Remember: God Is Your Source

• Do you see how important this is to discern  the seasons of your life if you are going   to live in a state of contentment? I  had to learn this early as a pastor,   because there are certain seasons that Jesus  could preach and attendance would be down in   church. Church attendance is seasonal.  Well, the first year I didn’t know that.
• The first year I thought the church was falling  apart, but it was really just summer vacation. “We   love you, Pastor, but we’re going to Disney World,  and we will be back.” It’ll come back around. This   is what Paul learned, but you have to live through  enough seasons, especially some losing seasons.
• In sports they call it a rebuilding  year. It’s code for “We suck right now,   but we’re trying to do something about it.” Let  me put it in a really profound way: some seasons   just suck. When you know it’s just a season, when  you know that, yes, right now the nights are long   and the days are short, right now I’m lonely  and I feel barren, but it’s just a season… The worst thing you can do is to get stuck  in a season in your mind that God is trying   to bring you out of in your life. Paul says,  “It was a long winter.” Perhaps Paul wondered,
• “Do they care about me? Do they  remember what I did for them?   Do they have any loyalty whatsoever?”  But he chooses to see it as a season. “And to everything there is a season: a time  to be born, a time to die, a time to live,   a time to plant, a time to uproot, a time  to destroy.
• ” There is a time that the ground   must be fallow so it can be fertile again and  sustain what it produces. It’s a season thing.   “I know how to have plenty, and I know  how to be pruned.” Both are growth. The key is to be as content in one  season as the other. I often wonder   if stuff really makes you more content  or just makes you more insatiable.