I wanted to share some incredible insights that I have been reading in the book Permission Granted by Graham Cooke and Gary Goodell. I’ve been stuck reading and rereading just the preface and introduction of this book for weeks because it puts into words the things my soul wants to express. So, I’m going to skip a lot of it…but hopefully it will encourage and challenge you as it has me.
After giving many examples of third-day references in Scripture, Gary Goodell explains the third-day process of transformation in our own lives.
“Day one is the place of slavery and captivity and is the process of leaving. Day two is the place of testing where everything familiar and secure has been stripped away; it is where we must cleave to God and His promises that are yet to be realized. Day three becomes the entering into, fighting for, and claiming of our destined inheritance in Him.
Day one is where we are, where we are stuck, needing change, requiring movement, wanting more. Day two is where we enter this process of letting go, moving on, not looking back, moving toward the given and yet unfulfilled promises of God. Then, of course, day three becomes the culmination, the fulfillment, the victory, the resurrection, and the receiving.”
You’ll notice I identify with Day Two right now.
"To even consider something new, something different, to even think of leaving the first day…assumes that there has to be some degree of internal and/or external dissatisfaction brewing. This must be true to lure someone towards risking the tried and true and jumping off the safe to the deep waters of ‘having never been here before.’ Merely leaving the dock of security is torment enough to keep us in the first day…It requires a genuine leap of faith, losing sight of the land of self-reliance on your way to a new destination.”
“It is the knowledge that in that notorious middle, during the second day, in that place of transition, everything gets tested, and you die. The Latin word for this place is limina. It means threshold. It is that place you step into, not knowing where you are going, but also not looking back. It is that in-between place. In Hebrews 11:8, we read that Abraham stepped off his map as he decided by faith to go where he didn’t know.”
“So why not leap? Why not jump? Why not head into that dark day two? To not do so is to eventually become so stale, so brittle that the old wineskin plugs up, corks up, no longer receiving, not longer releasing.”
“Yet, deep in our hearts, at our core, in our passions and in our dreams, we have known all along that there is something more, something deeper, something beyond what our comfort zones have allowed us to experience or touch. To not take that risk, to not take that leap of faith, means to die a slow, agonizing death.”
I read the preface to this book after I had decided to “step off” the bank of familiarity by leaving my job, without knowing what was to come next. I just knew God was calling me out to a new place, a new season, with Him. And although the unknown of “Day Two” requires the dying of my expectations, my comforts, and my present understanding of how God works, I have caught a glimpse of the “given and yet unfulfilled promises of God.” The given promise of Him continuing this mighty work He has started in me and the yet unfulfilled promise that He will bring it to completion. I rest in the hope that I am still “being transformed into his likeness with ever-increasing glory.”
Part 2 to come…
