There is a happy woman in Hoschton, Georgia. She has been nearly giddy over the dropping temperatures. She spoke in excited tones when she saw some browned leaves on the ground at the foot of the maple tree in our yard. Out of nowhere, there has appeared on my front porch a large, ceramic pumpkin with a bible verse painted across its rounded exterior. I have a sneaky suspicion that sometime very soon this happy lady is going to ask me to go into the attic to pull down the container marked “Fall Décor”, so she and her aunt can spread it across the interior of our home. Yes, Autumn is in the air and, as she does at this time each year, Amy Lyle is enjoying the changing season. I must admit, she is fun to watch when the scorching heat transitions into the cool of Fall.
As one of the warmest Summers on record moves off of the Georgia landscape, I am yet again reminded that changing seasons have always been a part of God’s plan. Summer becomes Autumn, Autumn browns into Winter, Springs burst from Winter and then Summer blazes forth from Spring. Change is constant for us as we behold nature. If you and I are observing carefully, we will also recognize that God uses change to bring about His plans on even deeper levels than nature reveals. God is clearly not addicted to preserving things from change. Here are two observations about differing life-seasons that are rolling around in my heart lately:
During seasons of change, your humility and faith are tested.
During seasons of sameness, your patience and faith are tested.
God is constantly working on intentionally building our faith. Ultimately, His foremost desire is that we all know Him, love Him and trust Him. Knowing about God is a poor substitute for personal intimacy with Him. Trusting Him is the desired byproduct of the intimacy which God offers to each of us. You can actually read your Bible for years, while merely coming away knowing about God. This kind of academic understanding of Him treats Him like a subject to be mastered, a doctrine to be dissected, a puzzle to be put together. Yet when we pursue encounter with Him and closeness to Him, a relationship is conceived and begins to grow. To know Him is to learn to trust Him via experience with Him. In order to develop depth to that trust, God will occasionally place you in a season of stretching change. Similarly, when He desires to add texture to your trust in Him, God will leave you in a season of sameness. In both seasons, your faith is tested and grown. Yet, there is also something distinct which is developed during these two very different seasons. Seasons of change test your humility in addition to your faith. Seasons of sameness develop your patience, while also testing your faith. I will post in my next blog how seasons of sameness tests our patience. For today, I offer a snapshot of how God works in your seasons of change to test your humility and faith.
When God ordains that things outside of you will be changing, you must immediately recognize that it is a test of your humility. He is taking away your crutches. He is displaying a sovereign audacity to inconvenience you. He is rearranging the furniture of your life. He is going to reveal the degree of disparity within you as you truly think that He is your Rock, even though you are highly dependent upon familiar people, places and formulas for your life. When God begins to allow a series of changes to find you, He is simultaneously allowing you to discover if it is Him you trust, or some structured system that you may have subconsciously erected to facilitate ease in your day to day living. We are so prone to immediately focus on others when God brings change to our lives. Somebody has messed with our setup! Something has put a dent in our plan! Who in the world deviated from my carefully crafted syllabus? Yet, for the discerning believer, we must recognize that it is God Himself who has initiated or allowed these shifts. If we do not embrace the changes, and also endure in humility as God brings something new to us, we will fight these seasons of transition which He frequently ordains for His children. We almost always instinctively fight outwardly at whatever we imagine to be the source of unwelcome change. While we focus the battle on the externals, God is calling us to consider that we should be fighting this contest internally. Yes, these seasons of change seek to welcome us to conquer the hill of our own heart.
If you are going through a time wherein God is facilitating a deviation from your personal playbook, then there are some questions which I encourage you to ask yourself:
What is God removing from me in order that the result is a deeper level of trust for Him in my heart?
What new thing is God placing upon me so that I can grow in humility to receive it, even though I did not desire it and am being inconvenienced by it?
Am I blaming others for forcing this change upon me, instead of honoring God for bringing this change to me?
Will I, in increasing humility, accept that I need this season of change in order to grow in confident faith that God alone is the lone constant in my life? If this change is causing me to depend more on God and less on other things, should I not consider it as a helpful change?
We can pray for seasons of change to quickly end, and we usually do. Most of the time, they do not do so until we learn the assigned lesson, and pass the test which God attaches to the season of change. If you are a fighter, you may be resisting the changes to the extent that it can bring even further discomfort to your life. It is a little frightening to consider but, sometimes when we resist change, we are actually fighting God. On the other side of the coin, if you tend to easily feel like a helpless victim of circumstance, you may view the assigned seasons of change as something which is happening to you, instead of something happening for you. Either way, developing humility declares to the Father, “I will not pretend that I like this season of change right now. But, Abba, I will also not believe the lie that this is happening without your permission. I humble myself today, and I press into You, trusting that this season of change is meant for Your glory…and for my good.”
My next post will focus on those seasons when God refuses to change anything; how do we pass the test of faith and patience during seasons of sameness.
So insightful Pastor Jeff…and the key to coming though it and receiving the outcome that God intended for your life is exactly what you pointed out…it is humbly getting really quiet before the Lord and keeping the understanding that the battle is internal and eternal. Such good encouragement.