The One Season of Christ

Sometimes I hear someone admit or lament that they are in a “dry season” or a “time of waiting” in their faith. 

I have been tempted to adopt these oft self-imposed descriptions; what I now call "loopholes." 

I call them loopholes because, after experiencing what I thought were “times” of testing, persecution, mundaneness, spiritual attack, or “hearing (or not hearing) from the Lord,” I now see that these were mere labels to things that, not only did I announce privately or publicly that were happening to me, ironically then compartmentalized from daily belief, the same way some people compartmentalize their faith into Sundays and then “the rest of the week.”

This compartmentalization often meant I could justify a “leave of absence” from a daily, arduous, growing walk with Christ. Because I was “not hearing from God,” for instance, I could just go about my life without paying much attention to how I was actually living out the Gospel on a daily basis. 

I could put God on the back burner, cutting myself a break because I had no “call,” or perhaps because I was so persecuted by such and such, I could simply withdraw from the world entirely, instead of stay in it and learn better how to navigate people and situations in full reliance upon the Holy Spirit. 

In actuality, by drumming up a season in which to live in excuse, I forfeited the experience of trusting that God could and would transform me, and perhaps others, in His merciful directing of me, and every situation.

I came to realize that, when we humans, including Christian humans, begin putting titles to our “chapters of faith,” I think we miss the larger picture and purpose of being a Christ follower, and that is to, at all times, in every instant, live as Christ.

This living is by and through His Spirit in us, which is the muscle underlying every thought, every word, every deed, and every motivation. This is the muscle Paul implores us to develop, and through which we train to become content in all situations (1 Corinthians 9:24-27; Philippians 4:11-13). 

Taking everything captive to Christ, always and in all ways:

“For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war according to the flesh, for the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, but divinely powerful for the destruction of fortresses. We are destroying speculations and every lofty thing raised up against the knowledge of God, and we are taking every thought captive to the obedience of Christ,” (2 Corinthians 10:3-5) 

Sorry to say, but the “seasons” we declare, and let’s face it, frequently with a tad or more of an aroma of super spirituality, can be the very fortress, the “lofty thing” that is raised up against knowing Christ and obeying Him today, right now.

If we single ourselves out as being in a season of “spiritual attack,” we may miss the gift of conviction that calls us to repent—not for things “the devil” is bombarding us with—but the sin that “so easily entangles” (Hebrews 12:1) which we voluntarily allow (or that we open ourselves up to unawares because we are so bent on “praying off the devil” or being his victim). 

Obsessed and deluded that we can only be in one place at one time, we fail to live out the entirety of God’s call for us at all times, which is to live out the Gospel of Jesus Christ constantly and consistently. 

I get that there are intervals and junctures along life’s passage; the ebb and flow of tragedy, hardship, overt joys and accomplishments. 

But those stretches—that may drag on if negative or dissipate all too quickly if wonderful—contain, just as the seasons in weather—sun and rain, wind and calm, sun and moon, all intermingled. 

Summer is never three months of perfect weather. Winter is never only bleakness. 

Within both we continue to marvel at peachy sunrises and blood-orange sunsets, crisp starry nights and temperate days that surprise and delight us. 

Some of us adore the snow and turn ambivalent with the approach of spring. Some prefer the hot humidity of summer and grab as much of it as they can.

But within a season—be it the months of the year or the specific circumstances of our lives—there remains the Sabbath Day of rest that we entered the moment we were saved. 

This rest, often limited in people's understanding to mean “going to church on Sunday,” is the rest of God from our human striving to save ourself and others. It is a perpetual rest, ongoing; we live in His rest every day of the week, no matter how hard we work physically and mentally, or how profusely we are challenged by a fallen world and bodies. 

We, as members of Christ’s body, are in one season now: His. Every day is the Sabbath, otherwise, we would have to leave His rest if it only meant Sunday church attendance. The book of Hebrews assures us we have entered permanently His rest when we accept the New Covenant of Christ (please read Luke 6 and Hebrews chapters 4 through 13 closely, in context and within the systematic incorporation of Scripture). 

This season, the never-ending season of being a Christian, in the very smallest invisible molecule of time, is where and when we live Christ out. We aren’t “waiting” for Him to show up, or to reveal anything other than what He would have us be, say, perceive, discern and do right now. 

If we are afflicted and perplexed, we are also caught up in joy and in the already-overcoming Christ (2 Corinthians 4:7-11). We don’t take a holiday: we persevere, walking daily in Christ.

The “seasons” of faith we so readily glom onto I believe must be jettisoned for the one season: the timeline we began when we first accepted the Gospel of Jesus Christ and He alone as our Lord and Savior. 

That, His one-time justification of us, puts into motion our all of the time sanctification: the on-going process of acquiring the living of life in Christ, come what may: boredom, intense fears, questions, jadedness, spiritual “highs,” grief, turmoil, physical and mental frustrations, failures, and disappointments. 

It is all one season, and we live it, nano-second by nano-second, as the purpose and call of God. 

Copyright Barb Harwood