Transcription
Okay, so you prayed for growth, you asked for breakthroughs, and you begged God to take you to the next level. And now everything feels harder. You ever wonder why when things start going right, suddenly things feel like a battle? Like maybe summer isn't just all about growth. What if it's about warfare?
Today we're talking about your spiritual summer and what it looks like to know if you're in it and what you need to do. It might surprise you the direction we're taking because I'm not just going to talk about sunbathing and boat rides and all that. We're going to talk about what summer really looks like in our spiritual life.
If you're new here, I'm Havala. This is Hava's podcast, and we are in the middle of a series called spiritual seasons. Now, if you don't know what spiritual season you're in, we got you covered. In fact, you can go to havocington.com/seasons and take the test, and you can figure out what spiritual season you're in. But today we're jumping into summer and what does it look like to actually succeed in summer. It's not just about suntan lotion, right? Not burning in summer. It's actually about growing the thing that God's called you to grow. So summer—it's hot. It's hard. And you are going to be stretched in summer.
Listen, you wanted growth and you got it. But now you got to understand how to actually live in this growth season that God's put you in. So what are those signs of summer? This is how you're going to know if you're in a spiritual summer. First, you're being tested, and things are harder than expected. Like you're busy. You're doing things, but it just feels like, man, it's like Groundhog Day. Like I'm doing the same thing every single day. There's growth. There's evidence of God at work. But it's hard. And it's harder than I expected.
You feel the pressure of responsibility. Like if you started the business, you're feeling the pressure of that. You started the family, you're feeling the pressure of raising that family. You started the move across the country to do what God's called you to do. Well, you're feeling the pressure. Even though you might have the opportunity or the job, it's just—it's a lot of work. It's harder than maybe you expected. And there's a responsibility that happens in summer. Or uh, you need to understand that you're in a season of doing. You're not just dreaming. You know, like winter's all about God, where are you? Spring is all about what can we grow together, and there's a dreaming season. But summer, summer is not about dreaming. It's about doing. It's about getting your hands dirty, getting out in the beginning of the day and working all day long, and your nails are full of dirt, and you've been working, working, working. That's what summer is about.
And ultimately, you need to understand that it's not just about the work that makes it hard. It's also hard because there's some spiritual warfare around summer that if we don't understand, we can actually be vulnerable to being really hurt in summer because we didn't understand what was happening. You see, summer is where people either level up or they burn out. I'm going to say that again. If you're in a spiritual summer, you're either going to level up and do what needs to be done or you're going to burn out and you're going to give up and you're not going to be able to sustain till harvest.
So, how do we begin to steward summer? I like to take the acronym GROW, and it's really how to keep going when it's hard. The first thing in summer that you are going to want to focus on no matter what, and that is to guard your heart. Guard your heart. Because right now, you're working really hard. There seems to be some sense of the growth and evidence of what you've set out to do, but it can feel like you're just doing the same thing every single day. And it's really easy for comparison and discouragement to try to slip in and take you out. It might surprise some of you in winter thinking, really? I mean, I'm in winter. Doesn't that take you out? But in summer, you're growing, but you're not necessarily seeing the harvest. It's like I'm doing the church services every week and people are coming, but my friend over here, man, they have revival. Like they're they're having hundreds of people gathered and baptized and they're having these encounter services that are just powerful. And I'm over here and it's growing, but it just feels like we're setting up, tearing down, setting up, tearing down, setting up, tearing down.
You might have your kids where you're like, "Wow, you know, we're still in the in the grind of getting them to school and getting to sports and, you know, praying for them and talking about the hard things," and you see a friend whose kid has now like left childhood to adulthood and they're they're succeeding and they're happily married or they're, you know, they're in the grandkid season and you're thinking, man, I'm not in that season and I can start to compare—that seems easier than what I'm doing. Or I can be discouraged because it felt like, wow, their growth season seemed a lot easier than my growth season.
The R in GROW is simply to remain faithful. Don't quit even though it's tough. In summer, we think, "Oh, don't grow weary in well-doing." We think of that as winter, but I would suggest that that's more of a summer thing. Don't grow weary in well-doing. You—I know you see it. I know it—it's like, "Wow, this is harder than I thought." But I promise you, it will—it will—it will actually reap a harvest if you will let it. So, remain faithful. Don't quit because it's tough. Don't go to somebody else's harvest and try to eat their fruit. Grow your own fruit. Do what God's called you to do. Don't give up.
The O in GROW is overcome distractions. You see, good things can become as dangerous as bad things if they take the focus off of God. So, anything that we're doing, you know, when it's small, we go, "Oh, God, help me." And there's these little things that he's giving us and we're excited. It's the manna, right? But in the big growth season, we can be so distracted because we have so much to do that all of a sudden we're making Jesus a sandwich and our friend is sitting at Mary at Jesus's feet like Mary, and we're going, "But there's so much to do." And you're right, there is a lot to do. But we forget the purpose. And the purpose is I'm growing this because of what God's asked me to grow, but my attention and my affection must be on him alone. It cannot be on what I'm growing.
And so lastly, the W is to worship while you work. I know that sounds funny, but you got to worship. You got to—actually, I love that—like whistle while you work, right? That kind of old classic, but the idea is to actually not stop working, not burn out, not say, "I need a vacation from this." Because let me tell you, you cannot off-ramp in summer. Now, you can, but you will not have a harvest. You will have a garden that got—was given up on. You'll see some growth. You won't know what's fruit, what's weeds, and you will not have a harvest. And so, a lot of people I see, they don't continue because they think, "This is so hard. I want to harvest." And I want to say to you, you have to actually stay at a place of working hard and worshiping hard. And so, don't let that busyness take you out from actually being a worshipper. It's really the best way to do summer is to stay—is to become a worshipper.
So Galatians 6:9 says, 'Do not let us grow weary in well-doing, for in the proper time, you will reap a harvest if you do not give up.' A lot of times in my life, I have been vulnerable to want to harvest when it's not time to harvest. It's like, I want to do this, I want to do that, and it's not time yet. I remember when I started doing Bible studies, and I was excited. I had done my first Bible study for the church. Women had come to it. And then I thought, I'll do a Bible study at my house, you know? I'll just have women come to my house and we'll do like months of a Bible study. And it's so funny because God wasn't asking me to do a Bible study in my house. I just assumed because we're growing things, I should be working hard. Let's do this thing. You guys, 10 women showed up. The next week, seven women showed up, and then five women showed up. It was terrible. It wasn't what God had called me to do. But because I was in this summer season of working hard and doing things, I assumed let's just add more to it. And yet God was like, "No, I actually want you at home writing your Bible study and only doing Bible studies twice a year and kind of coming out and giving that rather than just consistently, um, you know, week by week." That was what God was calling me to. Now, you might be the exact opposite. I don't know. But it's very, very important to understand what season you're in.
You see, summer is when the plants—or the—where the plants get tested. If there's too much heat, they wilt. If there's not enough water, they die. And the same goes with your spiritual life. If you're so busy working, working, working, you forget to wash your soul or your spirit with the water of the word, you can dry up just because you're busy. Or if you're so busy, you can actually forget that the sun—being in front of people, being so busy, we can forget that we need protections around us, that we need a Sabbath. We need time to actually get a break from the sun that's being required of us.
So what are the top three mistakes that we can make in summer? Simply number one is we can burn out. We can be so busy being busy, and we can think busyness is a sign of a badge of—of honor or a badge of worthiness. It is not. You can be busy and not be productive. And so ultimately we have to understand that we have to pace ourselves—that God's not asking us to be God. He's asking us to partner with him. And so we have to actually be—be very aware of the burnout in our lives.
The second is that we can get really easily distracted. And so we have to stay focused on what God's called us to do. It's really interesting. I would almost say that favor—it's like there's a season of favor, and you follow favor. And favor is one of those things where you didn't have the favor before, and then all of a sudden you get the opportunity and you have the favor to do it. And yet you have to know what you're saying yes to because favor—it just hits everything. It's like everybody wants you to do this. Everybody wants you because you're busy. You look productive. People like what you're producing. But to really know—I have to be good at this one thing. I have to grow this one thing—is very important.
And then lastly, I think sometimes we forget the gratitude of God—you are the one that did all this. We can kind of attribute our growth to our hard work. Like look at how much I've done. Look at what I've created. Look at what I've produced. I found that in my own heart. You know, I'm like, if you want to talk about mileage, you know, I'm a 100,000-mile car because I've been working really hard. But I forget the gratitude of like, God, you put me in this season, and I want to honor you in the growth, but without your water, without your sun, without your soil, I got nothing. I got some hands and I got an opinion. But I really need you to help me. And that's very important to stay dependent and grateful for what he's given you.
So, how to stay strong in summer? First, you got to keep showing up. Listen, if you start believing the lie, I'm burned out in summer, you will start to self-prophesy that you are burned out, and you'll start to pull back. And I'm telling you, you will not get the harvest that God—what has for you. I've seen people do this all the time. They get so freaked out about burnout that they don't actually understand that they are in a work-hard season that they pull back. They shut everything down, and they don't realize that they're just about to get the promotion. They're just about to get that thing started that's been in their heart all along. And so the goal is not to pull back and cut off everything. The goal is how can I stay sustained in the midst of a busy schedule. That's the—that is the—that is the lesson—the leadership lesson of summer—is how can I stay productive and work hard while having a soft heart—while staying—while keep showing up—while—while staying rooted in God. Very important, which is the second point.
When we're busy, we tend to want to do all the things we have to do. And we forget to stay connected to a faith community. I don't know about you, but sometimes I'm like, I'm so busy doing things for God, I forget that there's other people doing things for God that I could really use and really be around and be good for me. So, I see people do this all the time where they're so busy running here and running there that they forget that it's time to actually plug into your faith community and let people help you sustain. Even though you're productive, let them help you.
Thirdly is to schedule intentional rest. Um, this is the long game. So I remember for Ben and I—we were in this summer season just working, working. We had—we had the four kids like under the age of seven, and we had the ministry that we were—we were stewarding—Wall Revolution. We were building Truth the Table simultaneously, and we're just working, working, now. And we didn't have a nanny. I'm—I'm a stay-at-home mom in many ways. I'm doing that at home. And then when I would leave, Ben would be home, and we were tag-teaming. And I remember like this realization of—I'm going to burn out before I actually get the harvest. Like this is not good. Like I am—I'm on all cylinders. They used to call it burning the candle at both ends. And I remember Ben and I pulling out our calendar and going, where are we resting? Where's our playtime? You know, if you don't plan to play, you won't play. And play is good for us. And so I remember us looking at the quarters of the year and saying, "Okay, we're going to go camping right here, and we're going to go over here to—on a family vacation," and—and actually laying it out because I hadn't set that up. It was just what was necessary, and we were going to burn out. And you know what else I had to do, which was really, really hard, is I had to call friends and people up and say, "I'm so sorry. I committed to this, but I can't do this right now for the sake of my family, for the sake of my—my physical body. Forgive me, but I'm asking for grace if you will let me out of this commitment." And it was—it was humbling. It was humbling. It was embarrassing in some ways because you think, man, these people waited for me, and then I said yes, and now they can't—they're going to be left without anybody, which is a little bit of a savior mentality. It's not always healthy. They—God has a lot of people he can use to help them. But also, I realized that when I don't steward my yeses, I say yeses to things I shouldn't be doing, and then I have to clean that up. And you need to understand that. It's very important. God's not asking us to say yes to a thousand things and then going and just saying I can't—I can't—I can't—I can't. That affects people. That's not stewarding people well. And so what I learned from that lesson because I called them and I took it seriously and I humbled myself and I asked them for grace, I learned two things. Number one, that I need to be very aware of my yeses—that my yeses hold weight and it's my word. And if I say yes and then I say no, that—that does change the dynamic in our relationship of what people can trust that I'm going to bring to the table. But secondly, I learned that sometimes when you say yes and then you say no, you don't get invited back to do it again because they—they—they don't—they want to be able to trust you, but they can't because you said no. So I had to unpack that part of my soul that was worried about opportunities and things being missed and say, God, you want me to have the long game. The long game is what's important to you. I want to be here for a long time. So, if I don't do this ever again or I don't get invited to do this ever again, that is okay because I'm in it for the long game, and I—I want to actually have intentional rest seasons. And I've been able to steward that very well—um—and learn to do that. But that takes enormous intention to understand what's at—what's happening at you.
And then lastly, don't let the enemy talk you into quitting. So, this is the spiritual warfare that I would recommend that you are aware of in the summer. And in summer, you're so busy doing things that the enemy can really slip in and begin to overwork you or overcriticize the things you're busy doing. And you can actually overfunction. And he's wanting you to get burned out. He's wanting you to feel overwhelmed. And so, he's very easily sending things your way that will—that will almost like press the button of worth or press the button of effectiveness. And we really have to understand that there is the enemy's voice that wants to come and burn us out. You know, if you think about the enemy—the enemy and—and even the root of sin and the root of, you know, your—your flesh, there is no boundaries around your flesh. Your flesh—the—the voice of your flesh is more, more, more—consume more, have more, see more, do more. And the enemy of your soul and your flesh want to bankrupt you—emotionally, mentally, spiritually, financially—come on. It wants to bankrupt us. They have no purpose in us having a—an—an investment of long life and an abundant life. They don't care. They want us to just obey that—that natural voice that says, "Keep getting it. Keep getting it. Keep getting it." And all of a sudden, we look around and we realize we have no money. We've overspent. We have no time. We've overcommitted, right? We have—we—we don't have a physical health because we've burned our body out. So, really being aware that in the summer we have to actually take notice of the enemy wanting us to overfunction to our demise—very, very important.
So, as we wrap up, I want you to ask this question—answer this question internally. What area of your life is being tested right now? You're in the middle of summer. Things are growing. Things are busy. Things are—are becoming fruitful. But what is the area that's being tested right now? Is it your—is it your worth where you go, I'm saying yes to everything because it makes me feel like I'm irreplaceable? Is it uh—being tested by saying—by—by not doing the thing that's easy to grow? Not fast growth, but actually like intentionally hard things that I really want to grow. Like really asking yourself what's being tested right now? Are you being tested to give up in your parenting? Because parenting is hard. Like I don't know anybody who's parenting that's just, oh, it's just easy. It was no big deal. I'm like, no, you're an aunt. You're a grandparent. But a parent—it's day in and day out. And so are we getting weary in your parenting? Well, you might need to actually ask the question, why am I being tested? Am I believing that it should be fall and harvest, and I'm not treating it like summer, which is hard work?
And then lastly, I really want you to commit to practice daily in your spiritual life to keep that spiritual life strong. So again, it's that tension between doing things and being, right? You are a son or daughter of God. That is who you are. This is an assignment. Summer is an assignment. There are things that you're working towards, but in your spiritual life, there's a part of us that has to protect us from burnout spiritually. And so, I would ask you, what is something you can commit to every single day to grow in your spiritual life? Whether it's—it's the washing of the water, the word, whether it's the worshiping—right, God, and—and giving him back the glory and being grateful, whether it's journaling—a gratitude journal—what are you grateful for? Whatever that might be. Maybe it's writing yourself a letter or something that says, "Hey, future me, it's worth the wait. It's worth the work." Right? So, really being intentional of how can I actually keep myself grounded? Even for some of you, and I'll just say this prophetically, you might need to attend a conference or a retreat or do something that's outside of your busy, busy, busy to where you get fed. Someone sewing into you in this season rather than you just sewing, sewing, sewing, sewing. Yeah. Your kids have dance, and I love that. And you're spending thousands of dollars on dance, and I love that. But are you spending money on your spiritual life? Are you—are you investing in your—your heart, your health, your ability to see what God is doing and not just busy checking the boxes? So, whoever that's for, I release that. I hope that that blesses you.
Next week, we're going to—we're going to finish this series in the season of fall and harvest. You're not going to want to miss it. It's such a great season. And to be honest, it's my favorite season. It will be yours as well. So, if nothing else, I'll see you next time.