8-9-2023
You and I will face many ups and downs in life. Just like the earth experiences spring, summer, fall, and winter, we experience different seasons in our lives. There will be times of significant growth and excitement…..and there will be dry spells (and everything in between). And when the dry spells come it’s easy to get discouraged and, in some cases, want to give up.
The key to enduring these dry spells is to respond in faith rather than fear. If you’re going through a dry spell right now, remember these truths. If you’re in an easier season, store these truths away because one day you will need them.
1. Feelings are unreliable. The Bible warns us not to trust our perceptions (Proverbs 3:5). Feelings come from many sources—chemical imbalances, food you’ve eaten, movies you’ve seen, and so on. We don’t need to listen to everything we think or believe everything we feel. Moods and emotions often lie to us, so we shouldn’t let them control our actions.
2. Life has both good and bad times. Ecclesiastes 3:1-6 reminds us that life is a series of opposite actions. There is a time for everything under heaven—time to plant and uproot, build up and tear down. Life goes through periods of expansion and pruning. We need these tough seasons to help us to grow.
3. Dry seasons help build our character. God uses dry seasons to teach us to live by faith when feelings are gone. He wants to build perseverance and maturity in us.
Dry seasons can feel like desert seasons—and deserts are a time for testing. Ask the children of Israel. The 40-year journey they took in the desert could have been a couple of weeks. But God wanted to test them and build their character.
4. Remember, you’re serving God, not people. God is our ultimate boss. We serve others because we’re serving Him. Our motivation—our “why”—determines how we do what we do. Paul faced all kinds of suffering for Christ. He was beaten and jailed, experienced starvation and thirst, and faced many sleepless nights (see 2 Corinthians 11:24-29). But he knew who he was serving, and that helped him endure all those troubles. Paul lived for an audience of one – an excellent reminder for us.
5. Your life makes an eternal difference. Many times you can’t see the impact you’re having on others. But God is watching the overall story of history. He sees an eternity we can’t.
6. You’ll have eternal reward. Paul wrote in 2 Corinthians 4:17-18 that eternal rewards far outweighed the temporary pain he was experiencing. “For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. We fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal” (NIV).
Our pain is short-lived too. No matter what you face today, it is minuscule compared to the rewards of eternity.
7. You’ll spend forever with Jesus. Life is a marathon, not a sprint. Keep your eyes on the goal. One day, you’ll celebrate forever with Jesus. You won’t be thinking about the problems you’re enduring right now. You’ll be with Jesus, and that will be all that matters.