It is a race against time. It is also a challenge for profit. My dad began preparing his field for this year’s crop. Careful coordination for seed, liquid fertilizer, and a predicted chance for rain all happen within a 24-48 hour window. If he starts too late with applying the fertilizer, it’ll wash away with the rain. If the fertilizer arrives too late, seed may not get planted quick enough and he could get rained out leaving him to plant at a later date with ruined seed and money wasted on fertilizer that wasn’t used. And even if fertilizer and planting occur as he plans, without the needed rain at the forecasted date, his crop is gone before it gets deposited into the ground. And due to high prices brought by high inflation—economic and artificial (greed) inflation—he didn’t make a profit last year (first year he had a loss). This year he’s already spent lots of money in repairs, fertilizer, and seed…perhaps more than he may recoup with this year’s harvest planned for June. There is a season or a window of time that has to be hit just right. Too early or too late you can miss key chances for rain, price for seed (as prices fluctuate constantly), along with other things planned for the summer, everything hangs in the balance for making a profit at all or be another bust like last year (or even worse since farmers are not allowed to irrigate this year).
Everyone has a season or a window of time for everything. There are windows in time for a woman to get pregnant (I am about to become a grandpa soon). There are usual windows of time to buy land or a house. There are windows of time or seasons when to start a business or to try a business idea. There are windows for advertising or sales. There are seasons for relationships—not just dating or marriage but also friendships or mentorships. There are seasons of time for ministerial calling/Calling or for a church to be sent to a specific city or nation (or even a specific/key person to be the key to unlock fruitfulness for God in that city/nation), that if things are done too late or missed entirely (through pride, sin, indecision, selfishness, laziness, etc.), it isn’t just the loss of fruitfulness in/for a church, but—and horribly more devastatingly—loss of people who are granted the opportunity to know and accept Christ as Lord and Savior who tragically go to Hell…all because we fail to respond in that season. Genesis 8:22 says, “While the earth remains, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, winter and summer, and day and night shall not cease.” John 9:4 (Jesus speaking), “I must work the works of Him who sent Me while it is day; the night is coming when no one can work.” John 4:23 and 35-38 (Jesus speaking), “But the hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and truth; for the Father is seeking such to worship Him…Do you not say, ‘There are still four months and then comes the harvest’? Behold, I say to you, lift up your eyes and look at the fields, for they are already white for harvest! And he who reaps receives wages, and gathers fruit for eternal life, that both he who sows and he who reaps may rejoice together. For in this the saying is true: ‘One sows and another reaps.’ I sent you to reap that for which you have not labored; others have labored, and you have entered in their labors.”
And then there are also seasons—not just opportunity outlined above—that each of us go through. There are seasons of when to travel, seasons for a career opportunity, and even seasons of life. Specifically we go through seasons or time where things click and our world—individually, couple, family, friendships, church community—seems to click and everything is running well. And there are seasons of loss and hurt. There are seasons where a dating relationship goes well and seasons where nothing seems to go right or it is best to focus on self (meaning focus just on our relationship with God). And for those of us who’ve lost a loved one—spouse, child, parent, dear friend, or other family member—who once enjoyed our season of joy and sharing to now have our season is filled with sadness, remorse, or regret.
The last chapters of Genesis allow us to see a literal and figurative picture of lives lived, moved, transitioned at key times and places to as Joseph said in Genesis 50:20, “…to save many people alive”. Years into the drought and famine, a whole family would have died off leaving only Jospeh to survive in a foreign land. The Bible (Christian and Hebrew) would have ended with not only the deaths of Jacob and his sons, but their children and any chance for a future. It would be like in a movie to introduce the characters, set the stage, and before the narrative can really get going everyone is dead and the movie ends right there…leaving all of us lacking to say, “what? Why?” Exodus chapter 1 speaks how the family grew from seventy to many, even after the famine was over. Hundreds of years go by and we see something in Exodus 2:23-25, “Now it happened in the process of time that the king of Egypt died. Then the children of Israel groaned because of the bondage, and they cried out; and their cry came up to God because of the bondage. So God heard their groaning, and God remembered His covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob. And God looked upon the children of Israel, and God acknowledged them.” Hindsight is a wonderful benefit, especially when we read about this event that took places thousands of years ago where we are so far removed that the sting of the whips and hunger doesn’t taste our lips and lives. We read this in the comforts of our homes, food in the frig, out of one of the multiple Bibles—digital or print—we possess and never have experienced what they went through. So we, like an audience in a movie theater awaiting the story to unfold to get to the happy ending that almost always occurs, go through all this account in the early books of the Bible to see the end result: the eventual arrival of His people into the Promise Land. And there is a lesson we easily see that God works through seasons of hardship and finally we arrive at blessing; that if we endure to the end we will be rewarded. Matthew 24:13 (Jesus speaking), “But he who endures to the end shall be saved.” Revelation chapter 2 repeats similar words, “…him who overcomes…” (Revelation 2:7), “Be faithful until death…” (Revelation 2:10), “To him who overcomes…” (Revelation 2:17), “But hold fast…And he who overcomes, and keeps…” (Revelation 2:25-26), “He who overcomes…” (Revelation 3:5), “…you have kept My command to persevere…He who overcomes…” (Revelation 3:10 and 12), and “To him who overcomes…” (Revelation 3:21) are all examples where God encourages His people to press on that the season of adversity, trial, temptation, etc. will be over; don’t quit. And it is a very clear and easy thing to see throughout the Bible that if we trust and hang on, then God will see us through.
But a preacher in a recording that I caught in mid-sentence and then I immediately turned off the radio right after I heard these words captivated my attention concerning these key words found in Exodus 2:24, “…God remembered”. The American English language is one of the worst languages there is because words are so casually used that often minimize or misrepresents a deeper or truer meaning contained in what was just said. We look at those two words God remembered and almost take it as if God smacked His forehead in Heaven and then to say, “Oh yeah, I forgot…” as if the lives of people are as easy to forget and dismiss like when we forget to buy the toilet paper at the store. Beginning in Genesis 12, God delivered His initial promise to Abram and it continued to flow. There was a land, a specific place, that God desired to be occupied to bless a family who would eventually become a mighty nation and a testimony to the power, provision, and protection of God to a lost world. And through the protection and preservation of God—God’s ordained plan—for Jacob and his family to move to Egypt out from the Promise Land to survive and multiply. So let us forget all about the time of slavery and the people eventually freed by the hand of God through Moses and all that. Let us then take a look at this event through the lens of “season” as I began all this and then perhaps lift another lesson.
I can accept leaving a time (or season) where our demise would not benefit the Kingdom of God and so we are to leave that for something else instead. There are those who are to die on the battlefield and there are those who are to be taken out from one field and placed into another field. We don’t understand why until years later when we see fruitfulness in a person’s life that had they died years prior, none of that would have existed. I think about my good friend Pastor Roman Gutierrez. He literally was dying in Bolivia and wanted to die as a martyr for the Gospel in a foreign place (his testimony that I’ve heard). Pastor Richard Rubi called him and his family back. And Pastor Roman shared years later that he was angry and bitter toward Pastor Rubi for doing this—all under the radar—because Roman wanted to live and die like the missionary heroes we read about and use as examples to be sold out to Jesus despite the costs. Years go by and Pastor Roman pastors, now, a very powerful church in McAllen, Texas that is literally touching nations with him preaching and inspiring thousands of people along with many people responding to the Gospel to make impact in the world in their own right. But had Roman died in Bolivia, none of that may have ever happened. I use that very specific example to point out that there was a season for him to be in Bolivia and then eventually a season that he is living in in McAllen. And had key people not did or obeyed at the right time, none of that would have resulted with the end result.
So let us ponder a “what if” for a moment with us going back to Jacob’s family in Egypt. Let us assume these people survived the famine in Egypt (which they did) and even for a year or so stayed in Egypt to build up provisions but then go back to their Promised Land (and not hundreds of years later as they actually and eventually did). Again, let us forget the gold that they eventually took and everything that happened but focus on that initial time of Exodus 1 and even Genesis 51. Had they existed in that season and then went back instead, these people would never had to taste slavery. The lives of Israel (the Hebrews as a whole) would had been exempt from all that.
I say that to now get to the whole point of this and that is season. And allow me to use a very specific example in my life that we can perhaps transpose to other areas of our lives. The past few years for me have been one hit after another that followed ten years plus of a life-changing event and time. And by the grace and loving hand of God, God allows us to grieve or be upset or wrestle with our pain to process what has happened with the loss of family and friends. And anyone who have lost dear loved ones know exactly what I am talking about. It is a season, a hard season. It is a time that “get over it, give it to God, and move on” are (1) not godly words when spoken from a (2) calloused heart who refuses to be empathetic like God is toward us (a man of sorrow and acquainted with grief, Isaiah 53:3). The loss is there, pain is in the heart, and some losses truly do take time to process or to learn or have to adapt.
But then these two words can radically change everything, God remembered. Or in other words, God, before we were ever born, had a plan not just for salvation but for our lives to be used for His glory for lives to be saved and then touch and impact others that have an ever-growing ripple effect that can be felt for many years after. Over 3600 Fellowship churches (and growing) we have that all started with one family in one church in one “hick town” who asked two couples over fifty years ago to stay to give this church a try, to stick it out. This pastor and his family was calling it all quits but they stepped out of that season into another season. And over fifty years later and hundreds of thousands of lives touched later, we see God’s hand. And for us, God wants us to share in the God remembered event to shake us out from our season of pain to go back to our Land of Promise (or our fight or our ministry or our marriage or our…well, you get the point). That if we leave the land of Egypt (often we view Egypt as a time of sin but let us use it in the point of this writing a time or season) that serves as our resting place or a stationary place to allow us the time to grieve and process. But when the season concludes—as seasons do conclude to allow others to occur—we need to be wise to respond and get back to our promised destiny and purpose that God had planned. Psalm 30:5, “For His anger is but for a moment, His favor is for life; weeping may endure for a night (or a season), but joy comes in the morning (when we move on).” We cannot continue to live in the land of stationary, to “settle”, and accept “this is good enough” for us to never contend, fight, or pursue to fulfill God’s destiny. How disappointing Heaven will be when we arrive and all we have to show for it is “we made it” and nothing more meaning no souls won for Christ and no destiny fulfilled. But what if we leave our season of pain, sorrow, sin, compromise, etc. to remember what God has, not just for us but through us, to fulfill His plans for the earth? Will we remember respond God’s way in our season?