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New Seasons – POSTURE Episode 171

Jun 7, 2021

In the unknown of this exciting new season I’m practicing pointing my imagination in the right direction.

—Key scriptures in this episode:‭

  • Philippians 4:6-9
  • Psalm 27:13
  • Psalm 145:7

Transcript

Today, before we jump into our episode, we are going to meet our newest and probably youngest member of our Posture community, Miss Hannah Lee. Do you want to say hello everyone out there? We just want say thank you so much to this community for all of your prayer and encouragement during my pregnancy with Hannah, the labor and delivery, and just our soaking up the early days of her life during my maternity leave. We have felt every prayer. You guys are such a treasure to us. So thank you. I’m excited to be back from maternity leave this week, coming out with new episodes for Posture Season 6, and don’t you worry, this is probably not the last you’re going to see of Miss Hannah during Season 6. So let’s go ahead and jump into today’s episode.

Posture is a short, audible fist bump to remind you God is with you in everything. Together, we’re going to be emboldened to take a daily Posture of perfect peace. Today, we are going to take a “Posture of Peace” by pointing our imaginations in the right direction.

Philippians 4:6-9 says this, “Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.” That sounds like a very safe space. “Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. What you have learned and received and heard and seen in me, practice these things and the peace of God will be with you.” I love Philippians 4. You know, throughout our lives, we’re going to experience a lot of new seasons. As you know, I have entered a new season called motherhood. Maybe you’re in this new season with me. Maybe your new season has to do with a career or a relationship or perhaps you’ve moved to a new place. And these new seasons are wonderful and full of excitement, but often there is a lot of unknown in our new seasons because we’ve never been here before, right? We just don’t know. And because it’s unknown, there is a lot of opportunity to utilize our imaginations.

You know, we think about what is this going to be like? How will this change affect me? What might never be the same about my life again? You know, we might think about all that we loved in the old season and wonder if we’re going to have the same amount of goodness in the new season moving forward. We may think about all we hated in the old season and wonder, you know, is that negativity going to continue on and follow me into this new season? There’s so much to think about. There’s a ton of opportunity in transition, in new seasons, in transformation to exercise our imaginations and our imaginations, by the way, are a gift from God. They’re not a dirty thing. They’re a holy thing.

Now, do you find that your imagination often heads down the path of all that could go wrong in the new season? Especially when you maybe come up against a hard circumstance in the new season. You might think, oh shoot, here we go again. Or where is this going to lead? I definitely have experienced that. And for me, I found that often it wasn’t the hard thing in front of me. It wasn’t the circumstance I was facing right then that was causing, you know, the anxiety or the panic or the stress. It was instead where I was allowing my imagination to go that was causing the panic and the anxiety, the stress, the fear. It was thinking about where is this hard circumstance going to potentially lead? And I realized I was pointing my imagination in the wrong direction. I was allowing what could potentially go wrong to prophesy to me about what would go wrong. And, you know, in some cases I was allowing what did go wrong in past seasons, what I had experienced in past seasons, dictate how I would move forward in the new season, but as sons and daughters of the most high God, you and I have been promised a much better way.

And Philippians 4 gives us some really helpful encouragement about how we can use our God-given imaginations. You know, it talks about bringing all of our requests to God. Don’t hold anything back. Tell Him about everything in your life. That’s what I’m practicing doing right now. I’m actually practicing bringing things to the Lord before I bring it to anyone else. And then Philippians 4 encourages thanksgiving, gratitude. I believe thanksgiving protects our imaginations, especially when we feel vulnerable to the unknown. And then it gives specifics here in Philippians 4 about what specifically to think about.

You know, David wrote in Psalm 27:13, he said, “I would have lost heart unless I had believed I would see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living.” And later David writes in Psalm 145:7, he says, “They shall utter the memory of your great goodness and sing of your righteousness.” One version says, “They shall bubble up with the memory of your great goodness,” speaking of God’s goodness. When you feel pressed by circumstances, when you feel pressured by the pain of the past, you know, you get to choose, what am I going to be overwhelmed by in this new season, in this hard thing? Will it be the hard thing or will I be overwhelmed by the goodness of God? What will you allow to bubble up inside of you in those moments? Will it be the memories of God’s goodness, will it be thoughts of his goodness in your future? Or will it be fear or worry or trauma? You know, God’s goodness is present with us in every situation, good, bad or ugly, because he is present in every situation. The Bible says He will never leave us nor forsake us. So we can always carry a healthy expectation of His goodness. We can always be looking for His goodness in every season of our lives. It’s healthy to carry that expectation in our hearts always. Now take note of what it says in Philippians 4:9. It says, “Practice these things.” And I find that so encouraging that I don’t have to execute this perfectly today, but I get to practice it over and over again until it becomes permanent in my life.

So that’s what I want to encourage you to do today. Start practicing this truth. Start pointing your imagination in the direction of God’s goodness. And here’s the promise, you know, in verse 7, it says that the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, is going to guard your heart and your mind in Christ Jesus. And in verse 9 it promises that the peace of God will be with you in the practice. So remember today, even if our circumstances don’t change immediately, even if we continue to have to face the unknown in this new season, you know, things might not change immediately but we will. We are going to be transformed from glory to glory.