When the Seasons Change

David, despite his misfires and the range of twists and turns reflected in his amazing yet turbulent life, was described by God in Acts 13:22 as “a man after My own heart, who will do all My will.” This was the key thread defining this incredible, overachieving leader of God’s people. One we might describe as a man for all seasons, while indeed, navigating the extremes in the change of seasons that he encountered.

Not unrelated to these change-of-seasons, the life of David was characterized by being a change-artist. In the course of it all, David changed. But the central, overriding consistency throughout David’s life was his passion for God’s presence and heart.

Jesus, in one of His bedrock admonitions tapped the foundational perspective to this very thing. In giving priority to the people of God’s response to managing the change in life all around them, the Passion translation uniquely captures this truth: “So above all, constantly chase after the realm of God’s kingdom and the righteousness that proceeds from him. Then all these less important things will be given to you abundantly. Refuse to worry about tomorrow, but deal with each challenge that comes your way, one day at a time. Tomorrow will take care of itself.” Matt 6:33-34

It’s about our response to change. David understood and consistently pursued God’s heart …. and His priorities. The result was a life replete with change. Indeed, a life poised to embrace change.

The distinguishing characteristic between Moses and the people of God he led was that Moses’ focus was God’s heart and priorities. Unfortunately, for most of those he led, their focus was on themselves, their own priorities …. which included their resistance to change.

When the seasons change, the focus should be more than simply adjusting. With our identities and destinies linked to God, it behooves us to reach to better understand our response to the priorities of His heart for the emerging season-changes.

With all the change David faced ….. shepherd boy to giant slayer; minstrel-to-the-king to being targeted by the King’s wrath; leader of a band of outlaws to garnering the unity in bringing together all of God’s people. After years of being chased, David organized the military might to conquer the evil nations around him. Yet, at the height of all the exploits in establishing God’s kingdom, David yielded to complacency and became prey to passions that led to his fatal betrayal of one of his most loyal lieutenants.

With his agility in responding to change, David held a formidable grasp of God’s heart and was quick to humble himself with repentance. Nevertheless, as he navigated the peak of his life, he became the target of betrayal by his own flesh and blood. Yet ultimately God honored his desire to be succeeded by the offspring resulting from his previous dalliance.

In all this David’s default reach was for God’s heart and priorities …. chasing the realm of God’s kingdom and the righteousness that proceeds from Him. So, as he faced the sequence of challenges …. some the result of his own making, some the result of his mantle …. David reached for those God-breathed priorities and more of Him. A man after God’s heart, who ultimately accomplished what the Lord wanted him to do.

Discerning and Embracing God’s Opportunity and Change
Times of change require not hesitations, but decisive responses. A ministry we strongly engaged with years ago, hosted gatherings with the moniker of “Out of the Box.” It takes “out of the box” thinking to discern and embrace God’s opportunity. Change requires a consistency in thinking, that is not stymied by the patterns and expectations of a past season. So is the perspective needed to face a new season. What has been mobilized in recent months in terms of God’s people seeking the Lord, must now shift into overdrive as an unfolding of both fresh opportunity and challenge mount across the globe.

All of which requires being tapped into the realities now being faced by today’s generation. It begins by being at peace with the tasks at hand …. without either being overwhelmed or in digressing into being seduced by the force and accomplishments of the season past.

Change and Making Peace with the Season
So it is that the response to when the seasons change reflects a twofold focus: first the personal response as a part of the community, while simultaneously facing the big-picture manifesting around us. A bottom-up response alert to the contextual top-down developments …. simultaneously.

The personal response is driven by the community role defined by one’s identity and purpose. The contextual response is driven by the Issachar context of understanding the times and their developments in order to know the needed perspective and how to proceed. Again, recognizing the simultaneous process of the top-down and bottom-up response of God’s people to the overriding, emerging purposes of God.

I recently heard a highly regarded minister describe David as the Elon Musk of his day. While this perspective is instructive, in terms of getting out of the box and seizing the challenges, I believe the role of Joseph the Patriarch reflects even greater insight into the season-change now before us …. and the significance of the role of influence defining the mantles for a range of modern-day Josephs.

Yet, with this role of influence there is another very vital dimension pertinent in the life of Joseph that bears on when the seasons change: Joseph not only was able to make peace with the season-changes, he chose to set boundaries as his anticipatory responses to the impact of the famine proved to be beyond the turbulence tied to the changes, as he discerned the gateways of opportunity.

From being the favored of his father to the sibling betrayal in selling him into slavery. From slavery to a most favored and trusted position within his master’s household. From that place of authority to the bottom dropping out when scripture described him as being shackled in irons. Yet, even then he gained the favor of the jailer, being advanced to another position of trust before being given the opportunity to employ his most significant spiritual gift of dream interpretation, with that resulting in his promotion to a place of absolute authority at Pharaoh’s side. And that was only the beginning.

Understanding the Season and Stewarding the Prophetic
In all these changes, Joseph’s role of influence was the spark for both the challenges and the opportunities. Not unlike David, despite the extremes of the challenging circumstances, Joseph abided in the consciousness of God’s presence.

That abiding shaped Joseph’s response to the changes, both the challenges and the opportunity. Joseph was uniquely gifted in the prophetic, yet it was his diligence in the course of mundane events …. in Potipher’s house and then in prison …. that kept things on-course, capturing the attention of Potiphar and the prison overseer.

Specifically, during these tenuous yet future-impacting seasons, Joseph had both the maturity and discernment to know when his gift was being sought.

One of marks of maturity for prophetic intercessors is in knowing when what is being discerned prophetically is to be held sacred and invested in prayer ….. or when it is to be shared/ imparted/ acted on. Indeed, there is a fine in knowing the difference.

So it is in the season before us, that the key role of the prophetically gifted will rest in knowing the difference in what is to be nurtured/ given birth in the prayer closet and what is to be imparted.

It involves the wisdom needed for timing issues when discerning the difference between casting your pearls before swine and acting on a word from on high. Ignoring that critical difference carries implications of not only diverting the focus of the assignment, but in potentially undermining it.

Combined Anointings and the Authority to Walk a Straight Path
Proverbs 11:2 indicates when pride comes, then comes disgrace. What distinguishes the confidence of acting in faith and the pride tied to the need to show-off one’s gift is indeed a subtle one, marking those being diverted and spinning wheels from those who finish well.

Such spiritual traps are avoided by a mix of abiding and recognizing a key dimension of the season now emerging ….. that being the manifesting of balanced “words” that result from the combined anointings of the mature. Iron sharpens iron with the groundwork that offers a balance that embraces a valid word and avoids presumption …. by adding to it. So it is that we need one another as we submit to one another in humility and holiness, in carefully discerning what is to be acted on.

Where this maturity is demonstrated, the season will be defined by unusual spiritual authority being imparted. Yet it is going to require the exercise of that seasoning and maturity to avoid the religious spirits designed to create diversions from a straight path.

More than in any recent time in history, the issue involves maximizing the opportunity and the timing …. unequivocally holding fast to key values and foundations of righteousness and holiness. Regarding the opportunity, Paul advised the Corinthians (2 Cor 7:1) to bring holiness to completion by means of the fear of the Lord.

Facing the Season: Values and the Spiritual Atmosphere
While it should always be this way, history and the shifts in seasons should have their mark linked to truth and those who can be trusted with truth.

Spiritually-speaking in the course of changing world events, Israel represents the pivot point. Being the pivot point, Israel also is the flash point to watch regarding the spiritual atmosphere that will be determined by the actions of its allies, those of the sheep nations …. and its enemies, the goat nations.

Truth and Israel and the response to the Jewish people …. gleaned through the rhetoric of associated values …. God-breathed values rather than the lure of subtle counterfeits …. represent defining factors regarding responses to season-changes.

Keeping an eye on such value-parameters underscores making peace with the season …. peace that embodies a dual focus. The first is the obvious of embracing the realities of the season head-on. The other is more subtle, involving the anticipatory responses to traversing the toxicity of the spiritual atmosphere that can be both overt and covert.

It is not without significance that scripture reveals that it is God’s peace that is required to guard and rule hearts and minds. Similarly related, is John’s revelation of the time in which the accuser of the brethren, those being targeted for their faith by the intentional agendas of evil spirits, will be cast down. Until then …..

Keeping an Eye on the Needle: Shalom, Values, Prayer, Leadership
The conflict between good and evil has reached a crescendo previously not seen in recent generations. Yet indicators in the spiritual atmosphere point more in the direction of one of the Hebrew definitions of shalom-peace, that being God’s order. It therefore behooves the wise to keep an eye on the needle as the cosmic conflict of the ages, until the time of the Millenium, will always be a subtle, moving target …. advancing God’s order.

Both David and Joseph represented the leadership needed for their generation to keep its eye on the needle …. with prophetically discerned anticipatory responses. This dynamic operating between God’s leadership and the fervent prayers of His people is the driving force which explodes in revival when properly aligned spiritually. It is the unreported factor defining the change in seasons over the course of history.

Patriotism is the definition given to the devotion to and vigorous support of one’s country, embracing that for which that country stands for: its values. The vital and underlying need is in standing up for Judeo-Christian values with unapologetic vigor.

With that standard of vigorous support for these values, what is right, true and supports Israel, is in developing strategic alliances. The battle-cry of these alliances should be as that made by good Queen Bess when boldly facing the Spanish armada: “Let tyrants fear!”

Notwithstanding wayward family members, what distinguished David’s leadership as king was his ability to surround himself with lieutenants who upheld and supported what he knew to be right and true in advancing Israel as a kingdom.

Arising from his misfires, David’s finest thrust was in preparing his chosen son for the generation to follow, who despite his great wisdom failed to follow his father’s legacy-example. Yet, it was this legacy that the council of elders of the early church restored, following the resurrection of Jesus: with the tabernacle of David, which imparted the fire of the Spirit with the resulting explosion of those drawn to the Faith, while simultaneously triggering the fire of persecution from both the religious and political spheres.

God’s people have always been anointed and equipped to be a voice …. as change-artists. So, when the seasons change, genuine leadership will strengthen the foundations and values, articulating and inspiring the people as representatives of these standards in putting them into practice.

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Morris Ruddick has been a forerunner of the Joseph-calling and God’s economy message, being an international voice for the higher dimensions of spiritual game-changers and intercessors since the mid-90s. As founder of Global Initiatives Foundation, the Strategic Intercession Global Network [SIGN] and designer of the God’s Economy Entrepreneurial Equippers Program and the Jewish Business Secrets YouTube series, Mr. Ruddick’s messages equip leaders and economic community builders with strategy where God’s light is dim in diverse regions around the globe.

He is author of “The Joseph-Daniel Calling;” “Gods Economy, Israel and the Nations;” “The Heart of a King;” “Something More;” “Righteous Power in a Corrupt World;” “Leadership by Anointing;” and “Mantle of Fire,” which address the mobilization of business and governmental leaders with destinies to impact their communities. They are available in print and e-versions from www.Amazon.com, www.apple.com/ibooks and www.BarnesandNoble.com.

Global Initiatives Foundation (www.strategic-initiatives.org) is a tax-exempt 501 (c) 3 non-profit whose efforts mobilize economic community builders imparting influence and the blessings of God. Checks on US banks should be made out to Global Initiatives and mailed to 3838 South Wabash Street, Denver CO 80237 or by credit card at https://strategic-initiatives.org/donate/

2024 Copyright Morris Ruddick — info@strategic-initiatives.org

Since early 1996, the Strategic Intercession Global Network (SIGN) has mobilized prophetic intercessors and leaders committed to targeting strategic-level issues impacting the Body on a global basis. For more information go to https://strategic-initiatives.org