Date: November 8, 2018 ()

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Have you ever wondered to yourself about your life, what in the world is going on Lord? Why is it taking so long, what is happening? And everything that is happening to me, I do not understand. What does it mean? What is the point of it? Why can’t we just get on with it? Have you ever felt that way? I sure have. I felt that way for a long, long time. The amazing thing is, as God works through your life from the day you are born until the day you die, there will always be something you are waiting on. Why is that? That is what we will be talking about today, the seasons of preparation we go through.

As you think about what you want God to do with your life, let me ask you a question. Deep in your heart, have you thought when nobody could see you and nobody could hear you, Lord I really want to serve you and I really want to be in the very center of your will? I do not want to be off a little bit. I do not want to be out there in your permissive will where things are happening that I do not want to happen. Lord, with all of my heart I am committed to you, to serve you and to do whatever it is you want me to do with my life. Do you understand that God’s plan for your life is better than the best plan you could think of, because you think with a finite mind. You look around you, see all your possibilities, weigh all you options and you think this is what I want. I think I can do this, and this is what I want. What you do not understand is that God is infinite. We are finite, He is infinite. That means God who created you, created you to do certain things. That can happen at different points in your life. What you do in one period of your life may not be what you do in the next period. The important thing is that you have prayed; I want to be in the very center of your will. I do not want to be anywhere else. I want to do whatever it is that you want me to do. If you will have that deep in your heart, it does not matter if you do not tell people. It does not matter at all, because God looks on the heart. Man looks on the outside and God looks on the heart. God knows how you feel. You might even be wondering if people really do that.

Maybe you have never even watched Christian television before, and you think do people really do that? Yes, they really do. In fact, the people that do that are some of the happiest people on earth. How can that be? Are they rich? No, not necessarily, some might be. It is not based on money. As I travel around the world and see people in every country, it is becoming more and more apparent to me that people and their happiness and joy is not based on material things. Now in America, we kind of feel like it is based on if I can get this or if I can get that. As I travel around the world, I meet people that are very poor. I mean very poor. They still have a smile on their face. They say, “Sure I wish I had more money. I wish I had some things.” But happiness is your decision. It is not external, it is internal. It comes from following God and knowing that I am right where God wants me. Life is good because it is good on the inside.

(Look at this picture of this man preparing to run a race. Is that you? Look at him. He is out there by himself. Maybe there are people cheering him on and maybe not. Maybe he is just out there practicing one more time; because when you run a long race, important race or great race you are out there by yourself in the times that no one sees you. You are doing things that nobody even knows you have to do. You are preparing in ways you have to prepare if you are going to be ready for the race; if you are going to be ready to win the prize. So, there is that guy out there just getting ready. He is waiting to hear that gunshot go off.)

What Scripture do we have that says God is really going to take things into consideration in our life and will make it all work? Psalms 138:8 says, “The Lord will perfect that which concerns me.” You are very important to God. How do you know I am important to God? If you breathe, you are important to God and what happens to your life is important to God. He has a big plan for you. If the plan is really big, then the preparation time is even longer. Why? It is so important that when you get there you can handle it, finish with honor, be grateful for what happened and see how you have grown. Do you feel like you are growing in the Lord? Do you feel like everything that is happened to you has worked together for your good? It says in Romans 8:28, “And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.” Not everything that happens works for people’s good. Do not make the mistake of saying that is what the Bible verse says. It does not say that. It says everything works together to those who love God and are fitting into His plan for their life. That is when you can know for sure that even in the worst possible thing that could happen to you; God will turn it for good some way. The wisest thing you could do, right this minute, is to bow your head now. Just bow your head and say, “Lord, I give you all of me. I want to be in the very center of your will for my life and I do not want to turn away from it Lord. I want you to strengthen me more and more and more so that I am prepared to do what you want me to do. Amen.”

If you will do that, there will be people who come to you and ask how come all this stuff is happening to you and it is not happening to me. All you have to do is ask them, how sold out are you to the Lord? Are you holding back on Him? If you are, it is not going to happen. A lot of people will say,” Lord, tell me what your will is. I will think about it and if I want to do it I will do it. If I do not want to do it I am not going to do it.” God does not work that way. It is all or nothing. So, you decide.

As we look at these seasons of preparation once you have prayed a prayer like that God gets busy working. One time I was driving out of my driveway. I was thinking about the Lord working in my life and all the things that he had me do to get ready and to change me. In my mind I was thinking about a dump truck coming up and getting a big load of dirt and hauling it off. All of a sudden it was like the Lord showed me another picture. It was one of those giant earth moving things that you build roads with that digs deep holes. I just laughed out loud because I thought, that sure is the truth.

The seasons of growth are to prepare you for what you are going to face in the future, even the bad stuff. Is there any way to avoid bad stuff? No, sorry, you live in a human body in a real world and stuff just happens. Sometimes it is completely beyond your control. You could not have changed it if you had tried. What do you do in a season like that? What do you do when you have been through something so devastating and so hard? Some of you know what I am talking about. You would not wish it on your worst enemy. Like my friend, Jerry B. says, “Some things you go through make you feel like you are being pulled through a keyhole backwards.” I know that feeling, do you? But I will tell you something the Lord has taught me to do. He has taught me to say, “Milk it for everything it is worth, Lord. I do not want to ever go through this again. Let me learn every lesson you want me to learn out of it and turn it for good.” If you will pray that, a lot of good will come out of it.

But you know, actually, many times, you are just ignorant of what God is doing. You cannot figure it out. You cannot understand why you seem to be stuck or why things do not change. I have a little saying that I have tried to live by and it says, “When you cannot trace his hand, you can always trust his heart.” You see, God’s heart toward you is nothing but good, nothing but love, nothing but blessing. He cherishes you and He wants so much to help you. So, you have those seasons of good times.

We are going to talk about the seven seasons that are in preparation for your call, or what God wants to do with your life. You can go through these seasons over and over again. Every time you move up a level, you start all over again because you are growing and maturing. The first season is the one we all love. It is the season of good things when everything good is happening. It is going just the way you want it to go. Your prayers are being answered. Everybody likes what you are doing. Your fruit looks good and luscious. You are growing very fast in the Lord. You are reading the Bible a lot, and it is speaking to you. Oh, it is just such a wonderful thing. And you see a lot of success. That is that season of good things. You need to be grateful for it, because there will be times that it is not there. When it is there, have you been a person that stopped and gave thanks? “Lord, thank you for answering all these prayers. Thank you Lord, I am so grateful.” If you remember the story of the ten lepers, Jesus healed every one of them. Leprosy at that time would be like having the HIV virus today, real serious. He healed ten people with leprosy. They all went off to show themselves to the priests to prove they had been healed. Only one came back and thanked Jesus, just one. How many things have you prayed about lately, and you never stopped and thanked God with the same intensity as you prayed the prayer. See sometimes we just kind of say, “Thanks, Lord.” That is not how you prayed at first. You were crying and carrying on like it was the biggest thing in the world to you. The good times always come. God promises they will. In fact, there is a verse that says, “Be glad for all God is planning for you.” Have you done that? Or have you been a person that says, “Oh, I don’t know about my future. I don’t know if it will be good. Look at the economy, wars, weather and everything that is going on. I don’t know.” No, the Bible says be glad for all that God is planning for you.

Do you really have those seasons of hard times? Yes, you do. We are going to talk about those. The season of affliction is where everything seems to be coming against you. Here is the Bible verse, Psalms 119:71, “My suffering was good for me for it taught me to pay attention to your decrees.” Unfortunately we all get where we do not pay attention to God’s laws. God is talking to us and we do not want to hear it or think about it. And, bam, something happens. What is the reason that God has for a season of affliction? It is to get the unimportant things out of your life. When affliction hits, you are suddenly able to get rid of things because they have lost their meaning. These things before had such a high value in your life. I have a friend that has just gone through a lot of really hard things in their business and in their family life. I mean really hard things. They felt like it was going to swamp them. My friend said, “Betty, I have been thinking about it. I have just about decided that there are times that God blows something up because something really good is going to come out of it. And if the blowup didn’t occur it would never happen.” What do you think? I think I can see that in my life.

Along with the season of affliction, you will go through a season of chastening. Hebrews 12:11 tells of God correcting you, “No discipline is enjoyable while it is happening. It is painful. But afterwards there will be a peaceful harvest of right living for those who are trained in this way.” Affliction is to get the unimportant things out of your life. Chastening is to get the sin out of your life. We all have it, all of us. We want to live a good life, but God will come to you and say, ”You have a critical mouth, you have to quit. You are judging other people, you have to quit. I cannot have it. You are lying. You have to quit lying. Tell the truth, even if it is hard.” I know a man who had lived a bad life, and he would not stop. The first time God comes to you, He will say do not do that. The second time, do not do that. Third time, bam! I said do not do it. Just like with your kids. There was a man who would not stop living the way he was living. Finally, he realized I am going to lose my wife and my children if I do not shape up. He was going to lose the things that mean the most. I have got to quit this in my life. Maybe it was gambling. He made up his mind and straightened up. But you know what the sad story is? When God brings these times of discipline in our lives and we do not pay any attention to it. Then we suffer the consequences. The Bible says it is possible to make the mistake yourself and blame God. How many people do you think are going around in the world right now that think God did that to me and I am not going to have anything to do with him? And God did not have anything to do with it.

That brings us to the next season, the season of disappointment. These are hard seasons, are they not? These seasons are those times you go through in life when you ask, Lord, what is going on? The season of disappointment, God actually has seasons like this. Not that He causes them, but you are going to go through them. They are going to prepare you, if you learn how to do it the right way. In 2 Timothy 4:10, Paul is working so hard. Many people hated him. Paul was one of those people you either hate or you love. He took great stands for God all over the gentile world. You have to remember that he was not even around people who understood the Old Testament. He was with people that had never heard anything about God. A lot of them were Greeks. When you read the names of the people that have left him or deserted him, you realize they are not Jewish names: “Demas has deserted me because he loved the things of this life and he’s gone to Thessalonica, Crescens has gone to Galatia and Titus has gone to Dalmatia.” Titus was actually helping Paul, but he was gone and he needed him.

In Psalms 41:9 David is writing and he says, “Even my best friend, the one I trusted completely, the one who shared my food has turned against me.” Have you ever had that happen to you? It might be one of the most bitter things that can happen to you, because you trusted someone. You were open with them; your heart was just to help them. You thought their heart was just to help you. Then they turned against you. What purpose or what good could God bring out of something like that? To teach you how Jesus felt. It says in the Bible that if we are going to share in his glory, then we are going to have to share in his sufferings. Does not mean we have to go to the cross? Jesus suffered in a lot of ways before he ever got to the cross. He had people desert him, and they were some of his best friends. And they were the people he had spent hours and hours and hours helping, showing them God, helping them learn to walk with God and letting them walk with him. It just shows you how Jesus felt when everybody deserted him. I know a situation where a really good man worked very hard to help people. He even went out on a limb for them, and helped them better themselves. He had those people steal from him, cheat him and blame others. How would you have responded in that situation? It takes God’s grace to respond the right way to all of these seasons. You cannot do it in your own strength. You can for a little bit, but you will run out. God is there to give you everything you need to go through this.

The season of proving yourself to others is another season you may go through. I am not talking about being an approval junkie. I am talking about when you have heard an idea or plan from God, and nobody else hears it that way. They did not hear what God said to you, but you are trying to tell people, “This is what God wants to do with my life. This is what I am supposed to do. I have this idea.” And people say, “You want to do what? Why do you think you could do that? Well, nobody has ever done anything like that before. You know, who are you to think you can do that.” It says in 2 Timothy 4:5, “But you should keep a clear mind in every situation. Do not be afraid of suffering for the Lord. Work at telling others the good news and carry out the ministry God has given you.” You have to really know in that season when people do not quite get it or they do not approve of what you are doing, but you know that God has told you to do it. Then you have to get your eyes on God and carry it out. It is hard, but what is the purpose? It is to get a reputation of integrity, character, stability and confidence. Sometimes you have to keep on keeping on until people recognize you are in the right way. Psalms 119:161, “Powerful people harass me without cause, but my heart trembles only at your word.” As a woman, I have had leaders who were not fully open to what God was telling me to do. They did not think a woman ought to be doing what I am doing. But I only paid attention to what God was telling me. Was it discouraging? It really was. It is like, “Lord, I need help. I need encouragement. I need people to say they support me they’re behind me.” And it was not there. But God is faithful. He always comes to you when you are in your lowest moments. He does something to encourage you that you are on the right track and to just keep going because I am the one that called you.

Another hard season you can go through is the season of persecution. In 2 Timothy 3:11-12, Paul said, “You know how much persecution and suffering I have endured, but the Lord rescued me from all of it.” The purpose of that is to enjoy the fellowship of His sufferings because righteousness brings persecution. You can be a good person and people will not bother you very much. But if you try to be righteous and stand on what God’s Word says, they are going to persecute you because they do not want to hear it. People do not like to hear it, especially if they want to live the way they want to live.

You can also go through the season of discouragement. Are you there? Is this lesson helping and encouraging you? Psalms 10:1 says, “Lord, why do you stand so far away? Why do you hide when I am in trouble?” What is the purpose of it? It will strengthen your commitment to your call. Here is another one you have not thought about; to cause praise and worship to rise up in you anyway. Do you do that? Or do you just wait until you are happy, jumping and shouting to do praise and worship? No, real faith praises and worships God when it is the hardest thing in the world. You have to make your mouth move to even get it out.

There is also the season of warfare, contending for the call that God has on your life. 2 Timothy 2:3-4, “Endure suffering along with me as a good soldier of Jesus Christ.” You see it says soldiers do not get tied up in the affairs of civilian life, for then they cannot please the officer who enlisted them. All of the people in the military know exactly what I am talking about. What is the purpose of it? To fight the good fight and defeat the devil is the purpose of it. God has somebody that does not like anything He does. He hates him and he hates you because you are with God. You have to fight, and you have to learn how to fight. You have to learn your weapons. There are lessons on my website (www.bettyswann.com) about the weapons of spiritual warfare, and they work. They are very powerful. What would be an example of a season of warfare? Contending for your finances would be one example. You might be a person who is really in debt, and God is saying, “I do not want you to be in debt. I want you to get out of debt. I will help you, but it is going to be hard. You are going to have to discipline yourself. You are going to have to have delayed gratification. You are going to have to work at it for a long time. It might take you seven years to get out, but let’s go.” So you contend for it. You war for it. You stand against it.

How are you in these seasons of preparation? Remember, there are good times. There are those wonderful seasons where everything is working and your dreams are coming true. There is even the season God has where it is better than you ever thought it could be. You did not know God could be this good. You are thrilled with Him and you love Him more than ever. That is just as important to the Lord that you have the good times as you have the other times. What season are you in? Do not give up hope. God has a big plan for you.

QUIET TIME QUESTIONS

1. What is the wisest thing you can do in your life in reference to God?
2. List the seven seasons of preparation and describe the purpose of each one.
3. What do we need from God to operate in these seven seasons?
4. What season are you currently in?
5. How has this lesson encouraged you?