When you’ve spent a lot of years wandering in the desert, it can be hard to maintain a vision for your promised land. You may have even wandered so long that you’ve begun to IDENTIFY with the desert. 

Maybe this means reflexively telling yourself the trials of the desert aren’t so bad because they could always be worse. Maybe this means looking for the good and figuring out how to be grateful in the midst of it. 

Gratitude for the present is good and healthy, but without a sustained vision for the future, complacency easily grows in it’s place. 

I know for me, God has used our desert seasons to reshape my faith from complacent and passive, to a much more active faith. It was extended trials that first showed me my need for a Savior and ultimately led me to the feet of Jesus. But it was years, before I began to understand and activate the authority in prayer I was given as a daughter of Christ.

God has used your last season to prepare you for the next. You are empowered to partner with Him through your authority in prayer too. Matthew 16:19 says, “I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.”

Just like we change out our clothes when earth’s seasons change, maybe it’s time to take a more active role in shifting the seasons of our lives too.

As much as I love summer, I just wasn’t meant to live in it forever. If the seasons didn’t change, growth in the physical world would stall out and stagnate. Similarly, we won’t grow in our spiritual lives without readying ourselves for our next life season.

Faith + Vision = Activated Faith. Believe the best is yet to come, live accordingly in faith, and so it will be.