Seasons

Sometimes our God seems absent.  He was close, we were doing things for Him, life was exciting, and then it stops.  Our life goes through a change we don’t always want.  We feel, well, abandoned.  If we continue in this type of thinking, we begin to criticize ourselves for whatever grudge we believe God has against us.  Perhaps there is hidden sin, or we are not fervent enough in prayer . . . whatever we think God has against us, we work on.  We do this in order to restore our lives to the close walk we covet with God.  As right as this behavior seems to us, it is based on a lie, because God does not abandon His people (Dt 31:6). Nothing can separate us from God’s love (Rm 8:39); we just have seasons in our lives . . .  and seasons bring change.

In the 77^th Psalm we read,

“Will the Lord reject forever: Will He never show His favor again?  Has His unfailing love vanished forever:  Has His promise failed for all time?  Has God forgotten to be merciful? Has He in anger withheld His compassion?” (Ps 77:7-9).

Feeling abandoned is not a new thing. How did the psalmist relieve his grief?

“I will remember the deeds of the Lord; yes, I will remember your miracles of long ago.  I will meditate on all your works and consider all your mighty deeds.” (vs 11-12).

Remembering our closer walk with the Lord is not evidence that God has withdrawn from you.  On the contrary; it is evidence that God has laid a foundation in your life that He intends to build on.  What the Lord begins, He will finish.  Though we may feel like His apparent silence is a reproach, His intentions are quite the opposite.  God lets His people go through seasons of time wherein He seems to “go away” in order to strengthen and establish us, to the end that we are rewarded.

In some of Jesus’ parables He mentions that the “Master went away” and then returned to assess how His servants had done.  In the parable of the good and wise servant, when the Master returned he rewarded the good servant for giving his fellow servants their food at the proper time (Mt 24:45-46).  From this parable we know that how we treat our brethren is important, and is a ministry we grow deeper in during God’s apparent “absence.”  Without hearing directly from the Lord what to do for others, our heart must enter into faith’s action by love rather than by obedience.  And Love is what God’s Kingdom works are about.  We also see that God rewards our works of love in the parable of the sheep and goats (Mt 25:31-36). Jesus broadens the concept of loving God by saying “whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.”(vs 40).

There are other examples in Jesus’ parables of God’s seeming absence and then return.  The Lord knows we might feel abandoned and so is encouraging us to see these times as seasons of growth.  We should remember God’s works, and have faith, “being confident of this very thing, that He who has begun a good work in you will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ” (Phil 1:6).  Amen.