Seasons Series

Times And Seasons part 1

One of the questions I get most often is,

Why can’t I understand

what God is doing in my life?

It seemed like God was blessing me before,

but now he isn't.

It seems like my prayers were being answered before,

now they aren't.

Things used to be easy, now its hard.

Why is this happening,

and what is God doing?

And people want to know

is there's some kind of secret

to understanding what God is doing in my life?

Well, if there is any secret to all this,

it can be captured in one word...

Seasons. Seasons.

All of us in this room are in different seasons of our lives.

Some of us are new parents,

others have become empty nesters,

some of you have just started a new job,

others are getting ready to retire,

some of you are dating, some of you are newly married,

some of you are divorced,

some are working on 40 years of marriage.

Some of you are new followers of Christ,

some of you aren't sure if you're a Christian,

some of you are back in church after a long time away,

some are leaders in our church.

We're in different seasons.

In fact,

Has anyone ever told you,

just enjoy the season you're in?

Usually its someone older or farther along than you,

and they've already been through that season,

Like maybe their kids are grown,

and yours are still rugrats,

so they tell you,

hey, while you're in that season, enjoy it.

And of course you want to respond,

That's easy for you to say.

You're not living with a couple little terrorists at home,

constantly cleaning messes,

changing diapers,

exhausted all the time,

haven't been on a date with your spouse in 3 years.

How am I supposed to enjoy it

when I'm tired all the time?

We're entering the Christmas season,

and I want to talk about seasons today,

in fact over the next 3 weeks,

we're going to try to discover

some secrets about our seasons.

If you have your bible turn to Ecclesiastes 3

because Solomon is talking about seasons.

If you haven't read it,

Ecclesiastes is an interesting book,

Scholars would say that it is observational in nature,

in other words its making observations about how life is,

but not necessarily about how it should be.

So Solomon, who some say is the wisest man to ever live,

is writing, not about how things ought to be,

but how they are.

Therefore, Solomon writes about seasons,

because the way we experience life

is in seasons.

Eccl 3:1

There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens:

Then it lists a lot of different seasons,

some that seem good to us,

and others that don't seem too good.

And it implies that

God brings different seasons into our lives,

some that we wish we could stay in forever,

and others that we wish we could skip completely,

and he says

There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens:

I'm not going to read through all the seasons…

Lets skip down to verse 11.

After listing all these seasons, Solomon says…

Eccl 3:11-12

He has made everything beautiful in its time.

[Notice the words, in its time]

He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end.

Now we may not be as smart as Solomon was,

but we do have an advantage over him,

because we have some of God's word

that he didn’t have.

And if you look at the NT, Eph 1:9-10,

Paul says this…

…he made known to us the mystery of his will according to his good pleasure, which he purposed in Christ, 10 to be put into effect when the times reach their fulfillment—to bring unity to all things in heaven and on earth under Christ.

Paul is describing God's ultimate purpose…

To bring everything in heaven and earth,

under the rule of Christ.

So Ecclesiastes is about how

its often difficult to figure out the purpose

in the seasons of our lives,

but Paul comes along a little later and says that,

now that Christ has been born and died for us

and raised from the dead,

we can now know the purpose of God in every season,

the ultimate purpose is

to bring everything under the rule of Christ,

in heaven and on earth.

That means the seasons of your life are not an accident,

there is a divine timing to all of life,

And if we can understand it

it helps us to live it a lot better.

Because there are times and seasons to our life.