Some seasons seem longer than others. As we go through a season of refinement and being made ready, it is as the hot summer season in which we crave refreshing rains, and we look forward to the cool of the fall. When the new season finally is entered into, we can look back and say, “How good it was for me to be afflicted for it removed the pride, jealousy, anger, rage, malice, unforgiveness, operating in my own strength, and all sorts of wrong ways of thinking and acting. You have surely made me ready to be employed as your anointed vessel.” We will continue to be refined and perfected until we stand before Him in His full glory and beauty.
Some seasons are more concentrated in the fires of refinement than others. When we finally submit and release our hearts to God, level by level, He takes us higher in Him. We begin to understand what it means by, “I count all things a loss except the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus.”
When we set our thoughts and actions upon Him and do not look to the right, left, or behind, we at last begin to behold His richness, beauty, and all that He offers us in the land of the living – and it is a lot! Richness applies abundance, means, ability to live and move and do what is needed without restraint – this is just what Chris offers us. When we walk with Him and let the Holy Spirit really, truly, and completely occupy our hearts and the seat of our desires we operate with all the richness Heaven has to offer. What a delight we will be not only to others around us, to Him, but to ourselves.
He can change our path, circumstances, and make our lives new, but most importantly, He can change us into His image. Is there a need for means? He is our Supply? Is there a need for healing or resurrection of health, relationship, or position? He is Healer and Banner, the same power that raised Christ from the dead is at work within us. Nothing is too hard for him, not even our own walk of faith or our own stubbornness and willfulness. He can even change our hearts to desire what He desires – this may seem unimaginable as we wrestle in the dirt to hold onto that which we think will satisfy our longings. He can even fill our hearts with His desires so we look back after the refinement process and say, “Why did I ever want that? How much more fulfilling is what God has put in My heart to desire.”
God can restore and multiply all we offer to Him to feed thousands. Ours is only to offer what we have to the Master Potter and enjoy Him. He will work it all out and accomplish the purpose for which He birthed us on earth at such a time as this. We must understand that we receive grace and new mercies for each day – whether to enjoy or endure, but all that we face transforms us into His image, for He desires to refine all the impurities out and ready us for His purposes.
Why is it important to understand our life’s seasons? Because we move from strength to strength, season to season, until we will appear before God in glory. Let us be careful not to judge what He can accomplish in a life, even if years have passed, the fields lie dormant, and the crops were eaten by locust swarms. Man’s wisdom tells us what to expect in each age of life, but we are beyond this – for nothing is too hard for Him. Our lives are in His hands. If He wants us to bare children at a ripened age, so be it. If He wants us to scale a wall and advance against a troop at a tender age, so be it. God makes us strong and gives us the strength we need and health to accomplish all He desires.
The more we are willing to lay down our lives, the more we will enjoy our walk with Him. Those who lose their lives will find it in Him. He says to ask, seek, and knock and the door will be opened. In this He doesn’t say when, but He does provide the assurance that it will. The way made may not open to what we expected or thought we wanted, but it will open to a beautiful, detailed blessing that only He could orchestrate and that will fill our hearts to overflowing.
The world says to strive for all you can get and enjoy, for we only live once. Actually, we live for eternity, and this life is so short compared to what we will experience when time is no more. We will never regret one desire, comfort, idea, or endeavor we gave up for Christ’s sake, as He puts His finger on this or that and says, “Release this to Me.”
What a fragrant offering our lives can be when joyfully given to God in extravagant generosity to offer our lives to Christ to live and move and have His being in us wile in the land of the living, to know Him daily, to receive His Holy Spirit dwelling within our hearts, to commune with Him in deep spiritual intimacy, to experience every delight He offers and gives even in the direst of circumstances, to no longer be empty but filled to overflowing with His goodness, love, tenderness, and joy.
What if I called you to do just what you are doing? Would I not continue to add and unfold My gifts in you to the world even through such humble means as you can offer. This is your basket of fish and loaves, you offer it to Me and I multiply it. You learn to hear from Me, you seek Me, I pour out through you. I will change your seasons and your work in My time and in My way to bring about My purposes.
You search here and there to go and do what you know, when I’ve called you to walk with and work for Me. So many giftings I have placed within you that I will use, but why seek ye to receive your accolades from man, when I have called you to work for Me. Beloved, you have been in a desert of sorts for you have felt desolate and hidden away, but My love, have I not grown you and increased your influence in unseen ways – even your tears to Me I have bottled and answered your cries.
Do not think this place of seeking Me and sharing yourself in your work as something I take lightly. Have I not brought the harvest even to your doorstep, for you have been faithful in the small and I will make you ruler over much. My love, how I love and delight in you. I see each thing you do with your hands as unto Me, and it delights Me.
What others have minimized I exalt. Did they minimize David’s gifts and abilities, My love I anointed him King over Israel. How much I will anoint you over. I make your way great, know and feel and rejoice in My delight in you. Continue, continue what I’ve set your heart to do. The work of your hands I will make a way for, just offer to Me.
Lamentations 3:22-23
“Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.”
Romans 12:1-2
“Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God – this is your true and proper worship. Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is – his good, pleasing and perfect will.”