The Seasons of God

My birthday comes around every December. And every year, on my birthday, there is a changing of seasons – from fall to winter. On my birthday every year, I can look out the window and see trees now bare of their greenery, Bermuda grass now losing all its bright green summer color, the last of any remaining flowers are withering.

Yes, the earth has its seasons. Plants go from active growth to dormant life and then to re-activity. Temperatures go from hot to cold and back to hot. Colors go from bright to dull and back to a new glow. Everywhere there is seasonal change. I have lived through 78 of these cycles. And I have observed through the years that Jesus Christ, our Lord, is a SEASONAL God.
He comes forward for a while in a Christian, and then He withdraws for a season. His dwelling place in a Christian never changes, His faithfulness never changes – but His seasons do!
There are seasons when the tree is green, there are seasons when it is dry, and seasons when, for the life of us, the thing looks dead! Likewise, the Christian life.

Now does this mean you are serving some capricious God who comes and goes whenever He feels like it? Or could it be that IT IS ONLY THROUGH SEASONS THAT TRUE GROWTH MAY COME?

In all my years, I have not found a Christian who has not had a run (and sometimes a long run) of what could be called “bad luck”. Invariably he begins to entertain the thought that either God has left him or that somebody lied to him about what God was like.

A person cannot be always “up”. Though he may try hard to be always up, he is certain to catch up on the down side. It is just the way of the seasons.

Paul said, “Does not nature teach us?” Fruit from a tree comes to us as a result of three of the four seasons. But that fourth winter season’s stress serves the purpose of internal preparation and strengthened structure so that the next blossoming in spring can be at its best.

The Christian needs rain and sunshine, hot and cold, wind and doldrums. Seasons of joy, seasons of sorrow, times when Christ is so real it seems any activity you undertake is a spiritual experience. Seasons of dryness, when things are so bleak you wonder what good can come out of it.

And are not these seasons from the hand of God? If so, what is His Goal for us? He is taking you to that place where you can be A MAN FOR ALL SEASONS. Where seasons don’t faze you – no, not even the glorious ones.

You need seasons. You will even need to overcome the season of joy!. What? Yes. If you are addicted to joy, then that addiction will have to be broken. And if pessimism and sorrow and dryness are your favored addiction, then you’re going to have to be broken of that addiction too. You can shout and rejoice yourself hoarse in wet seasons and cry yourself hoarse in dry ones. But Christ can drive you forward through them all.

The day must come when every season is taken fairly much the same. In fact, the seasons are there to make us eventually SEASONLESS. When you can view the sound of abundance of rain and the hot or cold wind of a dry spell exactly the same, then you are nearing the land of maturity.

There are always a few flaws in each of us, flaws so well hidden we ourselves often don’t know we have them. (Usually our brothers and sisters know, though. Isn’t that fascinating? We can’t see our flaws. Others can. Three cheers for close-knot Christian family and church life.) Those flaws are carryovers from our birth and living separated from God. Those flaws constitute the major field upon which the battle for our transformation in Christ will be fought.

When we accept Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord, we realize that He can transform us. But do we really want help? Do we really want to be transformed or do we simply enjoy being a Christian and being a part of a people who have given their lives to the Lord? Or are we unconsciously enjoying the church surroundings, the singing, the fellowshipping – yet somehow building a fence around that hidden flaw, making sure that nothing really dear to that independent attitude is broken?

Again I say, getting rid of that fence and that flaw is the purpose of the seasons of God.

We walk a thin line when we talk about either the JOY of the Christian life (the summer season) or the CROSS of the Christian life (the winter season). Either can be overemphasized. The Christian believer who has left over from his unbelieving days positive ideas about the world will gravitate toward the positive thoughts, things of joy and exuberance. The more negative pre-conversion mind of the Christian will find happiness in the gloom of his considerations of the cross. Neither view is truly Christian. So both the optimist and the pessimist are in for a divine adjustment. God displaces all human independent disposition with a divine one.

Sometimes the human flaws and the divine lifestyle go in opposite directions, operating totally different from one another. This is God’s winter season. There are also times when your human perspective easily relates to that divine life. This is the summer season of God. At still other times your soul is neutral to that divine life. You are in the spring or fall equinox of God’s seasons.

We know that one day Satan entered into the chronicle of the life of Jesus Christ. The question of why he appeared has filled volumes, perhaps libraries. Even Jesus had some seasons of God with Satan. This we know: when that confrontation was over, the result which emerged was no less than salvation of all mankind.

Anytime you get the idea that God has allowed His enemy some season of your life, even for one split second, remember this: when the confrontation is over, the results will be transformation in you for the better. A little more of the bright summer season of His divinity will have taken its place.

The key to the Christian life is recognizing and accepting God’s seasons in your spiritual life. The number of my 78 earthly season cycles has been multiplied many times over when I consider my spiritual seasons of God. I have been “hot” for God; I have been “cold” for God. I have been a “river of living water” for God; and I have been a “dry and parched land” for God. But the many season cycles have produced a more mature (and still maturing!) tree of spiritual fruit.

Happy birthday to me!

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