It feels great to be blogging again! After 10 years of writing and wordpress-messing, we went on a hiatus in August and coming back today just before Xmas and new year 2020. It was like pulling over after 10 years driving. Parked the car on the roadside, went to the lake for 4 months and just rethink about everything.
Have you ever started a new chapter in your life? Here’s some of my thoughts about it.
Sometimes you go without knowing where it will take you, and it can be scary.
When we decided to halt the blog in August 2019 and said to everyone “we’re opening a new chapter 2”, there was nothing in that chapter 2! It was a big blank question mark and we had zero idea or plan about what we’re going to become next. This is the reason it took so long, not the technical web building aspects.
All I know with certainty was the previous chapter was done.
When you put something to a full stop, many unexpected things could happen. Sometimes you might discover that you’re better off without it and never continue the journey despite you said to everyone you were just taking a break. You could also slipped on your discipline – since full stop means letting it drop completely – and finding “the touch” and building the habit again is just too difficult. You fall out.
Sometimes it happens for good reason. If all you know is God wants a certain chapter done and He’s not telling you what’s next, sometimes it’s better to go into that unknown next than staying in the known past.
Once you step out, you start to discover the next piece of your identity.
Cowards don’t go to heaven (Rev 21:8). God does not reveal anything to the cowardly, those who truly embrace the Holy Spirit are transformed into brave and courageous people, because God unlock secrets to them. The people who have seen the secrets of the real life does not want to go back to the old life. But before this can happen, everyone must make their big step of faith.
Bigger than just finding a theme for the blog, the past 4 months have been absolutely transformative as God opened a bigger clarity and details into what lies ahead for me and my family (hence the main theme of what will be reflected on this blog in the future).
But it couldn’t have happened if I failed to decide to close the blog and announce to every reader about the decision. This is illustrative of many bigger things in life – your life and my life.
You gotta make the decision to close the old chapter before you can start a new one!
This is the first hard part about starting a new chapter.
The next hard part is finding your next direction.
Often time a new chapter means doing something radically different, and we’ve seen many many examples of Christians failing to switch their tracks and embrace the new direction that God wants them to embark.
More than we would like to admit, but we Christians are not the best people when it comes to EMBRACING CHANGE. From the stubborn Israelites in the desert to the Pharisees in Jerusalem, majority of God followers tend to have a very bad score when the test is about coping with changes.
Somehow our minds harden very quickly like cement and when God tells us to do something differently, we either mistaken Him as satan (just like the Pharisees with Jesus) or we fail miserably at the task in hand because we hesitate too much.
When you make the first leap of faith to close the previous chapter, God will then unlock the next chapter and the Holy Spirit will give you confirmation of direction. After this takes place and you see where you have to go, DON’T LOOK BACK! RUN WITH EVERYTHING YOU’VE GOT WITHOUT HOLDING BACK, WITHOUT HESISTATING! DON’T MIND THE NOISE AROUND YOU, MIND THE ONLY VOICE THAT’S GUIDING YOU, THE VOICE OF THE LORD!
This is where we are right now and we are running to the direction which the Lord has confirmed us. Hope this speaks also to anyone who is also being led to a new chapter in life. Hope you like the new look of the blog and find it easy to navigate around. See you in the next post soon!
What do you think?