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A New Season

This is an excerpt of a message I preached last week to the leaders at Eastside Christian Church in Melbourne, where we have been appointed as new Senior Pastors from January 2010. The CD of this message is being made available to anyone at Eastside who wasn’t able to attend the Leadership Night, and I will also be posting a free MP3 download of it in the FREE STUFF section of this site very soon.

I absolutely believe that this is a new season in my family, marriage, ministry, leadership, and for Eastside corporately and as individual people. I believe that a new season in a church also flows over into a new season in the lives of its people. I shared some thoughts on what is required of all of us in a new season, and Alana outlined a broad picture of what we see for the future of our new church. We are so thankful for the past 26 years of faith-filled history at Eastside, but we are also so expectant for what God wants to do in the new season before us.

Historically and Biblically, significant new seasons for a person or community of people are hallmarked by:

New Leaders
New Vision
New Promises
New Sound
New Names
New Opposition
New Trials
New Tests
New Devils
New Revelations
New Breakthroughs
New Blessings

In Genesis 12:1-9 God begins to speak to Abram about a new season in his life. There are some great keys in this passage on what a new season requires us to do:

1. AWAKEN – “Wake Up!” – New Possibilities

• Gen 12:1-3 Now the Lord had said to Abram: “Get out of your country, From your family And from your father’s house, To a land that I will show you. I will make you a great nation; I will bless you And make your name great; And you shall be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, And I will curse him who curses you; And in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”
• Amos 9:13 Things are going to happen so fast your head will swim, one thing fast on the heels of the other. You won’t be able to keep up. Everything will be happening at once – and everywhere you look, BLESSINGS!
• A new season is a new day – with brand new opportunities and potential
• Requires an awakening from the semi-comatose state many people live their life in – drifting from day to day, meandering in the mindless maze of meaningless mediocrity!
• Proverbs says a wise son makes the most of harvest time, a foolish son sleeps through the day of opportunity
• The possibilities before us are staggering. Eye has not seen, ear has not heard, neither has entered into the heart of man the things which God has prepared for those who love Him…BUT He has revealed it to us by His Spirit.
• We just need to wake up and be aware of what God is saying

2. ARISE – “Get Up!” – New Positioning

• Gen 12:4 So Abram departed as the Lord had spoken to him,
• Don’t roll over and go back to sleep!
• Don’t hit SNOOZE on your new season!
• New seasons require a commitment to learn new things and new ways of doing them, see new things, receive new revelation, grow into new levels of leadership and authority
• It requires a refusal to stay at the same level we have been living at for the past 12 months or even 12 weeks
• Num 13 and Josh 3 says it was harvest season both times the Israelites were brought to the Promised Land. First time they chose their current season of wilderness wandering over God’s purpose of possessing a new day. They bowed to their fears instead of arising into a new positioning in God

3. ATTACH – “Join Up!” – New Personnel

• Gen 12:4, 5 and Lot went with him. And Abram was seventy-five years old when he departed from Haran. Then Abram took Sarai his wife and Lot his brother’s son, and all their possessions that they had gathered, and the people whom they had acquired in Haran, and they departed to go to the land of Canaan. So they came to the land of Canaan
• A new season requires new personnel to join up to the work of sowing or reaping or tending or plowing
• Some people will continue to flourish doing exactly what they have been doing
• Others may be repositioned for greater effectiveness in a new season
• Our prayer and expectation is that every person in Eastside will attach themselves to this new season and be part of the team for this next stage of the journey
• Very quickly others will join us and attach to the vision as well
• Already spoken to people in Melbourne who have decided they will be joining us here because they are excited by the potential of a new season
• We are so blessed to have half a dozen people packing up their lives in Queensland to come with us to serve in any way they can. There are still others in various parts of the country who are praying about joining us for a great adventure of faith

4. AROUSE – “Go Up!” – New Pursuits

• Gen 12:6-9 Abram passed through the land to the place of Shechem, as far as the terebinth tree of Moreh. And the Canaanites were then in the land. ⁷Then the Lord appeared to Abram and said, “To your descendants I will give this land.” And there he built an altar to the Lord, who had appeared to him. ⁸And he moved from there to the mountain east of Bethel, and he pitched his tent with Bethel on the west and Ai on the east; there he built an altar to the Lord and called on the name of the Lord. ⁹So Abram journeyed, going on still toward the South.
• You’ve woken up, gotten up, even joined up – now it’s time to actually do something!
• The Psalmist cried “Arouse yourself – stir up your zeal like a mighty man…”
• We can be awake to a new season, and be willing to lay hold of a new season, and even attach ourselves to a new season
• But until we actually get into action nothing really changes, and a new season passes us by
• There are many great churches in Melbourne, but there are 3 million people with no active Christian faith – 1 million young people who are heading for a lost eternity
• In the new year we will be sharing in detail some of the new pursuits which God is speaking to us about, so that together we can influence this city for Jesus
• We know that God has a significant, divine purpose for this house.
• A new season of faith, miracles, soul winning and kingdom expansion beckons
• Let’s GO UP together!