Sunday Message: the season and the lesson

Today  I have a simple lesson that took me a long time to learn, told without Bible verse or the story I learned it from, so as to not cloud the point.


Have you ever been through a bad time in life, only to have the realization that God is trying to teach you something in it?  Then, you think you have the lesson- but the bad season rolls on?  You begin to question whether you got the right lesson at all.  You work and try and pray, and you are sure God has taught you the lesson... but the season still goes on.

At this point, I will add something that Charles Swindoll said this week to prepare me for my "bad season".  If you know your Moses, you know they came to a point where the Israelites were complaining about no water for like the millionth time.  God told Moses to speak to the rock.  Moses cracked the rock with his stick and shouted at the people.  That led to bad consequences for Moses, but that is another story.

Swindoll said, "I think Moses was disappointed with God. (and that's why he shouted and hit the rock)"  And I think Moses was going through just such a thing- and so did I.  And here's what we both eventually learned.

Yes, God will teach lessons through a bad season.  BUT...  I think we, and I know I, looked at the pair as a joined-at-the-hip, two headed monster; and when the lesson was learned, the bad season should end- because why should the same thing happen over and over if I GOT IT already?

Moses cracked the rock and shouted at the people.  I told God, "Just give me an "F" and move on!"  Which told God that each of us had another lesson to learn.

See, first you have that bad season.  It happens to all of us.  If I was an atheist, likely the same bad season would have occurred.  The bad season is independent of anything spiritual, it is a condition, a circumstance of the physical world.  And unless God's will decides to intervene, it will play out as it plays out.

The "lesson" is not just a short term epiphany- it is growth from the time you decide to seek God until you meet Him in heaven.  God has individual facets of the "lesson" but the lesson rolls on and on.

And every now and then, the two intersect- and while touching, God uses the one to bring clarity to the other.  The longer the bad season goes on, the longer it is touched by the "lesson", and the more opportunity you have to learn it.  But eventually, they split up, because they were only ever joined at YOU.  The "lesson" moves on to other things, because, yes, you learned it.  The bad season goes on till it's spent.

THEY ARE TWO DIFFERENT THINGS.

And in fact I had this going on in two different ways- One of them was an ongoing and not-likely-to-change-soon situation; the other was a collection of REALLY bad short term annoyances of which the first had a part, and which God prepared me for days in advance without my realizing it, through the very Swindoll sermon I mentioned above.

And the Lesson- the overarching growth- moved through both, simultaneously and separately.

And when I thought about how I would have reacted to my really bad day even a year ago, I thanked God for the growth, for the Lesson.  And yes, for the bad day, because what the Lesson had taught me brought glory to Him.

The bad day ended.  The bad season has a while to run, and will not end well.  But the Lesson goes on.