Seasons

The first time I heard the song "Seasons" from Hillsong, my heart felt ripped out of my chest and I just wept. The song talks about how God has us in certain seasons of our lives longer than others and sometimes it can feel like the dead of winter. First time I heard it was in a season that we are still very much in. When we decided that we wanted to have children and began to dream about what our life would be like it was hard to imagine then that the journey we were about to go on would be filled with sorrow and grief instead of the joys a new baby brings.

I have read so many devotionals about overcoming difficult seasons but what do you so when you're in the fire? How do you trust when you don't understand? How to you follow when you don't know where you're going? And don't even get me started on the "Why?" questions.

This song says something along the lines of “If you’re not done working, God I’m not done waiting” but I was (and am if I'm being honest) SO done waiting whether God was done working or not. Let’s be honest—if given the choice, we would all choose the shortest route to the object of our wait. Even though we know God wants to do a new thing, we prefer the fastest route with the least amount of trial in it. But God, knowing our weaknesses and vulnerability, often chooses to lead us on a longer journey so we can learn to rely on him more. I typically have trouble relinquishing control over a life that doesn’t even belong to me and God and I have had some knock down drag outs about it. At the beginning of this season the God who gives good gifts wanted to give us more than a child but wanted to give us changed hearts, and if you've ever been in a season of waiting, you know that eventually you come to a point where surrender is the only option.

James 1:2: “So don’t try to get out of anything prematurely. Let [a test or challenge] do its work so you become mature and well-developed, not deficient in any way” (THE MESSAGE). Let's think about this verse for a moment. "not deficient in anyway" so other translations say "lacking nothing." You may recognize a later passage in James 16 "Don’t be deceived, my dear brothers and sisters. Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows. He chose to give us birth through the word of truth, that we might be a kind of first fruits of all he created."

These verses to me can be so challenging because in the same breath James talks about not getting out of the trial prematurely and God giving good gifts. "If God would just give us the gift of having a child then our trial would be over." (definitely had that thought ha!) The bible says that "Children are a gift from the Lord; they are a reward from him. Children born to a young man are like arrows in a warrior’s hands. How joyful is the man whose quiver is full of them! He will not be put to shame when he confronts his accusers at the city gates." So let me walk you through my thoughts on these verses.

1. Children are gifts from the Lord

2. The Lord gives good gifts

3. The Lord says don't try to get out of a trial prematurely

Long story short, My trial is not being able to conceive and there is no one more able than God to stop my trial. So why doesn't he? Why are we still childless?

Because of this:

Gifts are not just answered prayers, not just children. God knows our needs before we even speak them. A good gift is God himself and the work that he does to make us complete through the trials that we face. If we never get anything else, that is enough.

So what is our part in God's work? Our response to the trials we face. According to James, there are two choices in how we respond, We can respond to a trial by giving into temptations of jealousy, anger and bitterness which leads to sin or we can respond to trial by being tested, and persevering which will lead to lacking nothing in him. Whether we like it or not , it is necessary for Jesus’s followers to embrace the seasons when we wait, as well as be willing to move forward following the leading of Jesus even if we aren't sure where we will end up. I know in my prayer life during this season my forefront focus has been to ask God for the trial to be stopped. I am still praying that the Lord will give us a child but now I also pray that my eyes will be turned to the good gifts that God wants to give and not just the ones I want to receive.