Seasons - Sermon Notes

Because I stayed home from church yesterday, Dan brought me the sermon on CD...and he was right.  It was another great sermon.  This one should help you if you are evaluating your life as the New Year approaches.  Be blessed!

Seasons

Brad Preston

December 26, 2010

Sawyer Evangelical Church

Every year around this time we say goodbye to an old year.   Remember the movie “2001 A Space Odyssey” and we thought that was so futuristic.  The world has changed a lot - but guess what?  God is still in control, and He has a plan not only for the world but He also has plans for us as individuals.  From the beginning, God established the world in such a way that we go through seasons.  This takes place in nature.   God also in our lives takes us through seasons in our marriages, in our education, in our spiritual life, in our occupations, in every aspect of our life because that’s the way He’s established it for all of life since the very beginning.  People have been talking about the season of building that our church has been through.  Brad’s glad that this season is ending and he’s working on getting back to the idea of being pastor.  Genesis 1:14 – God establishes the times to mark seasons, days and years.  It is a part of God’s plan to have seasons...like big seasons (years)...the smaller seasons (spring, summer, fall, winter)...and little seasons (daytime, nighttime).  He’s even got seasons of prominence and obscurity is the pattern or the concept of seasons.  There are seasons of creation, there are seasons of production.  There’s a rhythm of back and forth in the way God created.  There’s a season of rest (Genesis 2:1+).  There’s the season of productivity and the season of relaxation.  And you see these seasons because God knows that no one can run full tilt or be completely productive at all times.  We see this pattern in individuals, nations, Scripture.  There were times when Israel came to great prominence and then times when it was reduced to obscurity.  We also know there’s a time Israel will rise again to great prominence.

Think about the personalities in the Bible...they rise to prominence and then obscurity.  The prophets...the great fathers...all raised to prominence and then obscurity.  Ecclesiastes 3  (wisdom literature).  Interesting book.  Written by Solomon who had great wisdom and understanding but he reached a point where that wisdom and understanding frustrated him.  He eventually decides everything is meaningless.  He’s questioning.  He’s discouraged.  Very gifted...all kinds of resources.  Do you know that gifted people have questions sometimes?  “Boy, if I was smarter I’d know everything and would have questions...doubts.  If I were more spiritual I’d be more content...no paths that lead to dead ends.”  Thankfully...in all of his struggle...Solomon comes to the conclusion that he doesn’t have all the answers but he’s going to trust the One Who does (Ecc 12:9+).  Fear God...keep His commandments...for this is the duty of every human being.  So Solomon is this wise man that comes to the conclusion that not everything can be understood, but God can be trusted.  There’s a time for everything...and a season for all activity under heaven.

In our day and age, we have a tendency to expect everything to get better and better and bigger and bigger and morer and morer.  We expect everything to continue to grow.  We, frankly, medicate ourselves in such a way that we can keep going.  You get the 5 Hour Energy so that you can keep going, because we have that mentality because that’s the way things have to be.  If you’re not better, bigger and morer what’s wrong with you.  We blame God when this doesn’t happen.  We will be confronted with seasons in our life whether we choose to or not.  It’s the way God has designed it.  So for us to combat, circumvent or live beyond the seasons God has designed in our lives ultimately ends in frustration.

Let’s look at the 4 seasons and apply them to the many aspects of our life:

Winter – winter is a time of reflection and internalizing growth.  There’s little evidence or obvious activity in wintertime.  Snow covers the ground...the trees are barren...it just doesn’t look like much is happening.  But we know that something’s going on underneath the surface of the ground.  Work is being done behind the scenes.  Winter is a time when stuff is taking place on a deeper level...not a surface level.  Winter is a time when activity is internal.  Winter is the opportunity to prepare the inner life for what is to come (John 20:29).  Winter, if you will, was the time when Jesus was in the tomb.  Disciples thought nothing was going on.  Peter thought it was over.  John was crushed.  Mary was disillusioned.  The disciples and those who followed Jesus were scattering.  Often, winter is a time of discouragement and disappointment because we gauge things by what we see happening.  And we struggle to perceive, or to permit, things to happen that we can’t see.  There are times when God wants you just to sit down and shut up – be quiet – because He wants to do some winter things in us...some establishing things.  God created winter for a reason...and He creates winter in us for a reason.  In winter we can evaluate our priorities.  In winter we can assess our resources.  Sometimes winter is a time in us when we cut those things that are unproductive and literally those things that are hurting us.  Sometimes winter is a time when those things die.  Winter in our life is a time when we question.  All these things were taking place when Jesus was in the tomb.  God has designed winter to be that way.  There are seasons of winter in church...in ministry...when it seems nothing is happening that can be put on a chart or described at a yearend meeting...or written on an attendance record.  There are times in our lives when it just seems like nothing is moving forward and yet God is moving inward.  If we deny it...resist it...don’t recognize it, then we end up frustrated.  It is winter...winter happens.

Spring – in many cases more enjoyable than winter.  Kind of a wet, mushy, windy time.  It’s a time of planting.  It’s a time of work.  It’s a time when things begin to look like they’re happening.  Smells good.  The wind comes and blows across the earth to dry away the winter wetness.  But spring is a time when it just looks like there’s evidence we’re heading into a change.  Spring is interesting because it’s a time when farmers put seeds in the ground expecting the seeds to come to maturity later.  Spring is a time of faith because that which we plant in the spring we don’t expect to harvest until later.  Spring is a time of planting.  Spring is a time of honoring God, believing that that which we are doing at that moment won’t actually come to harvest for four months.  We are such a get-it-now people.  Patience is really not something that we probably brag about.  When things don’t happen as quickly or as much as we like we get an inner feeling or restlessness, agitation or anxiety.  And then we look around ourselves to see who else in our life isn’t doing their part...because that’s who we want to blame.  If things aren’t producing as quickly as we think they should...well.  Spring is a time of planting and waiting.  Farmer plants seeds on path, thorns, good ground.  Eventually the seeds that fell on the good ground were the ones that produced a good product.  Isaiah 55:11.  God understands that the Word that He gives will someday reap a harvest.   What are you planting in your life right now that you don’t expect to see a harvest for years..months...weeks to come.  You say, “Hey...I got an IRA.  I put money in it.  I expect it to get some percentage of growth and I won’t do anything with it for years to come.“  You’ve got the concept.   Let’s flip that concept into other aspects of our life.  Who is consistently planting spiritual truth in their life (every morning) and not expecting a harvest till God calls it?  I used to read the Bible.  Who is giving to the person that cannot give back and saying to themselves, “In your life I’m just planting this and waiting to see what God does.”  Spring is the opportunity to plant that which will be harvested in the future.  Spring was the time Jesus was teaching His disciples...knowing that at His crucifixion they’d all just run away.  Did Jesus think His three years of teaching were a waste when He saw them run away?  We do that.  We take up that attitude.  Jesus really said He’d invested three years of seed and soon it will come to fruit.  That’s the faith that allows spring to exist as a season.  Ask, “What springtime activities are happening in my life right now.  What am I planting that I’m just giving it permission to be planted...not expecting anything for a period.”  God designed it...made it...prefers it.  It’s part of the process.

Summer – summer is a party.  It’s just a time of just enjoying life...enjoying the people around us...enjoying God... enjoying the seasons.  Summer is summer.  God purposefully designed in the process of seasons a time of just pure sunshine, blue skies and vacation.  You’re thinking you don’t get much vacation.  Don’t interpret what God has done by your experience.  Let’s interpret our experience by what God has done.  Just because you choose not to enjoy summer doesn’t mean God didn’t design summer to be a time of pleasure...a time of relationship.  Psalm 27.  Summer is the  opportunity to enjoy relationship and the blessing of God.  Nehemiah 8:10.  Summer is a time to enjoy the joy of the Lord.  Can you smell the fresh air?  Do you know that there’s a cow right over that hill?  Can you smell him?  Just down the hill is a farmhouse and there are white linens flapping in the breeze – and that’s summer.  Often, because of our idea of getting better and better, bigger and bigger, gooder and gooder, and morer and morer, we don’t give ourselves or give our life permission to have summer.  And yet God has incorporated that in His plan and destiny for life.

Autumn – Fall – a beautiful time of the year.  A hillside of trees reflected in a lake.  A time of harvest...where things planted in the spring and germinated through the summer come to fruit.  We reap what we have sown in autumn.  It’s in autumn what we planted by faith in the spring comes to sight...we can see it.  If you take corn seed and plant them in the ground in the spring, by the time 4^th of July comes up there’s these things about yeah high and in the fall you get corn.  If you plant corn seeds you get corn...bean seeds – beans...watermelon seeds – watermelon.  Did you know you harvest what you sow?  If you plant obedience to God -  you get God’s blessing?  If you plant disobedience - you get God’s chastisement.  There’s an amazing correlation between what you plant and what you reap.  We want to act like the devil and then get mad at God when He doesn’t give us what we want.  We want the freedom to do whatever we want and expect God to bless us.  This is not rocket science.  Spiritually, God has designed seasons in our life.  Autumn is the time He’s given us the opportunity to see His faithfulness in relationship to that which we’ve planted, and share that faithfulness with others.  Autumn is the celebration around the throne of the saints redeemed through the resurrection.  Because Jesus raised from the dead, the apostle Paul makes the correlation between crops raising and Jesus raising from the dead.  Autumn is the harvest of what Jesus did on the cross.  A principle of harvest...you always reap more than you harvest...both good and bad.  One corn seed will have a harvest of ears of corn with many of seeds.  If you plant poison ivy, you will reap vines and vines of the stuff.  You reap in multitudes of what you sow.   If we sow godliness, we reap righteousness in multitudes of amounts. 

What season do you think you’re in personally right now?  I don’t know...is that too personal a question.  Is it hard to make the correlation...to connect them?  I think we can be in different seasons in different elements of our life.  Finances, marriage, relationship with neighbor, relationship with your kids.  The seasons can flow differently in different aspects.

1.            No season is an end!  A lot of times older people will say, “I’m in the winter of my life.”  Spring follows winter.  Don’t get caught up in that.  There is no end.

2.            Every season is necessary!  Summer wouldn’t happen if it wasn’t for the process of winter.  Sometimes we say, “I don’t like this season.”  Every season is necessary to the maturation of the process.  Some may be more attractive, but all are necessary.

3.            Every season makes preparation for the next season!  You can’t be the believe in Christ that you really want to be without winter.  Sorry.  It just doesn’t work.  It doesn’t happen.  Some of the deepest, darkest, coldest moments of your life are going to give way to some of the greatest fruit if you’ll give it a chance.

4.            God created the seasons!  It’s not something that happened by accident.  He purposefully intended that seasons function.  God designed seasons to exist, both in the biology of our planet and the success of our personal lives.

So, here comes 2011!  We’re heading into another season.  What season are you in?  How willing are we to give God permission to allow us to be in that season?  What harvest, unseen at this point, but yet, in fact, by faith, is out there in the future, does God want to give us.  This season thing is HIS plan.  I (Brad) challenge us to give it permission to be real in our lives.