UNDERSTANDING SEASONS IN LIFE
By : Ng Wah Lok
Text : Ecc 3:1-11 Acts 7:55-60, 14:19-20,
Seasons apply to every aspect of life.
3:1 To everything there is a season, A time for every purpose under heaven:
2 A time to be born, And a time to die; A time to plant, And a time to pluck what is planted;
3 A time to kill, And a time to heal; A time to break down, And a time to build up;
4 A time to weep, And a time to laugh; A time to mourn, And a time to dance;
11 He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also He has put eternity in their hearts, except that no one can find out the work that God does from beginning to end.
1. SEASONS IN THE CHURCH 2000 YEAR HISTORY
1. Acts 2:1 – Holy Spirit Poured down. Church era begins
2. Acts 2:41 – 3000 souls saved in Jerusalem
3. Acts 4:4 – 5000 souls saved
4. Acts 7:59 – Persecution begins. Stephen becomes the first martyr. Christians leave Jerusalem because of persecution.
5. AD 50-330 – Christianity spreads to Asia Minor because of persecution, reaching even to India.
6. AD 330 – Roman Emperor Constantine institutionalize Christianity. Persecution stops. Christianity fades for the next 1200 years. AD 330 – 1500 are called the dark ages of the church.
7. AD 1500 – Reformation begins. Martin Luther breaks away and formed the Protestant church. He was intensely persecuted.
8. AD 1500 -2000 are called the Restoration years. Church is restored back to become like what it was in the early church. Christianity is now the fastest growing faith.
2. SEASONS IN NATURE
Autumn – Leaves drop . Pruning time
Winter – Tree comes close to dying. There are no more leaves.
Spring – Leaves sprout out again. The plant begins to flower.
Summer – The fruit ripens.
A tree that is never pruned always produces small fruit.
But a tree that is pruned will bleed and look miserable, but when spring comes, it will heal and produce large and sweet fruit.
There are seasons for pruning. You prune a plant just before winter. You cannot prune a plant during summer.
3. SEASONS IN LIFE
Ecc 3:1 – In every things, there is a time.
a) You cannot pray _away a season.
Even Christians go through difficulties. Sometimes, we pray intensely that our difficulties will go away but God does not remove them. Some difficulties cannot be prayed away.
2 Cor 4:7-9 But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellence of the power may be of God and not of us.8 We are hard-pressed on every side, yet not crushed; we are perplexed, but not in despair;9 persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed
When we are in a difficult season in life, we should pray that God will give us the grace to go through the difficulties.
God allows difficult seasons in our life to deal with our pride and reinforce our confidence on Him.
b) You cannot run ahead of God’s Season
Sometimes God give us a promise. Then a long time lapses and the promise is not fulfilled. In our impatience, we rush ahead and try to help God fulfill His promise. When we do this, we produce “Ishmaels”.
Example: Abraham and Sarah – Gen 16:2-5
Gen 16:2-5 Abram agreed to what Sarai said. 3 So after Abram had been living in Canaan ten years, Sarai his wife took her Egyptian maidservant Hagar and gave her to her husband to be his wife. 4 He slept with Hagar, and she conceived. When she knew she was pregnant, she began to despise her mistress. 5 Then Sarai said to Abram, "You are responsible for the wrong I am suffering. I put my servant in your arms, and now that she knows she is pregnant, she despises me. May the LORD judge between you and me."
Abraham and Sarah could not wait for a child to be born. So Sarah gave Abraham her maid servant and Ishmael was born. Finally at Sarah’ old age, the promised son Isaac was born. By then it was too late. Abraham and Sarah ran ahead of God’s timing. The birth of Ishmael brought great difficulty in their family life and also trouble years later.
Example 2 – Metamorphosis of a butterfly
A butterfly cannot be forced out of its cocoon other wise its wings will not be formed properly.
c) Delay does not mean defeat
Story of Joseph - Gen 37:5-7
Gen 37:5-7 Joseph had a dream, and when he told it to his brothers, they hated him all the more. 6 He said to them, "Listen to this dream I had: 7 We were binding sheaves of grain out in the field when suddenly my sheaf rose and stood upright, while your sheaves gathered around mine and bowed down to it."
Joseph had a dream that his entire family was going to bow down to him. It took so many years for this dream to be fulfilled . But before it was fulfilled, Joseph endured the following:-
i) Sold to slavery
ii) Falsely accused
iii) Imprisoned
It was only many years later that he became the Prime Minister of Egypt and his entire family including his father had to bow to him.
2 Cor 4:17- 18 For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, is working for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory,18 while we do not look at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen. For the things which are seen are temporary, but the things which are not seen are eternal.
Light affliction - is for a moment to work for us an eternal weight of glory.
Don’t make permanent decisions based on temporary circumstances.
Don’t make important decisions when you are discouraged
4. WAIT FOR GOD’S APPOINTED TIME
Hab 2:3 For the vision is yet for an appointed time, but at the end it shall speak, and not lie: though it tarry, wait for it; because it will surely come, it will not tarry.
God makes all things beautiful in His time.
Ecc 3:11 He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also He has put eternity in their hearts, except that no one can find out the work that God does from beginning to end.
Do not let the devil steal away God’s promises from us in our time of difficulty.
Mark 4:15 And these are the ones by the wayside where the word is sown. When they hear, Satan comes immediately and takes away the word that was sown in their hearts.
Story of Adam & Eve – Death of loved ones – Gen 4:25 , 5:3
Adam and Eve had 2 children, Cain and Abel. Cain killed Abel and this was the first murder in the Bible. But later , God gave them another son called Seth. His name means “ Substituted”. Seth produced a godly line.
Gen 4:25 And Adam knew his wife again, and she bore a son and named him Seth, "For God has appointed another seed for me instead of Abel, whom Cain killed."
DO NOT ALLOW PAST CIRCUMUSTANCES TO DESTROY A FUTURE OPPORTUNITY
Conclusion
In an interview by Paul Bradshaw with Rick Warren, author of the best seller The Purpose Driven Life ( 20 million copies sold ), Rick Warren said:
People ask me, What is the purpose of life? And I respond, In a nutshell, life is preparation for eternity. We were made to last forever, and God wants us to be with Him in Heaven. One day my heart is going to stop, and that will be the end of my body - but not the end of me. I may live 60 to 100 years on earth, but I am going to spend trillion of years in eternity. This is the warm-up act, the dress rehearsal. God wants us to practice on earth what we will do forever in eternity. We were made by God and for God, and until you figure that out, life isn’t going to make sense. Life is a series of problems: Either you are in one now, you’re just coming out of one or you’re getting ready to go into another one. The reason for this is that God is more interested in your character than your comfort. God is more interested in making your life holy than He is in making your
life happy. We can be reasonably happy here on earth, but that’s not the goal of life. The goal is to grow in character, in Christ-likeness.
This past year has been the greatest year of my life but also the
toughest, with my wife, Kay, getting cancer. I used to think that life was hills and valleys - you go through a dark time, then you got to the mountaintop, back and forth. I don’t believe that anymore. Rather than life being hills and valleys, I believe that it’s kind of like two rails on a railroad track, and at all times you have something good and something bad in your life. No matter how good things are in your life, there is always something bad that needs to be worked on.
And no matter how bad things are in your life, there is always something good you can thank God for. You can focus on your purposes, or you can focus on your problems. If you focus on your problems, you’re going into self-centeredness, "which is my problem, my issues, my pain." But one of the easiest ways to get rid of pain is to get your focus off yourself and onto God and others.
We discovered quickly that in spite of the prayers of hundreds of
thousands of people, God was not going to heal Kay or make it easy for her. It has been very difficult for her, and yet God has strengthened her character, given her a ministry of helping other people, given her a testimony, drawn her closer to Him and to people...You have to learn to deal with both the good and the bad of life.
Actually, sometimes learning to deal with the good is harder. For
instance, this past year, all of a sudden, when the book sold 15 million copies, it made me instantly very wealthy. It also brought a lot of notoriety that I had never had to deal with before. I don’t think God gives you money or notoriety for you to own ego or for
you to live a life of ease. So I began to ask God what He wanted me to do with this money, notoriety and influence. He gave me two different passages that helped me decide what to do, Corinthians 9 and Psalm 72.
First, in spite of all the money coming in, we would not change our
lifestyle one bit. We made no major purchases. Second, about midway through last year, I stopped taking a salary from the church. Third, we set up foundations to fund an initiative we call The Peace Plan - to plant churches, equip leaders, assist the poor, care for the sick, and educate the next generation. Fourth, I added up all that the church had paid me in the 24 years since I started the church, and I gave it all back. It was liberating to be able to serve God for free.
We need to ask ourselves: Am I going to live for possessions? Popularity? Am I going to be driven by pressures? Guilt? Bitterness? Materialism? Or am I going to be driven by God’s purposes (for my life)?
When I get up in the morning, I sit on the side of my bed and say, "God, if I don’t get anything else done today, I want to know You more and love You better ...God didn’t put me on earth just to fulfill a to-do list. He’s more interested in what I am than what I do. That’s why we’re called human beings, not human doings."
