people of stagnation, but a people of movement. Stagnation breeds decay. When the Holy Spirit shows up, we call it a move of the Spirit. God is ever at work, drawing His people into His movements, into His procession. He is a King and whenever He moves there is a Procession. Every procession has order, protocol, and qualification. All are invited, but not all may enter. Those who seek to usurp the King's glory cannot remain. Perjurers and liars cannot ride with the King. The proud and arrogant cannot walk in His company. The sexually perverse cannot enter His holy procession toward the Throne.
Early this morning, in my time with Jesus, I was thinking back on some of the changing seasons Steve and I have gone through in our marriage. There was the season we lived in Africa for almost two years, the season when we enjoyed a very stable pastoral ministry, and the season when we transitioned out of pastoral ministry and into the world of missions. There have been seasons where we traveled internationally and seasons where we've done more ministry here in the States.