By: Pastor Rachael Chinnery-Todman
Seasons come and seasons go. They change “like a shuttle on a weaver” my mother would say. I did not fully understand this statement when I was a child, but somehow I knew how to use it correctly.
We are in the fall season in nature. It is September, the end of summer and the beginning of fall. Just as God has provided the natural seasons I believe to help us understand our spiritual seasons. In each season we need to understand what is taking place during a spiritual fall, a spiritual winter, a spiritual spring and a spiritual summer.
The wise man Solomon tells us in the book of Ecclesiastes 3 “to everything there is a season, and a time for every purpose under heaven. Please read the text.
My short goal in this encouragement today is to help us understand the different movements of God in our lives. When we get to the place of understanding the movements of spiritual seasons we become better equipped to handle whatever life throws our way—as I always say ‘life happens.’
For several years the word of the Lord came to our church saying “a shift is coming.” The words became so familiar that we either consciously or unconsciously dismissed the warning for whatever reason—then March of 2020 came with COVID-19. In nature, March is the ending of winter and the beginning of spring. Needless to say, many lives were changed during the season of COVID.
My local church was not spared this shifting. Several leaders in our local church lives were changed affecting our local congregation leaving voids to be filled. How many of us know that in every season of life we are to give God thanks because His mercy never fails. Change happens sisters and brothers! Change happens! We cannot stop change from happening. However, we must be flexible enough to move with the winds of change when they are happening. Spiritual seasons speak to the shifting patterns of God in and through our lives.
As a child in my native home, the British Virgin islands there were two seasons in the year. The wet season and the dry season, in other words, the rainy season, which never lasted too long, and the sunny season which lasts all year long. In this talk I propose to deal with three seasons in God. The dry season, the in between season which is the waiting season and the wet season
The Dry Season—God seems absent. In the Song of Solomon 5:6 give us a picture of when God seems absent. He said, “ I sought him, but I could not find him; I called him but he w gave me no answer.” This is a very bad feeling indeed. Praying, seeking God and cannot feel his presence and there is no answer to your prayer. You feel abandoned, alone. Mary and Joseph could not find Jesus. Can you imagine how they felt? However, they found him after three days.
In our spiritual life one does not know how long a dry season will last. For that very reason it is not a time to take one’s eyes off the Lord and begin to feel sorry for one’s self. 1 Kings 19 tells us the story of the prophet Elijah who went through a dry patch after doing great exploits for God on Mount Carmel. Fear in our hearts can put us into a dry season. Fear makes us feel as if God has abandoned us. Fear is a killer of all good things especially in our relationship with God.
At one point Elijah looked for God in the wind, the earthquake of the fire, but God was not in either of them. In the dry season it is best to be quiet before God. Sometimes we talk too much. It was in the gentle whisper that Elijah heard God and humbled himself before the awesome presence of God. The bible says, he pulled his cloak over his face after he heard the Lord in a gentle whisper
In the dry season we must learn how to be quiet before God. In the dry season there are days when we must be like Mary and Joseph keep seeking, asking and knocking, until we find Him. There is a persistence that must be exercised in our prayer life, in calling on God the Father through our Lord Jesus Christ.
The dry season can scare us. It does not feel good when we cannot feel the presence of God. It’s an awful feeling. I have walked through several dry seasons in my journey with the Lord. I have found out that it is a time for purging, and cleansing. A time to wash our garments both inner and outer garments. After all I am a priest unto God and perhaps I have allowed myself to become defiled and contaminated by touching a dead thing [Haggai 2:13}
The dry season is a time to keep your eyes fixed on Jesus. It is a time when faith must be active in expectant preparation for what God will do next.
As you expect and prepare this takes you into: The Waiting Season is the in between the dry season and the wet season of your life. Many people do not like this phrase “wait on the Lord.”
The word wait is not something we do idlily. Quite the opposite. When a person is waiting on God, one is expected to be active in their faith in the worship of God. Whatever form worship takes—singing, dancing, praising God, reading books that will encourage your soul or being in solitude with God and his written word.
David says this about waiting on the Lord. He says wait in courage, wait in hope and expect the Lord. Be brave and let your heart be stout and enduring. Yes, he said, “wait for and hope for and expect the Lord.”{27:14 AMP} simple put, as you WAIT on God, you must:
· W==Worship
· A==Anticipate God
· I==Develop intimacy with God
· T==Trust God implicitly to bring you out of your dry season and into your wet season
The Wet Season—is the season of refreshing from the Lord-Psalm 72:6 states.
He shall come down like rain upon the grass before mowing, Like showers that water the earth.
This wet season is the time that God the Holy Spirit begins to show you with his Spirit because you have come to the place of refreshing as you wait and worship through the dry season and in between the season of waiting and now. The song write said, “there shall be showers of blessings, showers of blessing we need, mercy drops now are falling but for the showers we plea.
The wet or rainy season is a wonderful time. Like the farmer waits for the rain, so as children of God we need to wait for the refreshing from of the Lord. You might want to ask me at this point what season I am in right now? And I can say I’m in a season of refreshing despite the shifting and the changes that have happened in my life. I do not see all the answers yet, but my faith in God tells me that the answer is on the way, not only on the way, I know that I will see the manifestation of the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living.
I will reap if I do not faint. The seeds of faith believing prayer has been planted and I know that God will cause me to prosper for His name sake, He will bring my life out of trouble and free me from distress because I am His servant. He will cause my harvest field to be full, and everything I do will bring forth in abundance. {Psalm 143 & 144}
Charles Spurgeon said “little faith will bring your souls to heaven, but great faith will bring heaven to you.” We must believe in God in whatever season we might find ourselves.
In every season give God praise, glory and honor, because he who has begun a good work in you will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ {Phil.1:6}