Seasons of Faith

Seasons Of Faith

“There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens:” – Ecc 3:1

“…a time to tear and a time to mend,” vs 3b

“…a time to search and a time to give up,” vs 6a

“Whatever is has already been, and what will be has been before; and God will call the past to account.” vs 15

The Cycle of some Christian’s life:

Let’s be honest, whenever we began our walk and to this day our walk has been like the 4 seasons. The wisdom in Solomon’s statement “There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens:” is altogether apropos. Let’s reminisce.

SPRING: You were introduced to Jesus from a friend, family, at church, in the forest, at your office, one night in bed while you contemplated what you had heard, any number of places. For many, as soon as they began to understand the importance of Jesus in their life they felt a growing need to dedicate themselves with things like the following encouragement of this verse: “"That if you confess with your mouth, "Jesus is Lord," and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.  For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you confess and are saved." – Rom 10:9-10

Once done, over time, maybe even immediately the Holy Spirit that fills you as a born-again Christian will make its presence manifest. One way is in the fruitage the Holy Spirit begins to reveal found at Gal 5:22-25 – “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law. 24 Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. 25 Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit.”  Notice a list of 9 different aspects of the fruitage of the Spirit. You may be known for being long suffering/forbearing or gentle already yet, the entire list of fruitages in time will become your new transformed [Romans 12:1-2] self. The ones you already had will be deepened and limits you thought you could never experience will become seemingly limitless. There is much that begins to happen and much of it is so subtle and behind the scenes that you only recognize the change when confronted with something and your transformed self responds very differently than your old self. But the growth initially is very all consuming. You look forward to praise and worship in growing your knowledge through Bible study and in making a whole new family of friends who will each interact with your faith and both you and the other person will be edified by each other’s testimony. The growth period is then intensified in many new Christians into the summer.

SUMMER: For each new Christian this season will be different. You may merely be building your knowledge bank basking -- as it were -- in the effect TRUTH has in your life. Now, you fully understand the whys of so many questions you may have had or that came to you as you began to learn. You also have grown your Christian family and they too have added to your knowledge. You are sort of learning your new culture. As part of Christ’s body/church you begin to feel where you fit in best. Be wise, remember, faith comes from hearing and hearing by the Word. [Romans 10:17] You must be immersed in GOD’s Word the Bible to continue to grow. No matter how many times you read the Bible in its entirety you learn again and again many new ways to understand things. You may decide to endeavor to study the Bible by choosing a single book and really deep diving into. Whatever happens, by the end of summer the Christian can begin to fade from such intense heat – the heat of passion for Christ. It is not a given, but it seems to happen. It is not foreign for the Christian to begin to chill for a bit. Not necessary because no matter what speed and intensity you wish to worship GOD, HE is capable of sustaining you! But, many Christians, new and old to the walk, go through a series of seasons spending longer in some seasons than another. So, now you feel you need some change of pace and you arrive at the Fall.

FALL: When temps, or your passion, begins to cool down. Not intended and not necessary but it seems an inevitability. Let’s pause and look at a couple of statements Jesus made to two different congregations nearly 6 decades after HIS death. The first recognizes a ‘first love’ [Spring into Summer sort of passion] and reminds the congregation they stepped away.  To the Church in Ephesus, “Yet I hold this against you: You have forsaken the love you had at first.” Rev 2:4

It’s true. It happens to most of us. We were so impassioned when we first were born again it is like when you fall in love and everything is new and exciting. Then over time familiarity sets in and the newness sort of wears off. But that is our own perception. GOD is able to sustain that passion 24/7 if we let HIM.

So in the autumn of our walk when we have truly cooled down in our passion we begin to get lazy and flabby like when we begin to change our exercise and nutrition because the weather is becoming radically different and our focus is on bulking up in clothing to go out into the cool temps. Changes happening like the holidays closing in on us distracts from our longer active days of spring and summer. We may have a great routine for studying GOD’s Word and we begin to slack. We may have an incredible prayer routine, not repetitive prayers but times we set aside specifically for prayer, and we begin to let life’s matters crowd out our prayer time. Because the holiday time begins to consume our time, we may fudge on hanging out with our Christian friends. All of these things are weakening our faith because we are no longer conscientiously active in the ways we build our knowledge, increase our wisdom and enhance our faith. Before we know it, we find ourselves deep in the frigid cold of winter.

WINTER: This season finds much of our world in a state of dormancy/hibernation. But, do we need to hibernate our faith? Does it do well to put it in some state of dormancy? See what Jesus said about the winter like faith:

To the Church in Laodicea: “I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were either one or the other! 16 So, because you are lukewarm—neither hot nor cold—I am about to spit you out of my mouth.” Rev 3:15-16

Notice, the person is blah…nothing definitive or noticeable about them. They catch no one’s attention EXCEPT GOD’s and obviously not in a favorable way. So many of us have been here too many times. Doesn’t matter how long you have been a Christian you can wind up deep in winter and absolutely dormant. You will find you do have an ever-active conscience with the Holy Spirit and from time to time you will have a warmer day and will think about getting back to your old routine but again, distractions. Christians are very vulnerable in Winter. They can be so distracted, they are easily led to an activity that they would never consider during their more active times of faith. This is the time when your friends of faith should be busily encouraging you towards revitalization before you regret your waning absence from GOD. Remember, GOD does not walk away from us. We do physically, mentally, emotionally, psychologically and most definitely SPIRITUALLY walk away from HIM! The winter finds Christians ‘back sliding’. We sure do not want to be spit out of the mouth of Christ! Once the Holy Spirit has pulled the clamor to your Faith Bell and rings it long and hard you begin to come back to your senses. You revisit your old abandoned routine and begin to make steps to thaw out your routine and as you do you are back to spring and a new growth spurt.

Christians do not go through this as often as our weather cycles proceed. They do find that life in all its ways impacts closes in on you and begins to dominate your time, mind and focus. The wonderful thing about emerging from one of these times is the new light that has shone on some special need you did not know you had and as you begin to address the need it becomes immaterial in your continuing walk unless you choose to forget the lesson.

Beware Christian, new and old, it is not merely seasonal faith or life or laziness or lack that causes us to go from red hot for GOD to cold and clammy. Remind yourselves often of this: “Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil walks about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour.” That is pretty disarming. But notice what Peter continues to remind us:  "9 Resist him, steadfast in the faith, knowing that the same sufferings are experienced by your brotherhood in the world.” – 1 Peter 5:8-9

Also keep this in mind: “And no wonder! For Satan himself transforms himself into an angel of light. 15 Therefore it is no great thing if his ministers also transform themselves into ministers of righteousness, whose end will be according to their works.”—2 Cor 11:14-15 Why should we be vigilant about this? Because, we will meet those who have all sorts of opinions about Christianity, Christ, GOD, faith, prayers, who claim to be Christian, or who have no interest in Christianity and perhaps no interest in religion period! But, Satan is cunning and knows the Bible way better than many and has demonstrated -- even to Christ -- a wiliness with the scriptures that one not utterly and profoundly familiar with the Bible and the full unadulterated GOSPEL can and have fallen prey to this devil, the original liar.

So, though we cannot always control things how do we prepare ahead of time for those times we find ourselves cooling off to a lukewarm state, forgetting the love we had at first for Christ? Here are a couple of scriptures that may be of assistance.

“These were more fair-minded than those in Thessalonica, in that they received the word with all readiness, and searched the Scriptures daily to find out whether these things were so. 12 Therefore many of them believed,…” – Acts 17:11-12a

These verses have a concise formula for continued strong summer like faith: “Rejoice always; 17 pray without ceasing; 18 in everything give thanks; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus. 19 Do not quench the Spirit; 20 do not despise prophetic utterances. 21 But examine everything carefully; hold fast to that which is good; 22 abstain from every form of evil.”—1 Thess 5:16-22

Notice we should be glad, we should pray unceasingly, be grateful giving thanks—Why? Because it is GOD’s will for us in CHRIST! We are also told NOT to quench or extinguish the Holy Spirit. We are not to despise prophetic utterances. ß This one is particularly important because many Christians today are so fearful of the unknown [including books of the Bible that seem to confound those who do not vigorously study the Bible like Revelation] they would rather shy away from prophetic Bible books and scriptures, like those contained in Ezekiel, Isaiah, some of the so called minor prophets like Joel, Amos and the two Z’s Zechariah and Zephaniah because these books are perceived to have negative consequences and some pretty frightening imagery that sits poorly in the minds of those who have not yet decided to wholly give themselves to GOD. Study these books with intense prayer for knowledge. Be familiar with them so that as Jesus said “But when these things begin to take place, straighten up and lift up your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.”  †

There is more good news: http://lightwritingmatters.lightwritingmatters.net/2019/09/looking-to-escape-let-not-your-heart-be.html

  

Summation†

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 Bibles Designations

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