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Drawing Near to God

Purpose in each season

Posted on September 9, 2021

Fall is my favorite time of year. Something inside of me stirs when I smell the crisp air in the morning and evenings. I love when August turns to September and I feel the familiar crunch of leaves as the trees start dropping them on the ground. I also love this weather because I am happiest in jeans and a light jacket with a cup of coffee in my hands, or out for a brisk walk or a jog with a sweatshirt on. It’s my happy comfortable place, and to me it’s Michigan.

I haven’t always lived in Michigan, in fact, John and I spent 10 years of our lives in San Francisco. It was a beautiful city and a fun time in our lives, but those 10 years flew by in a flash. It was a blur of years and seasons blended into one long decade. San Francisco has an average variation in temperature of about 10-12′ from January to December (approx 58′-70′), and is consistently foggy throughout the year. There was very little variation in the seasons, and to me all the seasons seemed to blend together. I longed for the seasons and the changes that we had in Michigan, the sense of newness and excitement that each transition held.

In San Francisco, I often felt lost in time. Christmas decorations were up when it was 60′ and foggy, which wasn’t much different than the rest of the year. I didn’t have the sense of preparation and transition leading up to celebrating Christmas like I did in Michigan, with the cold weather and snow. It was a relief to me when we moved back to Michigan and experience the change of seasons again! The seasons signaled newness and change, and it helped mark time and purpose in each season.

Seasons of Purpose
Just like the seasons of spring, summer, fall and winter signal newness and change because of the physical change in weather, God often leads us through different spiritual seasons in our lives that signal newness and change. Each season has different temperatures and the earth responds differently with the newness of spring, the heat of summer, the change of fall, and the cold of winter, and each has a different purposes of preparation for the next. The same is true for the spiritual season God takes us through, each has a different purposes of preparation for the next!

Perhaps you’ve felt like the spiritual temperature is changing in your life, maybe it’s been a dry season, or perhaps you are in a season that is full of joy or a season full of sorrow and grief. No matter what you experience in each season, we have to remember that there is purpose in it! Just like spring could not come without the season of winter and all that takes place underground in that season, God uses every season, even if we can’t see evidence of what’s to come in that moment. That is good news!

Don’t miss the season!
When I lived in San Francisco and had no measurable marker of the seasons as they went by, I often felt like I missed the purpose of the seasons I was in. In our spiritual lives, there is a danger in doing this and missing the season. I often cry out to God, “God, use it all!” All of the good and the bad. I don’t want anything to be wasted. God doesn’t want us to just float through without any sense of the purpose of what He is teaching us, and without surrendered hearts to trust Him to bring about His goodness! We should not be going through any season without learning and drawing deeper to God!

What did Jesus do?
What about the seasons that Jesus walked through, what example does he give us? What we see clearly is that Jesus recognized every season he was in, every single place of preparation, every place where he had a choice of obedience or not, every place of celebration and every place of grief. How did he do this? Jesus trusted God. In every step of obedience. Even when he was tested and tried and faced extraordinary difficulties.

Jesus understood seasons of PREPARATION. Jesus didn’t start his public ministry until he was 30, that must have taken great patience and intimacy with Father God to have stayed in that season of waiting! What about the wilderness? Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to eat nothing for 40 days and be tempted by the devil (Luke 4). How many of us would have given up and thought God had failed us? Let’s be honest here! But here’s the thing, he knew there was purpose in it, and in Luke 4:14 it says he returned in the power of the Spirit and THEN he begins his ministry. If only we could learn and trust God like that in our own lives right?! What kind of spiritual authority would we learn to walk in!?

Jesus understood seasons of CELEBRATION. Isn’t it amazing that his first physical miracle took place at a wedding celebration where he turned water into wine (John 2)? We also see many instances where he is eating and lounging with his disciples. He understands there is a time for joy and celebration and friendship! This is a part of God’s design for us, we can rest assured by Jesus’ example that it is important to have seasons of celebration and joy and community!

Jesus understood seasons of GRIEVING. Jesus was deeply moved and wept when his friend Lazarus died, even though he knew that he was going to raise him from the dead. That moves me SO much. Jesus knows the outcome, Lazarus will live! But he feels the pain and sorrow his friends are feeling over the loss, and he weeps (remember Hebrews 4:14, our high priest who sympathizes with us.). We also see him “sorrowful, even to death” in Matthew 26:38 at Gethsemane where his sweat became like drops of blood (Luke 22:44). He knew the hour that was at hand (Matthew 26:45). He asked Father God if it was possible to let this cup pass from him, but he was obedient in the season because he always ends with “not as I will, but as you will.” How many times do we complain to God in difficult moments instead of trusting Him and yielding to his will?

Do you trust God through the seasons?
No matter if you are in a season of preparation, celebration, or grieving, we can learn from Jesus. Ecclesiastes 3:1 MSG says, “There’s an opportune time to do things, a right time for everything on the earth:” And just like Jesus, the key for us is to stay close to God! We need to trust Him, and recognize, that indeed it is a season, and it will pass. Even if we don’t fully understand the purpose behind it in the moment (which often times we don’t) if we trust Him and remain close to Him, even in the most difficult seasons filled with trials and grief, we can have hope. Hope that he will lead us through it and he will use it!

Daughter of God, I pray you learn to cling to him and trust him. Learn to allow the Holy Spirit to lead you, even if it’s into and through difficult seasons of wilderness. I pray that you learn in seasons of celebration that it’s ok to grieve, and sometimes God wants us to stay there with us! I pray that you also learn it’s ok to have seasons of celebration, as long as your source of joy true joy and thankfulness is through HIM! But I promise you in all of these seasons, if you keep your eyes on him, you will come out of it in the power of the Spirit and with greater authority, and you WILL be ready for the next season. I pray you allow God to do the work He needs to do in your life, in every season! And remember…spring is coming!

Drawing Near to God

Clean hands and a pure heart

Posted on August 30, 2020

I’ve been soaking myself in the psalms lately. Something about the deep cry of the heart, the honest searching and longing from the depths of the Psalms is entirely where my heart has been. Strangely enough, it’s not a book of the Bible that I’ve spent months dwelling mainly in before. The heart wrenching cries for God, exalting Him, praising Him, these beautiful hymns bring soothing to the heart, as the ancient writings from the 10th to 5th century BC resinate and awaken our souls to the majesty of God and the cry from man for God, that has spanned generations. Songs of thanksgiving, praise, petitions. Songs of ascent and of the majesty of creation!

Psalm 24 (ESV), one of my favorites Psalms, is a Psalm of David that says , “Who shall ascend the hill of the Lord? And who shall stand in his holy place? He who has clean hands and a pure heart, who does not lift up his soul to what is false and does not swear deceitfully. He will receive blessing from the Lord and righteousness from the God of his salvation.”

David is giving instruction here that is clearly saying, before you come before God, before you come to worship Him and pray to Him, seek to stand in His holy place, you better make sure your hands and heart are pure. This is also necessary in order to receive blessing from the Lord.

David is giving instruction here that is clearly saying, before you come before God, before you come to worship Him and pray to Him, seek to stand in His holy place, you better make sure your hands and heart are pure. This is also necessary in order to receive blessing from the Lord.

Why is it so important to do this? Because we are in process of being sanctified. The word Sanctification (Gk. hagiasmos) means to make holy, or morally and spiritually pure, separated from evil and dedicated to God, consecrated. To be sanctified means we have to be separated from sin. It is a process, that because of Jesus Christ’s victory over death on the cross, we are set free from sin’s power. He died so that we can be freed by Him, but now we must choose to live in the freedom He provided. (Romans 6:18). Daily, we have to examine our hearts and cry out to the Holy Spirit to search us, to purify us, and continue this process of sanctification.

Think of all the interactions and things that happen throughout your day that can start off as a tiny seed in your mind and then take root in your heart. How many opportunities do we have to take offense or get angry? Someone cut you off while you were driving. You had to wait in a long line. The cashier was rude to you when you checked out. Someone didn’t return your text or your phone call. Someone didn’t like your post on facebook. Your spouse didn’t tell you they loved you today. What about relationships at church? Relationships at work? Your family? We are balancing so many relationships and interactions that absolutely require the work of the Holy Spirit to continuously empower us to walk in purity and righteousness.

And this isn’t just about the “big” sins. And I say “big” in quotes because our human minds love to try and measure and judge the level of sins committed. What I mean is keeping a pure heart isn’t just about the “big” or “obvious” sins of not lying, committing adultery, or murder. It’s about diligently keeping our hearts pure, especially from the sneaky sins that can hide in our hearts. These types of sins take consistent tending on our part to guard our heart and stay pure! We have to continually pull those bitter roots out so those weeds don’t spread. They are also the types of sins that the enemy loves, because of how quickly those weeds can spread and wreak havoc in our hearts!

God is holy. He is pure. And we are humans who, because of sin in our lives, need a savior to make a way for us to have access to God. And it’s only through Jesus Christ that we have the power over sin in our life, which is why we must daily keep our hearts pure. God made a way through Jesus Christ for us to access Him, to “ascend the hill of the Lord”, but we have to allow the continuation of the Holy Spirit to purify us as we continue up the mountain towards him, or it will allow an opportunity for the devil!

Paul says to the church in Ephesus in 4:26-27 “…do not let the sun go down on your anger, and give no opportunity to the devil.” Clearly there is some direction here on the necessity for us to examine our hearts DAILY if we are to not let the sun go down upon our anger or we will give opportunity to the devil!

Also, in 4:31-32, he says, “Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along will all malice. Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you.”

The MSG translation says it this way, “Make a clean break with all cutting, backbiting, profane talk. Be gentle with one another, sensitive. Forgive one another as quickly and thoroughly as God in Christ forgave you.”

The Passion translation says this, “Lay aside bitter words, temper tantrums, revenge, profanity, and insults.”

Between these three translations, this is a pretty thorough list! And it’s all summed up at the end, forgive one another as God in Christ forgave you. We have to make a choice to forgive. It’s not a feeling, it’s not an emotion, it’s a choice. And only once we make that choice can our healing begin. How can we be followers of Christ and be burdened and imprisoned by unforgiveness? It’s the very trap the enemy wants you to get in so he can chain you to the bitterness that will grow rampant in your heart. How can you ascend the hill of the Lord when you are chained to bitterness, anger, and unforgiveness in your heart?

In Psalm 51:10, David writes, “Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me.

Somehow, it seems, even though the Psalms are quoted and used immeasurably, the cry to “create in me a clean heart” and “wash me thoroughly from my iniquity” (Psalm 51:2) aren’t quite on the top of the list. I don’t see many magnets or posters with Psalm 51:2 on them! Interestingly enough though, the words “iniquity” and “iniquities” are actually listed almost 60 times in the Psalms! Iniquity is just another word for sin. So that list from Ephesians 4:31-32 is Paul warning us from allowing iniquity in our lives. He says, “put it away” from us.

We love to gravitate towards the majestic Psalms, or the Psalms that speak of God rescuing us and being our help, such as Psalm 23, “The Lord is my shepherd…” or Psalm 121:1 “I lift up my eyes to the hills. From where does my help come? My help comes from the Lord, who made heaven and earth.”, which are beautiful and stunning, but we forget the importance of recognizing iniquity in our lives on a daily basis so we can become more like the very one in whom we stand in awe of, that the Psalms so beautifully glorifies, the creator of the heavens and the earth!

…we forget the importance of recognizing iniquity in our lives on a daily basis so we can become more like the very one in whom we stand in awe of, that the Psalms so beautifully glorifies, the creator of the heavens and the earth!

David was said to be a Man after God’s own heart, so I would suggest if we want any chance at seeking the heart of God, it would be good for us to heed his advice and recognize the importance of clean hands and pure hearts.

“Prove me, oh Lord, and try me; test my heart for integrity …” is David’s cry in Psalm 26.

One of the greatest acts of worship you can do before the Lord is to forgive those who have trespassed against you and to submit your heart before Him to be purified and cleansed. Do away with unforgiveness, resentment, anger, bitterness, wrath, jealousy and slander.

In Matthew 5:8 Jesus says during the Sermon on the Mount, “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.”

Perhaps you’ve wondered why you haven’t seen your breakthrough or have felt stuck in moving forward. It very well may be that the Lord is calling you to cleanse your heart. If you daily do away with iniquities in your heart and keep your heart pure before the Lord, you will make a way for His blessing in your life!

Pray with me. Father God, search me and know me. Examine my heart, I submit to you to make known to me any iniquity, any unforgiveness, wrath, anger, resentment, jealousy…anything that is unclean. I lay it down before you. Let me be one who will ascend your hill and see your glory come through me!