Transcription
Hi, welcome to Hava's podcast. I'm Havala, and today we are jumping into a brand new series. But first, let me ask you a question. Have you ever felt like your faith is on fire? Like it's a powerful season, and then it completely feels lifeless the next? Do you ever feel like one moment you're thriving and the next you're like questioning everything?
Well, what if I told you that's normal? What if I told you you're not missing anything? That your faith isn't broken, but it's actually part of the process of having a healthy faith life? This month, we're going to talk all about spiritual seasons. We're going to help you identify what spiritual season you're in, how to make the most of the season that you're in, and how to prepare for the next season that you will inevitably be in because everything is seasonal.
So, jump in if you're listening to this, um, and you're walk—like put your walking shoes on, grab your cup of coffee. Let's jump into this conversation about spiritual seasons. I remember years ago when I was prepping messages in my 20s, I was very single. I was really done with the season that I was in, and it felt like I couldn't hear God. Like I don't know why. Here I am, an ordained minister. I'm preaching. I'm leading worship. I'm doing everything I know how. And I just feel like I can't get God. I can't get his his voice and his—I don't even know—his presence.
And I remember even creating a a message series called When God Hides Himself from You. I did a two-part series on when God hides himself from you, which really tells you what season I was in. It probably only needed to be one one part, but I was in it. I was in the thick of it. And it wasn't until I hit spring did I realize, oh my gosh, I was in a winter season. I just thought something was wrong with me, or I was missing something I didn't understand.
And so, what I want to do is talk about your spiritual season. Now, first I want to explain that life happens in every season. So don't freak out. If you feel like God is far away, if you feel like you haven't accomplished what God's put in your heart, if you feel like there was a bunch of growth and now it's not much, guess what? Don't freak out. It's actually totally normal in your spiritual life to go through seasons. And so what's really important is that your spiritual life has seasons just like nature. Like if you think about God, he created all things, and he created winter, spring, summer, fall. And he didn't do it just by accident. He did it intentionally because each season has a unique purpose and a divine—like a pattern—so that the next season is ready, and we can actually be fruitful and multiply and grow what he's called us to.
So if you're expecting your spiritual life to be summer all year long, you are not getting it. I love you, and you might be in a spiritual thriving season, but it would not be honest of me if I didn't tell you winter might be coming. And not to be scared, but to be prepared and to understand that you didn't do anything wrong. You're not losing your fire. You're not losing your passion. You're just beginning to mature. And that's what the process looks like. So, we're not always going to bear fruit in every season. We're not always going to see abundance and harvest. Sometimes it's going to feel like things are not happening, or things are very small, and that doesn't mean it's broken. It means it's normal.
So the good news is Hebrews chapter 13:8 says that God is faithful in every season. It means that God doesn't leave you in any season. He's there, everpresent, always available, but his interaction is a little different. And that's important to understand. So let's talk about the four spiritual seasons. And yes, like nature, there are spiritual cycles that we go through.
Now, I know there's a lot of people that have teachings on this, and they can have different—they call them different seasons, you know, like the the um season where God takes things from you or the season when, you know, you have to go through the the battles and the and the testing. And those are great seasons, but I kind of like to keep it in the seasons—like like the seasons, right? Like winter, spring, summer, fall. I I like it that way because it helps me understand kind of what's happening, and it gives me a really good visual picture of what exactly the season might be.
So in winter, it's often called the wilderness season, and it's often the silent season. It's kind of like God, where are you? Like in the middle of all of this, where are you? It's quiet. It's dormant. It's just very—it's just—it's different. You're not seeing a bunch of activity. We're going to talk all about this, but I'm just giving you a tidbit. And then you have your spring season. And your spring season is when things begin to grow. It's kind of like new beginnings or uh fresh hope or kind of like some shaky first steps, but there's a lot of life in it.
And then you have your summer. And your summer is your pruning and your battle season, which might surprise you, but we'll explain that later. But God is stretching you. But even though God is stretching you and you're beginning to see fruit, guess what? The enemy is noticing, and he understands what is happening, and he's really trying to hurt the growth that you're experiencing.
And then lastly, you have your fall season, and that's your harvest and your transition season, and it's when all your hard work pays off and change is coming, but so is fruit, harvest, abundance. It's a beautiful season. It's a beautiful season.
So, here's the truth. You don't get to pick your season, but you do get to choose how you handle the season, right? We don't get to pick it. You don't get to pick if you're in winter and your best friend's in summer. It's—I know it's annoying. I get it. I know that if you have a friend that's in harvest and you're in spring and what you're doing is so small, it feels almost insignificant, and they're like doing everything they ever dreamed of, it's annoying. But the truth is, we can't change our season. But we have to learn how to handle that season and steward that season. And we can make it hard on ourselves, or we can make it a little easier depending on how we steward the season.
So here's something I want you to understand when it comes to your spiritual season. The biggest mistake that you can make, you and I can make, is when we try to make—we try to harvest in the winter or hibernate in the summer. When we are out of sync with the spiritual season that we're in. And I've done it myself where summer's a lot of work. It's hard work, and I want to go back into winter and more of an intimate time with God. And God's like, "Come on, get your hands dirty. Whistle while you work. Let's go." And there's other seasons when I want to harvest something, and it feels like everything I'm doing isn't working. And it's because it's the winter season. And that's okay. So again, you don't plant in the middle of a blizzard. And often we don't expect—so we don't have to expect God to do certain things in the middle of different seasons. Does that make sense? It should take the pressure off rather than you feeling like you're missing something. Hopefully it will.
So without discernment in your season, you will often—or I have often—resisted what God is trying to do. I've resisted it. I've thought, you know, I don't want to do this. I don't want to be in small beginnings. I want to be in big beginnings. I don't want to be in summer where I'm working hard. I want to be in a cozy cabin, you know, t—singing my intimate songs to the Lord. Or I don't want to be in winter. You know, I feel like I'm in this season when every little mor—morsel, this little mana matters to me, and I don't want to. But the truth is, if you resist it, it's going to be harder. So, it's better just to accept the season that you're in.
And secondly, we can get frustrated when things aren't working. You know, it's like all of a sudden, and I'll never forget this, I went through this long winter season in my 20s, and then I—I got—I met my husband, Ben, and I was so shocked that we were going to get married. I mean, I had gone through ups and downs of is this God, is this not? Am I going to get married? I'm not getting married. I mean, it was just this roller coaster. And then within a very short period of time, I meet the love of my life. We get married. We have kids. We get pregnant. We have four kids in five years. So, in within six years, I'm in the spring season. It's just—And then I think, "All right, this is really amazing." And then I go into summer, which is you got to raise the kids. God moves us to to Reading, California to serve at Bethel Church. Uh, I start writing books. We start traveling. And we are just working, working, working, working hard. But we're also storing up what God's given us because we know it's seasonal and there'll be a season when we have to go back into the into the cave, if you will, and begin to plan out what you want to plant next season or next time.
So again, what's really important is that without discernment, you'll miss the lesson you're supposed to be learning. And I think without discernment, you will—you will create that season or you'll make that season your identity. And so you are now a winter person, or you are now a fall harvest person. And then when the season shifts, you have an identity crisis. And that's what we really want to be aware of and understand. So Ecclesiastes 3:1 says it very clearly, to everything there is a season, a time for every purpose under heaven. So again, understanding that God is the God of seasons. He is. And there's a purpose for each of them. So, you can resist winter, but the truth is spring is coming if you steward it well.
I was thinking about this plant that I planted uh almost two years ago, and it's by our house, and it's this flowering plant, and it's supposed to smell so good, and I planted it, and within the first season all the leaves fell off, and I'm like, "Oh, did I plant this in the wrong place?" And I would water it, and then it took another year, and I'm thinking, "I got to rip that plant out." Like, it's not growing. It's just sitting there. It's got the stake in it. Well, wouldn't you know, spring has sprung here in Reading. And all of a sudden, there's some new leaves. There's a little bit of growth. And I'm thinking, I—if I had decided that that didn't look alive, I would have ripped that thing out and never been able to experience that this is going to be a thriving plant. It just takes some time.
So, in your life, if you can have the maturity of a spiritual person to say, I'm not going to rip everything out if it doesn't have life. Sometimes there's life under the surface. And that's okay. It takes a little bit of time for it to grow and mature. So here's what's important. Working with the season, not against it.
So if you're going to work with the season, if you're in a winter spiritual season, then you're going to understand that your roots are growing and that you can't see all the fruit, but your roots are growing. In fact, what I like to do in the winter season is I like to make sure my roots are deep in God. That I know he hasn't abandoned me. I know he hasn't forgotten about me. This is not my identity. This is seasonal, and so I allow those roots to go deep, and I actually allow them to root out roots that are no longer going to serve me.
If you're in the spring, well, the seeds are sprouting. So, I think sometimes in spring we're quick to want to show the world what we're growing. Like, here's my new book. Here's my new podcast here. And we want to, hey, here's my new vision. And then we try to show people, but we don't understand is there's a vulnerability to spring that if we overwater it or give it too much sun, if we give people too much access to it, we can actually kill that little thing that's growing. And so it's actually a time to protect it and tend to it meticulously and sacredly.
And then if you're in summer, well, summer, the heat is on. And so in summer, you're working, working, working. You're growing, you're building. But sometimes we can actually forget to be faithful in that. And what was growing so beautifully, now the weeds have grown the same time, and we're not sure what's life and what's God—right—like is this all a good idea or what's a God idea, and sometimes we can be so busy we stop growing the thing that we started out growing because we're busy just tending everything that's happening around us. I think about that in my own life, you know, I have these these four boys that I made—right—with God, and my job is to tend to them, to love them, to help them grow, to nurture them, but in summertime there's so many things happening. It—do I tend to their friend? Do I go over here and start this, you know, thing with them or do I—I mean, you start to see all these things, this kind of busyness buzzing around. But you have to go, wait, what's the object? My object is to grow them to be healthy, godly men. So, I have to really focus on growing them and not focus on growing other people's fruit. Does that make sense? Okay, good.
And then lastly, you have fall, which the fruit is ready, the harvest is ready. And this is a time when you celebrate. You know, you're—it's like you're getting married, you're having the baby, you started a business, you bought the house, you—you God's healing people in your services, whatever it might be. It's so exciting. But there's one thing you have to be aware of in the harvest that we will often miss, and that is we have to prepare and store seeds for the next year. And so, how do we do that? Well, we give away the abundance, but we do store some things to make sure for the next.
So, again, if you fight this season, you will fight your growth. You got to lean into it. So, let me just wrap up with these few questions. My first question to you is, what season are you in? Do you know? Maybe you don't know. That's okay. In our show notes, we'll put a little test where you can actually take a test to find out what season you're in. Summer, winter, spring, fall. You might be surprised. Can you be in different seasons than your spouse? Absolutely. Can you be in a different season in your parenting as you are in your finances or your finances in your spiritual life? Absolutely. So really defining that season is going to be very important to you.
And then also I want you to ask the Lord this week, how can I work with you in this season and not against you? How can I be strategic with you rather than fighting this season and going, I don't like being in this season? Well, you don't have to like every season, but you do have to steward every season. And so, how do I steward this season? And how do I work with you and not against you? Because what I have found is sometimes seasons are prolonged because we fight him. And he's a gracious God. So, he's like, "Listen, I want you to get what you need in the season so we can move seasons. We can shift seasons. But if you're just going to hibernate and not actually go deeper and let your roots go down, then we'll just pause here for a minute because I'm a good God. I don't want you going into spring and not—not having anything to grow. Very important.
So, next—next time on this podcast, we're going to jump into the entire season of winter. So, winter is coming. Listen, you may already be in it. You might be close to it, but the truth is it is coming. And so, I want to talk to you a little bit about how to survive without losing your faith or your mind in your spiritual season. So, we're going to talk about winter next year—next time. And then also don't forget to subscribe because we're going to do every single season this month. I think you're really going to enjoy it. You guys, that's it for now. Um, listen, if you're listening to this in real time, don't forget to subscribe so you don't miss all this. And you can find out what's going on in our world by going to havacunnington.com. You'll see where we are, what we're excited about, and most importantly, we'll see you on here next time. Have a great week.