Purpose in each season

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!