A New Season

A New Season

A New Season Brings Changes

A New Season Brings Challenges

A New Season Exposes Champions

Slide 1

I love the fall.

I enjoy the cool weather.

I Love sleeping when I have to snuggle up in a blanket.

In the cool of the evening you can have a fire in the back yard.

It is great spending time with your family roasting marshmallows

As a family, we enjoy going apple picking in the fall and seeing the colors of the leaves change.

The beauty of God’s creation really comes out in the fall.

We are blessed to live in an area that has so many trees and leaves. The property we sit on here is beautiful this time of the year.

I can’t wait until our master plan is completed and we will have the opportunity to sit out here and look out some huge windows to the back and enjoy God’s handiwork.

To me, the beauty that God designed into the changes that take place in the fall are just further proof that we have a God who loves us and has blessed us with such great beauty.

I also like fall because we celebrate the season each year with a fall fest.

It is a time that we as a church gather and enjoy spending time together, eating together, and ministering together.

But a couple of the things that I don’t like about the fall is that it means

winter is right around the corner.

another year has passed and I am getting older.

My kids are getting older.

I have 2 kids in Jr. high and next year I will have a son in High School.

And as the seasons of the year become new, it means we are moving on with new seasons of our life as well.

The Bible tells about the seasons of life as well.

Turn with me to Ecclesiastes 3:1-8 (P. 473)

Slide 2

It tells us that there are seasons for all the activities of life.

It reads as follows

Ecclesiastes 3:1-8

1 There is a time for everything,

and a season for every activity under heaven:

2 a time to be born and a time to die,

a time to plant and a time to uproot,

3 a time to kill and a time to heal,

a time to tear down and a time to build,

4 a time to weep and a time to laugh,

a time to mourn and a time to dance,

5 a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them,

a time to embrace and a time to refrain,

6 a time to search and a time to give up,

a time to keep and a time to throw away,

7 a time to tear and a time to mend,

a time to be silent and a time to speak,

8 a time to love and a time to hate,

a time for war and a time for peace.

(from New International Version)

Everything has a season.

We see the same things in the lives we live right now.

We enter a new season of life when we

Get a new job

Get married

Have kids

Kids become teens

Kids leave home

We move

We retire

All of those things are natural points of life that enter a new season.

But there are times when we make a conscious choice to change direction in our life that we also enter new a new season.

Maybe we recognize that our life has not been moving in a positive direction or really has not been working out so well, so we seek to change directions, turn over a new leaf, if you will.

Many times, these moments of thinking through our life occur at natural points during the different seasons of our life

Around the beginning of the year.

At major birthdays

As well as during the natural changes of seasons that occur which we spoke of earlier, like marriage, having kids, etc.

So even at those times while things are changing already, we may sense a need for other changes that need to take place.

All of this is to recognize that Different life events lead to Different seasons in our life.

Some of you here today may be entering a new season of life as a natural occurance.

Whether you have just

become parents or

gotten married or

changed jobs.

Others of you may be recognizing that you need to make some changes in life and thus enter a new season of life.

This not only takes place in individuals but in corporations and churches as well.

Hickory Creek entering new season

Hickory Creek is preparing to enter a new season of ministry as we begin phase one of our building and parking lot expansion.