I had a strange episode with my old laptop this week. Earlier in the year, I bought a new laptop but did not transfer all the information I had from the old to the new one. This week, as I was preparing for my first tutoring session with first-year law students, I needed to access some of my former notes to help me prepare a PowerPoint presentation and show students how I created case law charts. I woke up at 11pm and couldn’t access those documents because somehow, I had forgotten my password.
I have this bad habit of using a common password for most of the accounts I use on a regular basis. I tried that password in so many different versions and ways but couldn’t log on to my laptop. Then I remembered that 2024 was in that password and again tried several combinations which all failed. I got locked out of my account twice, tried other alternatives to reset my password but without success. I finally resigned myself at 2:00am and created the slides with part of the information that I had saved on my google drive. This frustrating episode left me anxious because I had a lot of information on my old laptop that I still needed to retrieve. So, I decided to create a password reset disk to reset my password, but I couldn’t do so with my new laptop which didn’t have the proper USB port. The next morning, I went to school with my USB trying to create a password reset disk but didn’t find anyone willing to lend me their laptop and was unsuccessful in creating a password reset disk on the computers administered by the school. I decided to go to my parents’ apartment to try creating a password reset disk and was unexpectedly successful in doing so.
When I returned to my apartment, I inserted the USB in the old laptop and clicked on reset. I was asked to create a new password. I wanted to use again the “common password” I often used. But something in me said “no, create a new one,” which I did. Surprisingly, the new password came easily, meaning I didn’t think twice before writing it, and it had 2024 in it. However, when I clicked next, I was told that there was an error with the password reset disk! I tried the same process again and was told the same thing again! At this point, I was clueless, but then something in me said again “why don’t you try the new password to log onto the laptop?” I thought “after so many failures over several combinations and being locked out twice?” But I still proceeded.
Folks, what happened next blew my mind. I tried the new password and low and behold, it worked! Yes, it worked, the new password that I thought I had just created was the password that I needed to log onto my laptop. I was so shocked that I took my phone to write a text message to someone who had tried helping me earlier in the day. I started the message like this “Do you believe in God?...” Then, I said to myself, perhaps the message would be too much for them to comprehend, so I ended up not sending the message, and proceeded to search for my documents on the laptop.
It was right in that moment that I heard clearly in my spirit these words “there is a new season coming and you cannot access it with the things of old.” Everything clicked for me in that moment, and I thought to myself “God had to go through all of this to teach me this lesson!”
I knew it was God because it was right in line with the many messages that I had received this year about letting go of the past and focusing on God. When I heard the message in my spirit, I understood that a lot had to change about my ways of approaching God, spending time with him, and dwelling in his word. I could sense that the new season is going to be tough but that only those who stay anchored in him would overcome. I could sense also that God wants a deeper commitment from me and from the rest of the body of Christ. It is not a season of lukewarmness, but a season of deciding who we will follow until the end and standing firmly on that decision.
When I took my new laptop today to write this encounter, I again heard in my spirit “you cannot access the new with the old,” and the Lord immediately reminded me of the prophet Elishah and the widow of one of the men from the company of the prophets. She had nothing left in her house except a jar of oil.
What most of us failed to realize when Elishah asked her to borrow empty vessels from her neighbors is that although those vessels might have been old jars for her neighbors, they were new jars for her! (2 Kings 4:1-4).
God wanted to do something new with her, he wanted to increase her supply of oil, but she couldn’t access that supply with the old jar she had! Like the Lord did with that widow, he wants to bring many of us to a place of enlargement, expansion and renewal. He wants to bring us into a new season, but we cannot access it with the things of the past, behaviors and relationships of the past. We must have the courage to let go of people/habits and trust God for the next season.
In Matthew, the Lord explained to us why we cannot access the new with the old. Mat 9:17 “Neither do people pour new wine into old wineskins. If they do, the skins will burst; the wine will run out and the wineskins will be ruined. No, they pour new wine into new wineskins, and both are preserved.” When we access the new with the old, we risk spoiling the good that God has reserved for us in the new season. We risk limiting God’s ability to give us more oil, more wine, and risk missing out on more of his goodness.
When the Lord spoke to my heart about this new season, I could also sense that it is going to be a season of good surprises, a season of unexpected packages, a season when we are getting what we wanted but in a different way than we expected it.
Earlier this month, I went to someone’s place and saw one of those trendy big Stanley Cups and asked jokingly if they could give me one, which of course they didn’t. However, little did I know that I was going to get one of those in the mail later this month! Last week, I started receiving UPS notifications in my mail about a package delivery that I had no clue about. I couldn’t for the life of me remember what I ordered that needed to be delivered, and I was so sure that I didn’t order anything. At some point, I thought it was a scam, then at another time, I thought about calling UPS and asking what package they needed to deliver but didn’t have time to do so. When the package arrived, surprise, there was a big Stanley white cup with the logo of the company for which I’ve started working for, with a card of appreciation. This along with a surprise check that I received in my mail made everything click when the Lord spoke to my heart about a new season.
I am sharing this message as a reminder for myself and an encouragement to the body of Christ. We need more room, more trust, more letting of things/people, to access all the goodness that God has prepared for us in this season.
If it still feels confusing and blurry, it’s because somewhere and somehow, we have still opened the door to let things of the past surface back into our lives. Being decisive and having the courage to let go will determine whether we access or not what God has prepared for us in this season.
If you've made it thus far, thank you for reading and I hope this message blesses you!
My name is Dede. I have been hurt, bruised, betrayed, abandoned, misunderstood, left wandering and confused, like many of you many times. I do not consider myself better than anyone. I am standing here only by the Lord’s grace and goodness.
Sometimes, I wonder how to keep standing, I can’t see the end of the tunnel, but in all those things what keeps me alive and breathing is purpose, running and completing my assignment to the body of Christ, because I’ve gotten to understand that everything we receive from God is not solely for ourselves, but mostly for the edification and building of the body. It is for sharing the love of God and giving hope to the most hopeless.
People see us through the lenses of our faults and past mistakes, and our age and physical appearance, but God sees us through the blood of his Son. He sees our hearts, he sees the lonely and painful moments, and when no one is there, he is there. That is how you know that when everyone leaves, God will still stay with you until the end of the world.
Mat 28: 20 "And surely, I am with you always, to the very of the age." & John 14:18-19 "I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you. Before long, the world will not see me anymore, but you will see me. Because I live, you will also live."
Comments