You need to think differently in the season, because it’s new season, which means a new mindset, and it means a new way of thinking and an anticipation, and I think we almost need to go back to the naivety of pre-COVID, and say come on, the world is good. God is excited with us as we journey with him, around what is coming for the future for all of us.
If you find yourself facing a change in season, then maybe it’s time for you to join Phil as he discusses how to adjust your mindset, and place your trust and expectation in God during the transition.
If you’re the kind of person that only worries about feeling good today, you definitely won’t want to be challenged by Phil in this podcast. But, if you’re game, grab yourself some time and enjoy coffee with Phil.
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- Bible Reference: 1 John 5:4 -15
- Podcast: CWP. 34. Advance and occupy
- Podcast: CWP. 44. New Season, New You
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Well, hi and welcome to the podcast again. My name’s Phil and it’s a privilege to be with you on this glorious day. Looking outside the window and the sky is blue. The sun is shining and it is beautiful. And that is because in New Zealand, where I am recording this at this time of year, we are shifting seasons, and I would say in this Coffee with Phil, episode number 44, that we’re in a new season, and I would say new season new you, and that’s not a cliche, it’s a promise, it’s a declaration of faith, and I’m declaring it over you and over me. And I want to say to you today, what that means for me, and what I’m experiencing, and what I would suggest you could experience if you would align yourself with what God is doing. So, let’s talk about that.
Before I do just wanna remind you, make sure you please subscribe to the podcast, it really helps to spread the word, by the number of subscribers we have and the people that are sharing this podcast. And look, I’m enjoying putting this together, and I just see the numbers rolling. So it’s fun, it’s fun, it’s good, it’s about impacting each other’s lives by journeying together, and this is one of the ways that I’m able to do that. So, appreciate you being part of my community of listeners, and if every you wanna reach out to me, feel free, because I’d love to have a coffee with you, whether it’s in person or virtually. So, let’s get into today’s episode, new season, new you.
I would say to you that we have shifted seasons spiritually and I’ve been sensing this for a while, I’ve been anticipating it, and I’ve been grinding my way through what I would call the close of winter. And again, in New Zealand, it’s been dark, it’s been cold, there’s snow on the mountains, the wind is cold. When you’re in the sunshine it’s nice, but it’s brief. And then it gets cold again real fast. And that’s what the end of winter seasons are like in the natural, and it’s what winter seasons are like in the spiritual context, in the personal context. But I would say to you, of a prophetic sense, that I’m seeing that God has shifted the season. Now this is, I’ll give you an example in a minute, but I also just want to reiterate as something that I shared with my church on the weekend and that is that this is literally tied into the fact that in the Jewish calendar in the civil calendar, we have just transitioned past Rosh Hashanah, which is the new year, it was last Friday, in New Zealand and our Saturday, but it was last weekend anyway. And the year is 5784.
So the Jews would declare that to be 5784 years since Adam. And for them the numbers are significant, and in fact prophetic for what God is doing. So very briefly, I’ll just share with you the decade and the year. The 84, the number 8, the decade 80. The Jews would say in the calendar that that declares the year pey P E Y, which means the mouth, which is about what we speak, and what we declare, and I want to move toward that at the end. But also 84. Number four is representing a door. It’s representing a door. And so we would suggest on the basis of this that God is opening doors. He opens doors that no one else can open, and those are the ones we want to see open. God comes and opens doors. But my friends, what I’m learning is that it does require me to choose to walk through them. And that’s where the wisdom comes in, it’s where the faith and obedience comes in. Because if I’m not willing to cross the threshold, then I’m not going to see what’s on the other side of the door.
I hope you’re feeling a little bit of anticipation and excitement in understanding that for you personally, God is shifting seasons. And in this new season for me, I’m anticipating a new me. I’m anticipating a new experience. I’m anticipating new things. I wanna talk about that in a minute. But before I do, I just want to really reiterate to you, because I promised to share how I walk this out. My podcast is all about my journey of faith and sharing it in a way that hopefully encourages you in your walk of faith, and your life. And so I just want to say to you. I’ve had so many aspects of confirmation about this in an amazing kind of way.
As a church board, so you know, you may know that I’m a leader in a local church, which requires me to be participating in a board of elders. And as a group, we meet monthly, and we pray, and we seek God’s intervention in our church world. And we have been sensing and speaking out across the church family for, I’m gonna say, almost a year now, that the time was coming for moving into a new season, and our language was crossing over, and I did share a podcast with you recently, sort of, Coffee with Phil, Mid 30s. Look for one called Advance and Occupy, about moving into new territory in space. But I’m saying to you that has been a sense for a while. And then, just last evening in a prayer time, one of my friends was speaking out confidently that God, the spirit of God, was saying that, just in the same way that in New Zealand, when we see springtime emerge, we’re seeing new life all around us. And obviously in New Zealand that looks like a whole lot of baby lambs, little white lambs bouncing around the green pastures. You can drive in any direction from where I live right now, and you see hundreds of new lambs bouncing around the pastures and chasing their mothers, chasing each other, and it’s new life everywhere. But also, as I look out across the valley below my house, I see trees of colour. I see pink blossoms. I see lavender blossoms. I see dark blossoms, and I see the light green colour of new growth. And I’d say to you that this is the spring time, we’re seeing evidence of it around us, and we should anticipate that that’s gonna happen in our lives, and that’s really what I have, a sense of excitement for.
Finally, I would just share with you that as a confirmation again this week, the night previous to that, still just this week, I’ve had board meetings all week it feels like. But I was part of a Christian School board meeting. We had a couple of meetings on Monday night, and as we paused to pray, as we always do at the beginning of our meeting, there was like a general, like a quickening of what God was starting to say to us as a group. And now this is, I’m saying to you, this is a group completely independent of the church board, but in a different environment, the same Holy Spirit, was speaking about open doors and new ways to look at our future. And so I’m saying, there we go, we’ve got four different signs as confirmation that bring me to the point where I’m anticipating, with a high level of expectation, that God has brought us into the new season, that the season has changed. And as colours and new life emerge, we will see great things that God is doing.
For me?
So, I would say to you again, my friends, as I say to myself, to encourage myself, new season, new you. And at the end, I’m gonna ask you, what you think that means for you? What does it mean for me? As I look at my own journey, and I, you know, I’ve been really introspective in this season. And this is kind of scary for me, but I’ll give you the good news first, and then I’ll share what might be scary on the other side of it. But for me, I’m sensing a quickening of solutions. And what I mean by that is, I feel like the distance to travel between need and answer has reduced. I’m seeing several instances at the moment, where I’m sort of seeing a need arise in life and not, I’m saying not in every situation. But I’m seeing an increase, in the numbers of situations I’m facing where I’m seeing a quickening of solutions and it’s not taking as long to come to the answer, and that’s fantastic. I also feel like the pace of momentum has increased. Now that is a good thing, and also not a good thing, if we get caught up in the rip, or the vortex of what that is. And I’ll speak about that in a minute. But I also feel that there’s, and I’m saying this almost prophetically over my own life, and you can hold me to account to this, and we’ll see what God does, he is the author. So we’ll get to that in a minute. But the point I’m saying is that there’s new things around the corner, and it’s very near. And I’m saying that again to make sure that I hear it, and to make sure you hear it. In my life I’m feeling like there are new things around a corner, and that is very near to me, and I’m excited about that. You know, obviously transition from old to new requires letting go, obviously moving space into a new season with God requires that winter must finish and we must finish it well.
I remember, in the previous house that we owned, out in the country, we had a big fire, and we used to enjoy the warmth and the atmosphere that that fire created through the winter. And it obviously required me and the kids to cut and stack firewood, and Kathy and I used to just love those seasons where we would have family days outside, cutting and stacking wood. But then, you know, you gotta bring that wood in, and you gotta store it in the house, and that means the weta’s and the cockroaches come in with the firewood, and they get stored in the area that you have the fire, and then, of course, you light the fire and there’s smoke everywhere, and ash. And my point in telling you that story, is that at the end of winter they just used to do a major clean, because there was soot and ash and debris from the firewood that we needed to clean up at the end of the season. And so when I say that I’m anticipating new things around the corner, and that’s very near for me. I’m also recognising that I’m going to need to tidy up a few things, clean out the mess and the cobwebs, clean out the dust of the last season and move into a new space. And all this sounds exciting for someone like me who is very charged by, positively charged by, new things.
This is positive, but…
But I would also say as much as this is positive, it also brings risk for me. Because I’ve shared with you guys before, my greatest strength can also be my weakness. And so my desire to see new, and change, and the progress and advancement is a strength, and, you know, I know that, but it also is a weakness, because it brings the risk of overload. It brings the risk of me being too busy and not having margin, not having rest, and not having the energy to even survive a whole week, and I’ll give you an example of that in a minute. It’s also bringing a risk for me of being distracted. It’s also bringing the risk of overwhelm and stress, and I’ve got an example for that as well.
So, in this, let me just share with you, you know, this week, it’s really positive, it exciting. But it brings risk. And just this week I really, I realised that last week was chaos, and I had a couple of days where I did some pretty long days of meetings. I don’t mind doing long days, but when I have long days of meetings, they’re really draining at the moment for me, and so I had a day specifically where I had, and I was out the door before eight in the morning. And because of the length of the meetings and what was going on in the evening, I really didn’t finish up with people doing nine o’clock at night. And I struggled the next day to even focus, and the weekend was long for me, and I needed to find periods of time where I just sat with a cup of tea in the chair and looked at the wall. But what I’m saying to you is that the risk of quickening, and pace, and momentum, brings busyness, which can bring a huge risk. And so I’m really grateful for the time that I’ve had this year, and the last year, to learn some new disciplines of managing my rhythm, my pace, and the momentum. And I have shared many times with you in this podcast around that recently. So get back into some of those and learn about momentum from what I’ve been teaching and experiencing, really just through my story.
I’d also say to you that I’ve recognised that overwhelm is a risk. And just that stress that comes from having too much in my head, and coming at me. And I even said this to Kathy, I think it was only yesterday morning. I’m just like, look, I’m really sorry, I just can’t even face that today, I’ve got so much going on in my head, I’ve got so many people coming at me, I can’t take another thing on, and if I do, I’m gonna yell. So can you please carry this one thing for me, and she was very gracious. And look, it wasn’t a major thing, it was just, I just don’t want it, don’t give me another problem. And that is a sign to me of overwhelm, and by that, I just have too much on my plate, and I’ve got to push stuff aside. So, what I’m suggesting to you, in my journey, is that I’m excited about what’s coming, but I’ve got to be careful to manage myself. Because the new positive, is very exciting, but it comes with risk.
I’d also say that the new positive also brings hope, and for some of you, and or some of us, because I’m including me in this, when you come out of a winter season where you’ve seen things naturally die away, or you’ve had to prune back, cut off things in your life, then there’s a real hope that comes with the idea that new things might be birthed, or have new growth. Jackson was telling me the other day about his roses that he’s got at his house, and he pruned them, and he pruned them hard, and now he’s starting to see the new growth, and he’s really excited to see the new flowers come on his rose bushes at the house, and that’s a great example of the anticipation that we can have, and the hope that we should have, that God is doing something to bring new life into our world.
And so for me I’m thinking. OK, what are these new things? I don’t sense a major, major career change, I don’t sense I’m relocating to the other side of the world. But I do expect to see new life all around me. I expect to see God opening those doors, and this is the year 5784 and I’m speaking out my faith, and I say God, you are the one who opens doors and lead us through the threshold. So there’s a real hope. And I say that to me, because the flip side of the season is that the enemy wants to steal away that hope, and he wants to bring despondency and despair, and he wants to accuse you of not being good enough to receive it, and for me, the dark time in the early morning is often a time where I get those thoughts flooding in my head. But I’ve learned to recognise they’re not me, and a good friend shared this with me in a previous season of life, because he had learned that, you know, three in the morning the Devil knocks on the side of your head and starts shouting negative thoughts at you, and if it wakes you up, and it does wake me up. If it wakes you up, it can wrap you up in a blanket of fear, or despair and hopelessness, and so you really gotta learn how to apprehend that and turn it around.
The other thing I’d say in this new season, it’s really positive, is this expectancy of hope becomes a fresh way of thinking. And what I’ve got to do is ask the Lord to help me to reprogram the way I’m thinking, because this is very, very different to the previous season that all of us have been walking through. You know, we had that anticipation at the beginning of 2020 that the world was changing. We didn’t even know what lockdown meant. And I remember sitting at a family lunchtime table and reading. We were all reading the news on our phone and watching news updates, thinking what will, lock down? What is that? And what is COVID? And what is happening in the world? And we were seeing just reports of horrendous deaths around the world, and so we got programmed in the last season, in the last three and a half years, of a negative way of thinking, and a fearful way of thinking, and a very judgmental, condemning kind of way. And I’m saying to myself, come on Phil, you need to think differently in the season, because it’s new season, which means a new mindset, and it means a new way of thinking and an anticipation, and I think we almost need to go back to the naivety of pre-COVID, and say come on, the world is good. God is excited with us as we journey with him, around what is coming for the future for all of us. So, what I’m saying is positive but with risk, so, I’ve got learn to self manage. I’ve got a positivity that’s bringing hope in a new way. But there’s a risk that the devil will try and steal that, and then it’s expectancy which brings a new way of thinking.
And so I’m now really challenging myself, well, if this is a new season that means a new you, what does new you even look like? What do I want it to look like? Or more importantly, what is God saying to me around what that looks like? Is it shifting some of my disciplines or habits? Is it? It’s certainly shifting my mindset, which means I need to change the way I talk, which means I need to change the way I think. And so I think a really good question for me to write down. Here’s me coaching myself and speaking to myself. You’re welcome. You get this for free, is I need to sit down and say, what does that new you even look like? What do you want it to look like? What is God saying it should look like? What’s he inviting me into? And I just see a picture as I’m saying this. I just see a picture of Jesus sort of sitting on the mountainside, but elevated from where I’m at, and he says, come, come up higher, come up higher. Come and see what I see. Come and sit with me and learn what I’m saying, and understand what I’m doing, and be part of what I’m doing. And so I’m receiving that right now as a prophetic encouragement. But I’d also even say that you could receive it as a prophetic invitation for you to go and find that higher place and sit with Jesus.
As I kind of wind this up, I just want to also land on something that’s becoming more important, and it comes back to the year of the mouth, and the declaration, or the speaking out what God is working on. And so, the headline, or the sub headline here for you and me is, we’ve got to be praying in agreement with what God is saying. Now you might go, oh my gosh, blimmen heck you asked me to pray, and it’s like, well, yeah, I am. But the point is, a prayer is a conversation with God, and conversation, if you think about, if you and me were sitting down having a coffee. If you were literally having Coffee with Phil, then we would be talking, and there would be many aspects, I would suggest there would be many aspects of what we were saying where we would agree with each other, and we would go back and forth in conversation to bring clarity, and bring anticipation of what’s next, and to ask questions for clarification of what’s being discussed, and we’d be in agreement. Well, that’s what prayer is, it’s a conversation with God, where we’re praying in agreement with what he is saying. Because what, prayer is not, you telling God what he should do, or telling him what, you know you can tell what you think, but I don’t see it’s going to get you very far
Praying in agreement with what God is saying.
So, this is what I just wrote down here, just yes and Amen. God, what would you say to me right now? He’s saying, you know, and for example, Jesus literally just said come up higher, come and sit with me and see what I see, and see what I’m doing, and work out how you can join in with what I’m doing. So, I say yes and amen to that. And then what I’m going to do is I’m going to say well, I can recreate my world with my words. So I can begin each day by saying, OK, Jesus, you’ve invited me higher to see what you’re doing, to hear what you’re saying, and to be a part of what’s happening around me, and I thank you Jesus that you would include me in that, and I am now expecting to see you working around me, and I’m expecting to see how I can do my part in what you’re doing. This is this is an example of how I’m praying in agreement with what God is saying. I got a little warning here for myself and it’s very important for all of us. You can’t manipulate God, but you can agree with him. So that’s where I think we just need to grow up a little bit in how we’re praying, and listen to what God’s saying, and agree with him. So, I’ve written down some stuff for me here, six keywords, and I want to give them to you because I think they’re gonna help some of you. And that’s my goal with this podcast. It’s not just rant and rave, but it’s actually, give you something of value.
So here goes, here’s what I’m saying. If you want to learn how to pray effectively then this is what I’d suggest. First, ask. Second, wait. Third, hear. Fourth, receive. Number five, agree. And number six, declare. So that’ll be in the show notes, so make sure you get the show notes. Scroll down at the bottom and click the link and you can get the transcription. You’ll see these six things listed there for you.
You know the important part about getting an agreement with God is first to ask what he’s saying, and then wait for him to speak. You know, too many times we think our prayers gotta be filled with words, and God’s like, will you just stop talking a minute so you can hear me? So, wait, ask and wait, and then hear. And God is very keen to speak to those who are willing to listen. We he speaks something and you hear it, then you’ve gotta receive it, and that’s saying, God, I hear what you’re saying, and then fifth I’m gonna choose to agree with what you’re saying, by agreeing, I’m aligning my heart with what God is saying. And then fourth, finally I’m sorry, the number six, was declare, that just comes back to me speaking out with my mouth, remember 5784, the decade of the mouth, pey. I’m gonna declare what God has said, and I’m gonna be in agreement with him, because my world can be recreated by my words that are in agreement with heaven. And I just want to give you a scripture for this because I really just want to anchor it in the Bible, and so, 1 John chapter 5, verse 14 and 15. John’s writing this beautiful letter full of love and he’s saying, hey, you know, you guys, you know, just be wrapped up in God’s love, and then he says this, and we are confident that he, Jesus, hears us whenever, we ask for anything that pleases him, and since we know he hears us when we make our requests, we also know he will give us what we ask for. Now I’m suggesting that that is affirmation of the idea that God wants to partner with us. But I’m suggesting to you first, that you partner with him, and then you come into agreement.
For you?
Right, so, as we close, I just wanna, just really bounce this back to you. I wanna turn the tables, or hold up a mirror and point back to you, and say, what do you expecting? What’s your new you? This is a new season, I’m confident that it’s a new season, I’m declaring it’s a new season. I’m saying what does it mean for you? What new things are you really leaning in hope for? And again, I’m not saying this, I’m not asking you this so you can then go back and manipulate God. I’m really creating a hunger, or wetting your appetite for more of what God’s got in this new season. And I’m, I believe that for some of you, it’s gonna be major healing is around the corner. Physical, emotional, and spiritual healing. I believe some of you are gonna walk into a season of breakthroug in certain areas of your life, where you really feel like you’ve been beaten up, beaten down, and you’ve just got nothing left. I spoke with a guy this week, and he just looked at me with tears in his eyes and he just said, man, I’m empty, I’ve got nothing left. And I believe in situations like that, and there’ll be some of you listening right now that are in situations like that, where God is going to bring a breakthrough that’s miraculous. I beleive some of you are going to find new relationships, friendships, or a significant other, it’s around the corner. Have eyes opened to be obedient to what God’s asking you to, because the season of preparation that you’ve been walking through, that’s been quite a long one, God says thank you for being obedient, thank you for being faithful, I’m now going to walk you into a new relationship.
Finally, the last thing I wrote down here is, I think there’s going to be some long term issues have a turn around, long term issues have a turn around. So, I would just take that as a bit of a prophetic promise that you can hold it in your hand and say, God, is this for me? I’d really like this to be for me, and God, do I have permission to pick this up and have faith that you’re doing something in my life in this area? So healing, breakthrough, relationship, and long term issues changed.
Well, I hope there’s planted seeds of hope in you that God says it’s a new season and a new you, and if you’re in my world, I’m grateful for it and I’d love to journey with you in that. So reach out, let’s have coffee with Phil, and let’s talk more about what God’s doing in each of our lives. God bless you. Enjoy your day, and I’ll be back with you as soon as I can. Alright, catch you later.