Trusting God At The Threshold Of Change

"Forget the former things; do not dwell on the former things; do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland.” - Isaiah 43:18–19

Most people assume that the hardest part of a difficult season is the middle of it — the long, dark stretch where the pain is sharpest and the end is nowhere in sight. And that stretch is genuinely hard. But there is another moment that can catch you completely off guard: the threshold. The place where the hard season has finally ended and something new is beginning to open up in front of you. You expected to feel relief. Instead, you feel something more complicated — hesitation, disorientation, and a fear you didn't anticipate. The fear of the new thing.

It sounds counterintuitive. But it is more common than most people admit, and it is worth taking seriously.

The Israelites understood this more than most. After forty years in the desert, some of them actually mourned what they were leaving behind. The familiar, even when it was painful, had become home in its own strange way. Crossing the Jordan meant trusting God with terrain they had never walked before, and that trust required something that surviving had not: the willingness to receive something genuinely new.

Isaiah's words in chapter 43 were spoken to a people in exile — a people who were well acquainted with the long wilderness, who had every reason to be defined by what they'd endured. And God's invitation to them is striking in its directness: stop dwelling on the former things. Not because the former things didn't matter, but because focusing on what was — even the painful what-was — can become its own way of resisting the new thing God is preparing. 

New seasons don't always mean the landscape changes overnight. They often mean God begins to do something in the same terrain that you couldn't see Him doing before. The threshold isn't the end of difficulty — it's the beginning of a different kind of His faithfulness.

Every threshold in Scripture that was crossed in faith — from the Red Sea to the Jordan to the sealed tomb to the upper room — was crossed by people who did not know exactly what was waiting on the other side. They crossed because they trusted the God who was calling them forward. That same call is extended to you today. The former things have done their work in you. Now, look up. Something new is already beginning to spring up. Do you perceive it?

Prayer
Lord, forgive me for the ways I've let the former things define me more than Your promises have. Forgive me for looking back at the wilderness with more comfort than I look forward toward the new thing You're already preparing. You said something new is springing up — help me to perceive it. Open my eyes to the path You are making, the streams You are placing in the dry ground ahead. Amen.