RESET

When you’re phone isn’t operating properly, tasks take longer to process, pages load slowly, and sometimes when you try to access apps, the phone crashes and takes you back to the Home page without warning. This is usually a sign that your phone needs to be reset. Sometimes you can get away with simply turning the phone off, leaving it off for a few minutes and when you turn it back on it is functioning properly. Other times the strain on the phone has caused so much damage that the phone must be completely reset and restored to factory settings. And so it has been with my life as of late. Despite my best efforts to perform a soft reboot, I was forced to perform a hard reset.


I have an iPhone, so I don’t know how it works with an android device, but once you have decided that a hard reset is needed, you must select “Erase all content and settings”. The iPhone then asks you to enter your password (I’m assuming because this is such a drastic act, erasing all content, that it wants to make absolutely sure this is what you want to do and to make sure that you are the owner of the device - the owner of the phone is the only one that should be permitted to perform this action). It is a function that requires full commitment.
Once the reset is performed and all content and settings are erased you are then presented with the option to restore the phone from a previous version or to start a new.


Here is what I’ve learned so far……




CHOICES HAVE CONSEQUENCES
It is ill advised to perform a hard reset without consulting the Lord. Making decisions based on emotion is deadly for our souls. Emotions cannot be trusted. They are unstable and fleeting and do not provide a firm and sure foundation upon which to build and support any kind of decision let alone one that may be life altering.


The choice to perform a hard reset must be sanctioned by God for it to yield a beneficial result for your life. In order to be sure before you make that decision you must spend significant time in the presence of God in prayer. Listen to His voice and obey what He says. Allow the choice to be yours and God’s alone. Just you two. When you are emotional you tend to share with others, they in turn share with others and before you know it many people have knowledge of your dilemma and are weighing in. I understand that sometimes we need counsel, but seek that counsel wisely and let the final voice of decision be God’s.




AFTER A RESET IS PERFORMED DO NOT RESTORE FROM A PREVIOUS VERSION
Listen! If you do not hear anything else I’ve said in this blog please hear this. If you look back with a longing for the old version that you just hit the reset button on, you will die. Kinda like Lot’s wife. Remember her? If not, you can read about her here. When God tells you to get up from a place or situation with the intention on destroying a thing in you that is not like Him, GO! This does not always require a physical move but sometimes it is a mind set move. In either case, do not look back longing for what was. God will do a new thing in you and all of that old “stuff” must be destroyed. Putting old wine in new skins is not the move. (If that reference means nothing to you then read about that here). Trust me on this, (or don’t), but I’m telling you, I am a witness to what God will do when you move out of the way and allow HIM to rebuild you and replenish your spirit with His spirit. It is absolutely transformational.
While you may have to perform many hard resets in your life, the goal is to not to have to perform the same hard reset on the same situation.




RESTORE TO FACTORY SETTINGS AND START ANEW
What we choose to load ourselves up with after performing a hard reset will have a significant impact on whether or not we wind up back in the same place that necessitated the reset in the first place. If we allow God to reset us and live within HIS perfectly designed operating system then we will find ourselves living our best life. When we choose to live contrary to God’s precepts it has devastating affects on our lives and the lives of those around us. But because of Jesus, we are able to repent and start a new.


It is God who created us. In HIS image. He manufactured us and placed in us the settings that are like Him. But because of our choices, we oftentimes replace His settings with our own. God help me, I have done it! Those things that we have set in our own lives by operating the way we want to operate instead of how He created us to operate corrupts our system and a hard reset is the only way to course correct. Once the reset button is pushed, do not attempt to live your newly transformed life from a corrupted place.




LIVING THROUGH A HARD RESET
As I live through my hard reset I struggle with Thy will versus my will. Though I am fully aware that God’s will for my life is always better than mine, I still struggle. But as I grow in grace and mature in Him I can readily identify God’s voice over my own as the authority in my life and I am choosing His way. My prayer is that you will so the same.


If you feel as if you need a hard reset, seek God and do what He tells you to do. It is a hard choice to hit the reset button, to wipe out all of those things that you are accustomed to and build from a new place, but it is sometimes necessary to move from a dead place in to a place that is filled with life and peace.


After you hit the reset button, trust God, then take up your bed and walk.....