What Season Are You In?
Hello and welcome to the new Journey Center blog page! Here you'll find edifying and encouraging words brought weekly from Journey Center leaders and members.
We'd like to kick off our first post by recapping the types of seasons we face our Senior Leader Scott Lowmaster discussed on Sunday. Keep these points in mind in the coming weeks!
RUN SEASON
The Run Season is a time of favor and stretching faith. It's an opportunity to take more ground than you usually could in other seasons. "All athletes are disciplined in their training. They do it to win a prize that will fade away, but we do it for an eternal prize. So I run with purpose in every step. I am not just shadowboxing." 1 Corinthians 9:25-26 NLT. The Run Season is where we see kingdom multiplication work in us and around us.
How to respond in a Run Season:
Get focused
Make hay
Run with patient endurance
Do great things
Bear much fruit
Make up for lost time
Temptations to avoid in a Run Season:
Sitting on the couch
Loosening your grip
Becoming complacent
Becoming too comfortable or at ease
Wasting time on insignificant things
Resting when you're meant to be running
Tips during a Run Season:
Do not neglect private prayer times
Make yourself available to GOd
Keep your ear tuned to His voice
Open your hand and heart regularly to receive from Him
Rest only when He tells you to rest
Understand this pace is only a season
REST SEASON
The Rest Season is a time of refinement and replenishment. Many don't always receive this season easily, and often view it as dismissal rather than a divine appointment. You can enter this season by accident or intentionally. Sometimes, the rest season can begin painfully. Don't wrestle, just nestle! "For since the world began no ear has heard and no eye has seen a God like you, who works for those who wait for Him!" Isaiah 64:4 NLT.
Rest Season opportunities:
God reveals your motivations
God heals your wounds
God restores your perspective
God refines your dreams
God strengthens your identity in Him
Learn to rest, trust, lean, give and be
Temptations to avoid in a Rest Season:
To run ahead of God and make something happen
To think you know better than God
To think God has looked away or lost interest
To get restless in your season of rest
To get offended by and impatient with God
To view this as wasted time or as though you are useless
Tips during a Rest Season:
Delight in the Lord
See this season as God's protection over you
Lay down your agenda
Be humble and teachable
Cultivate a new level of intimacy with Him and others
Start writing
STAND SEASON
The Stand Season is a time of purifying and testing. "My suffering was good for me, for it taught me to pay attention to Your decrees. Your instructions are more valuable to me than millions in gold and silver. You made me; You created me. Now give me the sense to follow Your commands. May all who fear You find in me a cause for joy, for I have put my hope in Your word." Psalm 119:71-74 NLT. To gain ground in this season is simply to hold your ground.
Temptations to avoid in a Stand Season:
To look down and forget the promises of God
To doubt much of what you know to be true
To lose ground because you loosen your grip
To look for shortcuts through the storm
To develop a cynical attitude toward God
To listen to the wrong voices, especially if God seems silent
Tips during a Stand Season:
Remember in the darkness what He told you in the light
Guard your heart and mind against negative thoughts
Don't let your heart close up, stay tender to relationships
Deal with issues that surface during this time
Know that in due time, breakthrough will come
Don't lose sight of the truth that God loves you
ACTIVE WAITING SEASON
This season is a time of inward depth and forward movement. "Now to Him who is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that works in us, to Him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen." Ephesians 3:20-21 NKJV.
Temptations to avoid in a Active Waiting Season:
To get distracted by your daily duties
To get so focused on your unfulfilled desire that you mismanage your current assignment
To emotionally leave your current assignment before God physically moves you to the next place He has for you
To get bitter over the delayed fulfillment of your desires
To miss opportunities to forgive and remain pure in heart, which hinders your forward-moving progress
To minimize your time with God and in His Word and spend most of Your time dreaming about your desires
To adopt a bored, tired-of-waiting, non-expectant mind-set
To believe wrongly that God does not want to bless you
To blame others or yourself for lack of forward momentum
To overwork to the point of exhaustion, trying to accomplish God's dream in your strength resulting in burnout
To go on autopilot and coast, fall back in a rut, or to run ahead
To strive on your own and forget all of His promises
Tips during a Rest Season:
Spend intentional consistent time with the Lord individually and corporately
Remind yourself of His promises to you
Ask for strength and grace to be faithful in the now
Allow God to refine your desires while on this part of your journey
Care for and nurture the promise of God within you
Trust His timing for its fulfillment
Stay in community and be honest about your up-and-down emotions and perspectives
Sometimes you will need friends to loan you their faith when yours wavers or you have none
Get into good encouraging, life giving environments, build friendships, depend on each other, building each other up
Lean in, listen, learn, receive, ask for help, get in community and stay in community-you are not meant to do this alone
