(This is an excerpt from letter 19 of Letters to the Pioneers found at www.letterstothepioneers.com)
Dear pioneers,
I feel it's crucial right now to share about the process we all face after one pioneering season ends and another begins.
Years ago we were crossing over into a new year after a long and hard pioneering season when I had a dream.
In the dream, I stood at a crossing with the red lights flashing and waiting for the train to pass. As I stood I could see that on the other side of the tracks, my path multiplied into many paths and so I began trying to look and see where each path led.
It seemed that the path to the far left was pretty straight and I could see something in the distance in that direction. Then the path in the middle was pretty much the same - a few more bends but ultimately seemed pretty well trodden and going somewhere.
Then I felt it, the knowing, the pull, or whatever you’d like like to call that moment where God changes plans and you have to deal with any previous expectations and adjust your sights on a new horizon. I knew that on the other side, I was called to take the unfamiliar path… yet again.
To be honest my heart sank. I’ve been on that road far too many times. I know the loneliness of it and the constant misunderstanding. I know there are far more bears to fight there and arrows to deflect. “Can I handle this again?” I thought. Then I look to my right and left and I see others like me waiting. “They are probably going to get the easy road. That would be typical.
Then I began to analyse the situation further and ask the Lord; “Is it wrong to long for some reprieve? Is it wrong to desire the road of least resistance for a while? How come others get to enjoy the comfortable road? How come it’s not expected of them?” My heart was starting to feel anger and bitterness bubble up inside like a kettle beginning to boil.“Peace!” I hear a voice say and I instantly come to my senses. It’s the train master about to let us cross and show us where we are meant to go.
Out of nowhere the train screams on past us and shocks me how fast it was going. The wind from the trains motion pushes us all back and whirls around us as it seems to go on and on and on. The train-master preparing to let us cross shortly simply announces “Leave everything behind!” “Everything?” I ask in reply. “Yes, you can’t afford to be distracted on the other side or you’ll end up lost. So leave it behind”.
My heart starts processing at a hundred miles an hour again but this time I’m self-reflecting. “What am I carrying that I need to leave behind?” I ask myself. Then I begin to hear the judgments and labels I had been carrying from other people. I see the faces of those who have hurt me, the dark and painful moments I didn’t understand, and the hope deferred wrapped around me like a counterfeit mantle.
I had seconds left until the train passed and I knew I needed to make peace with behind me, but it felt like a mountain, a roadblock, and a big bag of weight I didn’t know how to get through in time. Then I see it. I see Him. Through the tinted glass of the train I see on the other-side a man staring INTO me as if He knew the wrestle I was in. I stared back awkwardly and kept looking away, looked back, then away, then eventually locked eyes with Him. I knew who He was and He wanted me to know it was ok. He wanted me to know I could forgive them, the accusers, the season, and say goodbye to the path behind me. So in those split seconds I did exactly that.
Whewww what a weight off my shoulders! The train and now passed and we all crossed over and I stopped at the beginning of this new and unknown path but somehow I didn’t feel what I felt before. I didn’t feel like I had been dealt a bad hand. It felt fresh. I felt fresh. I was now ready to move on and embrace the new whatever that looked like. I didn’t need to look behind anymore. I didn’t need to prove myself or anyone wrong and i didn’t need to justify my steps. Something was different. Then to my surprise I heard a loud noise of people laughing and talking loudly behind me and I turned to see hundreds of others all joining me in the same path! “Who are you?” I asked. “We have been following you for years and we finally caught up!” They said.
This is for the pioneers who right now are at the end of one pioneering season and crossing over into a new chapter and are feeling the pull of a new unknown or detour. You have been wrestling a holy discontent and pull to move into a different lane than most yet again.
Maybe you are trying to reconcile your last season and last unknown trek and the flood of emotions and memories of the trials are screaming at you. Maybe you are just trying to move out of exhaustion and the thought of running alone is too painful for you to bare.
Know this;
- You are in a OFFLOAD moment. A moment where God us taking care of business and freeing you from every burden you have been carrying.
- Something feels different about this new unknown. Get ready to meet the other Wildpack.
- Get ready to see the fruit of your last pioneering season.
- Get ready to move in something new and it’s time to shed the old and embrace something fresh.
“WILL YOU CARVE A NEW PATH WITH ME?”
At the beginning of the year I had a dream where I felt like the Lord was speaking to the church that it was crucial for us right now to break away from the ways and methods we have been operating.
In fact it felt like a warning that unless we did pioneer this year in some way we would find ourselves feeling dry, stale, out-dated, and expired.
But it was more than that. He showed me that places of comfortability can become ceilings that then over time become compromise.
As we crossed over I felt it - the grace period on certain activities, methods, and messages was beginning to wane and God was wanting us to dream-forward with the Lord.
Then that dreaming turned into an awkward and painful wrestle with the new that felt so obscure and what was clearly changing and ending. It was a difficult balance or dance to maintain.
The other difficulty was trying to reconcile what we expected and what we were seeing. The door we thought we were opening didn’t end up being the door that came before us, and the package destiny was wrapped in just felt unfamiliar.
I know you had to see many seeds fall to the ground in the last few years. NnI know that pain. I know it doesn’t feel fair and you still have so many questions un-answered.
I know that you had to close more doors than you opened and leave behind far more than you were picking up.
I know it was a big sacrifice and I know that few understood you for it.
I mean you could have taken that opportunity, that position, that deal, that offer, that much easier way but you wouldn’t have felt right.
You could have stayed in that alignment, relationship, and connection but it would have felt like compromise to you.
What people don’t understand about you and maybe you don’t yet see either is that this is not about pioneering to you although that’s the outcome - this is a worship.
Like David dancing the ark back to its rightful place and being ridiculed for it. It’s your worship.
Like John the Baptist eating, dressing, and speaking differently to get an unusual message across - this is your worship.
And like Elisha slaying his oxen and burning his old tools to go follow the call of God - this is your worship.
And right now all of heaven is cheering you on because you have said yes to a life of following the Spirit of God where few say yes to go.
Because it’s uncomfortable at first It can be painful. It’s harder to navigate because there is no map for it.
But the fruit….. the fruit is unlike anything else you will ever see. And it’s the fruit that God is so eager for us to see this year.
You were not created to go through the motions. You were not created to tick all the boxes of human possibility but you were created to be a revealer of new and the impossible.
Right now the Holy Spirit is BROODING over His church and SEARCHING intently for the ones who are willing to BREAK AWAY from the pack, from the mundane, from the safe.. and reveal the new ember burning quietly on the inside of them.
Those willing to pay attention to the still small voice and fan that flame.
This is a year to pioneer because it is time that the church births what the enemy has been trying to prevent us from birthing!
We have been in a warzone and the target has been our creativity, innovation, strategies, and legacy.
There are songs that need to be written that become the soundtracks of revival that lead us out into open pastures. There are songs that need to come that will be the breakers for those in the church that are STUCK..
There are anthems aching to be sung by a generation that know they are alive for more than just reacting to and enduring the noise of the news and are awakened to their purpose.
There are books that need to come. The library of heaven is full of books that have not been pulled down to earth. There are ideas and inventions, and powerful blueprints that need to come.
As they come, they will become weapons in our hands against the enemies plans and we will storm the frontlines as the force to be reckoned with.
As I am writing this I am seeing scrolls falling with the words redemption written upon them and I feel like they are the blueprints of global redemption and restoration. God is giving out assignments today and strategies to turn around that Injustice, to solve that problem, and heal that issue.
Will you receive them? Will you take the path less travelled this year to see the fruit you have been craving to see?
I know you have felt the strange discontent like somehow there was MORE than what you were seeing. This was the Lord giving you the heads up saying “I am changing your appetite because I have something remarkable around the corner”
And where you have spent a year burying dreams and desires, and feeling so heart sick from the ending of an era of your life, this will be a year of LIFE & PLANTING THE NEW.
But what is this all for? Pioneers are those who break the church OUT of stagnant places and bondage and break us INTO places of blessing and breakthrough.
They are the ones who charge through the smokescreens and invite us into the new landscape.
They bring new language never spoken and print the news heaven is speaking.
They are the brokers of the fresh spring and the NOW word of the lord - hot on the pulse of where the Holy Spirit is moving.
“For those who are led by the Spirit of God are the children of God” Romans 8:14
And I hear Him saying “Will you come?”
Let’s go back to go forward. Let’s get low to go higher. Let’s lay down our plans to pick up something better.
Leave the last few years behind. Ask Him to refresh you and let’s begin!
QUESTIONS TO ASK GOD THAT WILL HELP YOU PIONEER
DANGEROUS PIONEER PRAYERS