Seasons.

I was astonished yesterday by listening to the sermon by the pastor’s wife Sola, as she read the facts and figures of the life of Paul. My Jaw dropped when I heard there where seven years between the Damascus experience and his public testimony and another 4 years until he was in ministry, totaling 11 years between him having an encounter with God and full time ministry. 7 Years after Paul see's the light and hears the audible voice of God he finally speaks out. I think we as Christians need to revamp our vocabulary. For those of us who have been saved long enough to know the lingo "seasons" is a word we tend to throw around a lot. For those of you who don't know about seasons this is the term we used to define the different time periods God sends us through. There are many season's, we have seasons of learning where the lord teaches a lot, then there are seasons of blessing where your on top of the world and nothing can seem to go wrong, then there are seasons of trial where everything seems to go wrong, there are seasons of greatness where you're doing big things and there are seasons of obscurity where nobody knows who you are or what you are doing. Every season has its purpose in taking you to your destiny. I have a problem with the word season, in my mind it’s not an adequate measure of time. When I think of a season I think of summer, winter, spring, and fall. Each of these seasons is a few months long, so because of the relationship of the word seasons to the actual climate seasons I think of the seasons of God being rather short. To add to this mental illusion the 7 years that Paul lives in a season of obscurity is covered in just a page or two in the bible. So once again I am seeing seasons as being short. This does not seem to be the case. When I look at many of the greatest of the bible they all had seasons, long seasons where they weren't living their lives of greatness, these seasons lasted years and not months. The greater the calling it would seem the longer your season of obscurity would be. This is a cause for pause for me because over the last few days I have been putting a lot of thought into the youth ministry program here at the Well. I am just a few weeks away from getting this up and running so my mind is often on what am I going to teaching what are the pillars of this ministry going to be. I often am trying to find ways to teach students how to be great how to stretch themselves and become more than they are right now, while this is important I am starting to believe that teaching how to live life through extended periods of obscurity is even more so. The small details of character, what you do when no one knows who you are or what you are doing is paramount. While I don't like seasons as a measure of time I do like the fact that they adequately describe life’s transitions. It is not one day 102 degrees and 90 percent humidity, the grass is green and the tree's full of life, and then the next all the leaves are orange, the grass is dead and the temperature is a cold 50 degrees. The changes of seasons of the year are gradual so are the seasons of life, typically they don't happen over night. So often I compartmentalize my life I see this vast difference between living in obscurity and living in greatness. I see it as differently as the dead of winter and the peak of summer. While the circumstance will be vastly different this won't happen over night, the change will be gradual in fact I think I will hardly notice it. I say this because I don't think the greatest of the bible really noticed when they were moving from obscurity to greatness, I think they did so gradually living their godly habits day to day. Regardless of their outcome, they had determined that these things were good to do and they were going to do them. By going about their godly routines focusing on their fundamentals they suddenly looked up and saw that they had done much but this was not their focus in the beginning. So it will be with me, my students, and with you. Focus on living godly day to day and then one day you'll look up and find your self amongst greatness. Live the adventure.