The wise sage King Solomon wrote in his book in Ecclesiastes chapter 3 the idea about life in terms of seasons. He apparently understood that life was a continuous series of seasons. In verse 1 he said, “To everything there is a season and a time to every purpose.” The word season denotes a fixed, definite portion of time. It has the idea of being fixed, but it also carries the idea of temporary fixing. Then he used the word time which carries the idea that it has a beginning and an ending. Between the cradle and the cemetery we will experience the seasons (the portion of times and the accompanying of what the seasons brings). When you experience the seasons there are elements that come with the seasons. The seasons of winter consists of specifics elements that makes winter winter (ice, lower temperatures, etc.). Summer has its accompanist (heat, mosquitoes, bugs, watermelons, etc.) Whatever comes your way in terms of seasons, do not think that the seasons are just picking on you. When the seasons arrives at your place, trust me it’s probably just leaving someone else, and when it’s done with you it will be stopping at someone else’s residence.
Someone said that life is like a huge time piece (clock), and the hands of the clock are timed by a divine clockmaker who allows the hours and seconds of the seasons to visit us. Solomon speaks of the season in an interesting way. He speaks of them initially as favorable, and then unfavorable, as positive and then not so positive, as good and then not so well.
A time to be born (favorable), and a time to die (not so favorable), a time to plant (positive) and a time to pluck up that which was planted (negative), a time to laugh, and a time to weep, a time to dance, and a time to mourn, a time to get, and a time to lose. Life is a cycle of seasons, a cycle where we experience and encounter the nuances of testings, stretching, stirrings, static, perhaps even stagnation and starving, or just staring at the seasons of our struggles.
There are seasons when life becomes dry and draining, life seems to be dragging us to be dutiful, rather than being driven by desired destiny. The center of life seems to be more about what one has to do and not what I want to do. It’s the dry season of life.
It’s like being in a hitter’s slump in baseball. You go to the batter’s box day after day and you just can’t get a hit. You find yourself 0 for 15, that means, you’ve been up 15 times and either you are striking out at bat or when you do make contact with the ball, you hit it right to where a defender is positioned and you are out. Dry season.
In the dry season you have no real joy, no real peace, and no real excitement. The oil of gladness is no longer in your vessel; the spirit of jubilation is nothing more then the scent of where it used to be. Dry season.
There nothing in the bottle, just the odor of where it was. Dry season.
The languages of your body are indicators that the dry season has set in. Some how, the switch or the knob that would allow you to change the contrast of your picture of life that you view to a brighter brightness, the knob is either gone or broken. And you can not even get a brighter contrast. All that is there is either a hole where the knob used to be or it’s now dysfunctional. Dry season.
The future looks darker than the present… Dry season... The only sound you hear is the sound of your own pain, fears, frustration… Dry season….
But here is the good news of the gospel. The God I serve can sustain you thru the dry season. The God I serve has a drenching for you when the Dry season is over. The God I serve can send a downpour when the season is ended. You can get thru the dry season. In this story before us today we see God sustaining his servant thru the dry season. This story goes back to chapter 17 when God commanded the prophet Elijah to go to Ahab the King and announce that no rain or dew would come except by my word. That word was strong and surely stirred the spirit of Ahab and Jezebel. The Lord perhaps told him to flee, sent him down to the brook and had a raven to bring him his food, but because there was no rain, the brook dried up and perhaps the raven died or could not find food, the raven stopped coming. But God sent him to a widow in Zarephath who was picking up sticks and the famine had impacted her, she had only enough for a meal and then death was eminent for her and the boy. But she obeyed the word of the Prophet by giving him some bread first. And the scriptures say they ate for many days, as a matter of fact they ate until the rain came which takes place at the end of chapter 18.
YOU CAN LIVE THRU YOUR DRY SEASONS:
I. When You Learn To Trust God Even In Dry Times.
One of the effects of experiencing dry season in your life is that it can cause you to think that God is also dried up.
A. God never has a crisis! He is God in the crisis! He is God over the crisis! God never has a 911. He is heaven’s EMS! He is the one who responds!
B. When Moses got to the Red sea, God did not panic! Stand still!!
C. When Joshua got to Jericho!! Put on your marching shoes!
D. When the disciples were in the storm on the sea! Peace be still!!
Verse 1 of chapter 17! As the Lord God of Israel lives!!!! That is it! In the Dry season of your life He is still living!
II. When You Learn To Live In Dry Seasons Based On God’s Word.
A. I personally do not believe that Elijah and the Old Testament Saints or New Testament Saints were much different than we are. They learned to trust based on God’s word.
Look at verses 2, 8, and 14 of Chapter 17. We have to learn to live on that!
Elijah I will provide! Jeremiah I will take care of their faces! David said to Goliath, “I come to you in the name of God!” David possessed something that Goliath did not.
We can never allow the Dryness we see or the experience makes us believe that it’s greater than the Divine-ness of God. That was what happen to the children when they spied the land. The size of the enemy causes them to doubt the strength of God. Their faith dried up because they looked too much at what they were facing and not who was with them.
I do not doubt that often what we face in life is huge! But our God is greater!!
Vashawn Mitchell! I searched all over and could not find nobody, nobody greater than him! He is the great I AM…
I am greater than any foe!!! I am greater than any problem… I am greater than any adversary! I can sustain you beyond any situation!!
He expects us to do that because we can create our own dryness by not trusting.
III. When You Stay On Your Knees Even In A Dry Season.
Life’s dry season will cause you to think and believe that God has turn a deaf ear toward you and that God has taken a hiatus from your life and that God must have taken his eyes off of you. It makes you think that prayer is nothing but empty words to a non-existent God. But don’t stop praying! Because prayer will:
Give you hope.
Help you to hear what others can not hear!
Cause you to see what others can not see!!!
Elijah sent the servant to look!!! Seven Times!!! And on the seventh the servant saw it!!! But I believe the prophet had already seen it… He was the one praying!!! He sensed it!!!
He perhaps in His spirit saw it!!!
A cloud… The size of a man’s hand… Just a little cloud… But that’s not much! The God we serve does not need much!
A little rod in a man’s hand! A little spittle and clay! A little fish and bread!!
A little boy and a sling and rock!
Get ready Ahab for the abundance of rain! The God of more than enough!!!
