Sweet Seasons with the Saints
Christianity is a sojourn. This world is not our home. Pilgrims, by definition, are people on the move. In God’s providence, He purposes each Christian life to serve Him, and where His Spirit leads, each believer must follow.
Filled with the Spirit of Christ, who gifts the saints to serve, the children of God perform good works prepared beforehand for them. These works typically increase in quantity and quality as the Christian matures. Maturity is the fruit of discipleship and discipleship is the ongoing work of the Word and the Spirit.
The Spirit-filled church rejoices in the work of the Word that renews the Christian mind, with transformation into conformity to the image of Jesus Christ. Like lambs who must learn the way of the flock, our Lord employs His people in His loving discipline of His children. He works on each one, and He deploys each one for the work. As iron sharpens iron, we need one another.
No one, with the exception of Jesus, has cornered the market on practicing the wisdom of God. In His sinless perfection, we see what is pleasing to God the Father. Our flesh is a body of failure, and this is why all flesh dies. This is also why the Christian puts no confidence in His flesh to ever be pleasing to God. The flesh sins, and it soon dies.
Our Christian hope is bolstered by the Spirit, who indwells those who are baptized by the Giver of life into the body of Christ, the church, the Israel of God. It is the grace of God that gives us our relationships in Christian community. It is my proposition here that these relationships are for sweet seasons of fellowship in the Spirit. Seasons are temporary. They change.
The context is almost always the local church, but relationships that bring sanctification to our souls are at God’s discretion. A short-term mission trip may lead to an edifying relationship with a person or people that help expose harbored sins, prejudices, or gifts and talents. Even traveling on the Lord’s Day may lead to a one-time visit to a local church, sporting a guest preacher who is himself there for the first time. During the sermon, he makes eye contact with you only a few times, but each time what he is saying is perfectly fitted for you and your circumstances. You marvel. That is a very brief sweet season…a moment in time.
When the Apostle Paul was invited to leave his 14 years stay at Tarsus, his hometown, it was only for a couple years at Antioch before his missionary journeys commenced. Even dating back to his Damascus Road conversion, his stays would be temporary until the end of his life. Of course, not all of his temporary stays would be sweet seasons.
In the plan of God, the saint is weaned from the world. It may be a prison stay or an assignment in a desolate location. In the reconnaissance of finding the lost elect, the found regenerate will suffer for the sake of those he may or may never meet in person. Stephen suffered martyrdom in the presence of Saul of Tarsus, who would become Paul the Apostle. Every encounter, in the providence of God, matters to the cultivation and development of the saint.
The Christian walks by the Spirit, and therefore is constrained to walk by faith and not by sight. The Lord knows those who are His and He knows the plans He has for each one and for the whole. He knows each of our days before there is yet one of them, and He never fails to accomplish what concerns each one of us.
It must be granted that he plants some saints in one place, and they serve Him there for their whole lives. This is hardly an argument against these pillars of faith, who minister to those who come and go. Most local churches have both extremes on the spectrum of time allotted in a place. One belongs to a family who settled in the area 150 years ago, while another has a one-year stopover with a military or corporate assignment. Everyone else fills in the gap. Sweet seasons are long and short, according to God’s will.
Sweet seasons are sometimes cut short by sour experiences. We must never forget that we are in a war zone while we remain in this world. Walking in love, which is the manner of our calling, is essential because our sins and the sins of others will at times hinder our love for one another. Long periods of estrangement from brothers and sisters in Christ beg for the ministry of reconciliation but pride and unwillingness to forgive can end sweet seasons, even until our reunion in glory and at the resurrection.
Trusting that the Spirit of the Lord is at work, we must believe that His work of sanctification is exactly where He wants it to be in every one of the brethren. Thus, we should be wise in being quick to forgive. Sheep bite and nudge and excommunicate in unloving seasons.
May God grant you every sweet season and the end of every sweet season for your comfort, help, and encouragement. A new season of sweet relationships is coming again. When displaced from the last one, make every effort to return to the city and the people God gave you for a season, in order to be a blessing to them. Paul longed to return to the churches to strengthen them in their faith. He also longed to go where he had not gone before. We, too, must do both. Reunion here is a dress rehearsal for reunion for eternity. That season will be sweet…and it will never end. Amen.
David Norczyk
Hillsboro, Oregon
July 5, 2021
