We all face changes—often unwelcome ones—in life. And whether or not we realize it, what we do with them matters. Will we remain stuck, or will we move forward with grace?
That question hit home for Robert Morgan, longtime pastor and bestselling author, when he lost Katrina, his wife of 43 years, to multiple sclerosis in 2019.
“I miss her all the time, every day,” he tells Dr. Steve Greene on a recent episode of Greenelines on the Charisma Podcast Network. “But I feel so thrilled that she’s in heaven; I can see her there. And I know this is a new stage of my life, and people go through stages as we go through life. … We can’t wallow around in sadness when God still has work for us to do.”
Morgan addresses the question of what to do when transition hits us in his brand-new book, The Jordan River Rules, sequel to his bestselling book of 20 years ago, The Red Sea Rules. The first rule in the new book states it plainly: “Realize God means for you to move forward.”
“You have to look at it in its context,” Morgan says. “The Israelites had not been moving forward; they had been going around in circles for 40 years. And it’s very easy for us to get stuck in life—we get stuck at some stage. And we just don’t make any real progress—spiritual progress or vocational progress or ministry progress or marital progress—we’re just stuck.
“And so we have to make up our minds that God has a new stage in life for us,” Morgan says. “It might involve a new relationship, it might involve a new location, it might involve a new, like a new point in life, whether we’re moving out of college into a career or out of a career into a retirement season. But these new stages are all great opportunities. And I deeply believe that every stage in life thus far has been preparing us for the next stage that God has for us.”
Morgan adds an important note: “Every stage, then, is better than the one before. Now, not everybody agrees with me on that. But I really do think that as we are going through life, we grow. We season in God, we grow in grace, we grow in knowledge, we grow in the Holy Spirit, and every stage in life is better than the last one. And that was true for the Israelites.”
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