We all work and live within the kingdom on assignment. These assignment separate us to specific mission. The assignment defines priorities and leadership in our kingdom living and serving. Fresh orders come through this matrix.
Being assigned means that we enter into a larger assignment, to expand that vision. New leaders do not change the vision; they expand the vision. As vision expands through newly assigned leaders, a season of resetting the assignment will inevitably arrive. These seasons of reset are to be anticipated with the same sentiments as the birth of a baby! Preparation begins during the season of anticipation like setting up the baby’s nursery, getting diapers, bottles, clothes, and toys. It is really, really exciting!
Resetting the assignment is God’s way of bringing what’s been done into what’s to be done next without losing the ground gained or sacrificing the growth of each involved leader. He brings each assigned leader into the next season with the spiritual experiences He has worked into them intact and ready for function. The resetting can, however, be upsetting. God keeps moving: we either move with Him or are left to play catch up.
Kingdom resetting is disturbing to human organization because kingdom leadership functions in a different culture. Kingdom resetting is disturbing to flesh because kingdom operates on different motivations and strategies from works of flesh.
I see the day of Pentecost experience as a major kingdom reset. The 3,000 males who responded along with the other thousands of women and children were people who had already had some experiences with kingdom through the ministry of Jesus and scores of His sent ones. They had already encounter Jesus at previous feasts. Now, the resetting hits them like a ton of bricks because they were far too upset by His ministry to be reset. The reset of the day of Pentecost was an accumulation of forty days of teaching on kingdom Jesus did with His bunch. Suddenly, the reset moved a generation into a next level.
Resets can be minor or major. They are more than correction or mild retuning. They go to the foundations. They reset everyone assigned with fresh orders, clarified roles and functions. This is God’s growth reset.
Resets reveal false expectations and assumptions, however, because we may have improperly interpreted our role in the vision. They reset seems to throw us out of synch because we have to examine our presuppositions. Pride will, for example, cause us to think more highly of ourselves than we ought, and resets will look more like the work of hell than the will of God. False expectations push us into false grieving for loss of things that were never ours in the first; unresolved false grieving produces bitterness.
Resets open up God’s delivery system for new leaders. They expand the vision at the frontline of expansion. They bring to bear the next implementation of kingdom strategy. In this sense, we call these leaders “strategic leaders.” Resets reveal strategic leaders prepared to step up into the next level, and resets are God’s way of revealing them.
“Reset upsets” appear as abnormalities to institutionalized church-anity that is protecting something that needs no protection and focusing kingdom energies and resources on maintaining. God’s kingdom maintains by continually moving forward to take new territory. Managers maintain. Leaders push forward. Strategic leaders are delivered to the places of God’s “now we do this” strategies for advancement.
Tragically, some of the very best of us fail the reset tests. We do the “wait just a minute, God” thing because we think God is having a decision-making meeting with us. He isn’t. God’s meeting with us are informational, not decision-making. Even Abraham interceding for Sodom was not fundamentally a decision-making meeting since God was fully aware of how many righteous before He informed Abraham of His decision. Abraham’s involvement reveals God’s reset strategy to His strategic leader.
