Embrace the New

Embrace the new!

Leviticus 26:9-10 For I will be leaning toward you with favor and regard for you, rendering you fruitful, multiplying you, and establishing and ratifying My covenant with you. And you shall eat the [abundant] old store of produce long kept, and clear out the old [to make room] for the new. Isaiah 43:18-19 Do not [earnestly] remember the former things; neither consider the things of old. Behold, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs forth; do you not perceive and know it and will you not give heed to it? I will even make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.

I’ve been wrestling with these two verses that I have had on my office wall for the past several years.

I’ve learn’t something amazing in this past 10 days where God has brought these verses to the fore and shown me what it is like to really embrace the new. But first some context…

In some areas of my life I love the new. For example, on this iPad that I am typing on, I’m using a new app, and have some 440 apps that I am regularly reviewing and updating to get the best workflow. Gone are the days of the old where you used Microsoft office and a select few other apps to get the job done. Such is the pace of change in the tech world today, every day there is a new app or device with the promise of a better experience. I love the journey of discovery and joyfully embrace the experience of the new thing in this space. In fact I would say this Editorial App is the best app I have ever used in the past several years. Light years ahead of Office. Customisable in the most intricate details, but in ways that I can ultimately simplify and improve my blogging process. I tried a new app on my desktop mac recently to do the same thing and it took me twice as long to get the job done.

But there is a learning curve to be had, and the frustrations of trying other apps, only to find that they can be limited in some crucial way the ultimately constrains the quality of the experience. Even with this app, there are limits in that it does not work on a Desktop or PC. But there is a version to come. So whilst I love the journey of discovery, there is character building to be had along the journey of change, sometimes it is patience, sometimes it is just simply putting up with the limitation or working around it.

In radical contrast there are other areas of my life where I HATE CHANGE. I am the husband of one wife for example. She was my first girlfriend, the first and only person I have ever kissed. She taught me and teaches me all I know about what it is to be loved and to love. Life with her is amazing, and always unpredictable. She encourages change, she is an explorer, she loves to do new things. Take for example how once she has gone to a specific place on holidays and explored what it has to offer, she enjoys it, but then doesn’t want to go back, as it is now “old” and would rather embrace a “new” destination, and have a new experience. I love her, and the challenge of the new, and the diversity this brings. I cannot imagine life without her. She is the new that I want to embrace every day!

But honestly I am the sort of guy when it comes to places and destinations, when I have found a great place I’m happy to go back there over and over again. I’m writing this blog from a fantastic restaurant that serves the best breakfast in town, the staff think this is my second home because I keep coming back so often. I’ve explored other options from time to time, but they just don’t stack up. In other parts of my life I stick to the old pattern like glue. In some ways this is great. For example, I am loyal to a fault, it takes a lot for me to move on from a relationship, whether business or personal. I have customers that go back over 5 years. If there is give and take, and a balance, an opportunity for growth, then all is well. If we get to a place where I feel taken for granted, I have a long fuze but then there will come an explosion, a resetting of the pattern needs to take place, and if it can be reset then the balance is restored, if not then we part ways. I’m keen for the other party to come back into balance and it takes me a long time to let go of the past. My wife and my God help me to re-focus.

Embrace the thing you cannot grasp

God said to me a while ago ” Embrace the thing you cannot grasp”. I had this feeling in worship and a vivid experience of intimately embracing someone in such a powerful way that my body tingled all over and I had my arms out feeling the hug. But then opening my eyes I found that although I could feel this person, there was no-one there. It was God encouraging me to embrace something that I could not see, to be passionate about what He showed and told me, when I could not see or grasp it. If you have read the last few blogs you will have seen how by aligning myself with what He says, there was a radical shift in the circumstance.

Embrace the new, give heed to the new, perceive and grasp the new.

This week as I have held on to the new, God has radically transformed our circumstance. Even my Father who is the most Godly man I know was laughing and clapping when I told him the news, like a child opening the best present!

We have been on the cusp of the new in business for the past year or so. Last year we announced the birth of the new brand and product offering as God asked us to, but then found ourselves dealing with the old and doing more with the existing business to the point where we had to put the new on hold. I realise now that this was the eating out of the “Old store” of produce long kept, to make way for the new.

At the start of the week, we were wrestling with fixing the last of a few bugs in our last software update and once completed would then be in a position to negotiate our way to complete the final step. As a client they are holding on to the old ways of doing business, whilst we push them towards the new. So here we where praying for the new, hoping for a shift and the breakthrough and wondering what God was going to do as we entered this final phase. We had put one of our new business clients under the new brand on hold whilst we sorted these bugs under the old business.

I will answer before you ask

These were the words the Lord spoke to me on Monday whilst I was at Pilates. Then my phone rang a couple of times whilst I was working out, even to the point where the instructor asked me whether I wanted to check it as it might be someone important. I shrugged it off and even said, even if it is I’ll check it when I am finished. Whilst I was working out, my back was in a bit of pain to the point where I asked my instructor whether I should not have an Osteo treatment to put things back in alignment! She had been my Osteo from many years back and still is the best person to sort me out, but due to health issues with her young son had not been practising or even doing Pilates until the last couple of weeks. I even asked her whether her replacement was available to do the treatment. How can it be that after so many years on this faith journey that we can fail to see what God is capable of! Her response was, “why would you not get a treatment from me”, almost offended in her response. I was perplexed, and embarrassed? She said that she was available this week to treat me and even at short notice on Wednesday. What the heck! Of course I took her up on her offer.

After finishing the Pilates session, I checked my phone to see a bunch of missed calls, and then an email from the Chief Operating Officer of this very large global IT company we had been forced to put on hold whilst sorting out the “old” difficult client. The email said, can you come to see us tomorrow, as I have the Director of Global Product development over from the USA that I would like you to meet. What the heck! This is clearly the answer from God that He spoke of. So of course I said yes, but asked God for a later appointment so I could complete the contractual paperwork under the new business name, and present this at our meeting. Whilst we had a good relationship and they had paid for our services they had been reluctant to sign a contract under our old name previously, so we were operating essentially in good faith with them, but had been speaking to them about the need to formalise our relationship.

So once again I found myself going to a meeting about something else, with a contract for them to sign, for no other reason than I felt this is what God wanted, and it was the leap of faith, the demonstration of the embrace of the new thing.

So we had a great meeting, where they spoke about all the “new” things they wanted to do with us in the future, as if God was trying to make a point! So then I gave them the contract under the new brand along with an invoice for pre-paid support a key feature of the new business model. Heck I didn’t even get time to explain why and how we were changing the brand and offering.

Late Wednesday I get a call requesting a chat re the contract on Thursday late afternoon. Usually I had Pilates then but was now available as I had cancelled it due to the unexpected treatment on the Wednesday. (You have got to just stand back in awe, how God orders your steps down to the finest detail) So I spoke with my key contact there who was a man of great attention to detail and was a lead negotiator on behalf of the Chief Operating Officer. In my humaness I have negotiated with many people in my life, but he is one of the best and most experienced I have ever met. I anticipated, many questions and lots to change and lots of too-ing and fro-ing, after all they had not signed the previous contract, and they acquire multi-million dollar businesses with regularity. In my human-ness I was ready to negotiate. But God is the master to Him every knee shall bow. There I was ready for the prolonged negotiation. But it never came, as after some clarifying questions, his only challenge was wait for it.. He had scribbled all over the original and was happy to arrange for it to be signed but just needed a new copy! What the heck!

So with some excitement I got ready and personally delivered a signed copy that afternoon. Again I was lacking in confidence that this was actually going to happen, so just dropped it at reception in anticipation that it would take a few days to get signed, if they truly were even going to sign it. Even the receptionist who was also the administrator of the system we had provided, thought they would take days to review it and sign it, although I told her that they had verbally said it was going to be signed.

No sooner than I had driven off, I got a text message from their negotiator that they had received it. Then 10 minutes later, another text saying that IT HAD BEEN SIGNED and when would I like to come a pick it up!!! I had not yet returned home in fact was going via the supermarket to pick up some items to celebrate in advance what the Lord had done. I picked up the items and then and went back to collect the contract to pin it on our wall as the first signed contract under the NEW business! And what’s more this will be the first time we have been paid thousands in advance, before we have had to do any work, and if they don’t use us within 6 months, we still get to the keep the money and they then pay us another instalment!

Don’t you just love God how he orders your steps, sets up the impossible to become possible. Behold He does the new thing, do we not perceive it, will we not give heed to it, NOW it springs forth! All Praise to him!

Be encouraged, embrace the thing you cannot grasp, the invisible God who does marvellous things, the new thing, the extra-ordinary thing. Get in alignment and just obey Him and get in step with Him, He is awesome.