Let the Seasons Change...

Dear Friend,

Simplify, this seems to be my word for this season. I’m firm in the fact that God deals with us in seasons. And so this season, He keeps talking to me about simplicity, not doing so much and sit back and chill ... Can I be honest, I am welcoming it, but I didn’t always.....Ecclesiastes reminds me....

Ecclesiastes 3:1-8 ESV / 222 helpful votes Helpful Not Helpful

For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven: a time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted; a time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up; a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance; a time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;

Can I be honest with you? When seasons changed before in my life, I was not really pleased. I would often try to hold on to things, that “I” thought mattered the most. I resisted, letting go of things that I thought validated me and sealed my importance. I fought, against removing myself from relationships that were frayed and hanging on by one string. I wasn’t, interested in changing “my” norm, even though I KNEW God wanted what was best for me (see Jeremiah 29:11). Truthfully I was always scared of those unfamiliar places.

Can I REALLY be honest? It’s because I liked to be in control! As much as I said I trusted God, every time a season changed, it revealed the lack of trust in my heart. It proved that I trusted God as long as I was comfortable. As long as everything was under my control. I wanted my season to change with warning, to come with a lot of explanations and due dates. I didn’t want immediate disruptions that would cause me discomfort or cause me to surrender “my life” to God.

1 Thessalonians 5:1 ESV / 68 helpful votes Helpful Not Helpful

Now concerning the times and the seasons, brothers, you have no need to have anything written to you.

The more that I’ve grown In my relationship with God I’ve learned that "by faith and not by sight", doesn’t come with a lot of explanation, it comes with a simple, “Will you trust me”? Are you willing to exchange my plan for your plan? I wonder what Abraham, the father of faith, felt like when God said (paraphrasing) (see Genesis 12) “Look Abram, I need you to go and leave all your people, leave the place that you call home, the place in which are comfortable, leave the place that you are prosperous and go and just follow my instructions. Now what I’m going to say next isn’t going to make sense, I’m going to make you famous and successful and you will have heirs in the World.” I can’t imagine what he was feeling, the pressure had to be great after all Abram was successful, had a family, property, servants. Oh, but he didn’t have an heir.

What made him trust God, leave the familiar and follow what seemed like impossible? There must have been something in his spirit that assured Him he could trust God. God was asking Abram to trust Him with his possessions, with his family, with his very life. And you know what happened Abram did. He cut covenant with God (see Genesis 17) and became Abra(ham), of God.

Perhaps He was familiar with God enough to know, His character, His ways. Perhaps He was tired of being ordinary. Perhaps simply He was just foolish enough to trust a God with whom he had never seen, for the one thing he had never been able to obtain on his own...His perhaps turned into His reality. Every promise was met with a Yes and an Amen. He would be the father of many nations!

Dear Friend, I want to conclude with this, get quiet enough to discern your season, to understand Godly success from worldly success, to know when the seasons change. God will give you the strength to walk away or to walk into, but whatever you do, let me admonish you, let the seasons change.

Changing with the Seasons,

LMJ