Living In Season

For the last month, six weeks, we have been in a series based on this very simple question.

Are you happy?

And we say are you happy, we don't mean like are you happy right now in the sense that things are going really well for you, everything's lining up, everything's working out.

We mean are you are you happy?

Do you live life with real joy?

With a joy that is so much more than circumstantial.

The Bible describes it as something called the joy of the Lord.

Nehemiah 8.10.

Don't be dejected and sad, for the joy of the Lord is your strength.

In other words, we're supposed to have a joy, a happiness that is intended by God to be our strength.

A joy that we can rely on, a joy that we can fall back on, a happiness that can carry us through all the challenges and all the trials that we face.

We live in a world where everybody's trying to be happy.

Very few people have that.

Very few people have that kind of joy, but it's meant for us.

So as a church, we're on a mission.

We are pursuing the joy of the Lord.

We are doing everything we can to get our minds around how to live with that kind of happiness and joy, to get our hearts lined up with God so we can experience the joy that He has for us.

Last week we started talking about some obstacles that we've got to break through if we're gonna get to that joy, to that happiness, some things we have to get over.

Last week we talked about the customer mentality and how we have to shift and be a contributor.

It was so great because as soon as we were done last Sunday, went over to Taco Mac to have lunch with my parents and with my son, and there was another couple and some kids from his hands.

We were in line, and Taco Mac was just busy, the Falcons were about to play, and there wasn't a lot of organization happening at the hostess station, and so it wasn't really a line, it was just this mob, and people were getting seated out of order, left and right, you know, that kind of thing.

And if you were here last Sunday, the couple that was across from me looked at me and said, This is ridiculous.

And I said, Yeah, there it was.

Because that's what we talked about last week.

When you have a customer mentality, all it takes is a minor inconvenience, and all of a sudden you're going, This is ridiculous.

I can't believe I'm having to deal with this.

Come on.

That is not the path to happiness, that's the path to constant frustration.

So last week we we dealt with that.

This week I want to deal with another obstacle that we all have to fight through if we want that happiness that God intends.

And it's something that I think of as living out of season.

Living out of season.

And right now it's football season, and I'm sure a lot of you are really excited about that.

A lot of people get into football.

A lot of people live for football.

I have friends that Saturday for them it's just football.

That's all.

Just football.

Maybe you're one of those people.

I I'm not.

I'm not a big football person.

Tab, I see you looking at me.

I'm sorry.

Tab coaches football, I get it.

Um, I get football.

I I like football.

I even played football.

You may not believe that, but I have a picture to prove it.

This is me playing football in the seventh grade.

So, okay.

I wanted to play football so bad.

And in my school, we were the Blue Jays, which is a very ferocious mascot, right?

The Blue Jays, ooh, coming to town.

And uh so I went out for the team and I made it, and looking back, I don't think anybody got cut from the seventh grade football team, but I made the team, and for some reason, my coach thought that the position for me was offensive center.

Now, if you know anything about football, offensive center, it's part of the offensive line.

You snap the ball to the quarterback and then you protect the quarterback from the freak of nature standing in front of you.

And and when you look at this picture, if you know football, I don't think you're thinking offensive center.

I showed this picture to my son yesterday and he said, Dad, why are you so fat?

And he didn't he doesn't understand the whole concept of pads.

I was like, No, that's not me under there, that's pads.

That's just all pads.

I weighed like 90 pounds, and it was it was just pads and a jersey, and I got put on the offensive line, and I just got steamrolled every single day.

It was awful.

It was terrible.

And this is a true story.

I think I've even talked about this before, but there was a day where I snapped the ball to my quarterback, and then I got hit so hard by that seventh grader, seven.

I wanted to see papers to see that kid was in the seventh grade.

Like, come on.

He either started puberty in second grade, or he'd have been held back a few times.

I'm just saying.

And so I snap the ball, and this kid hits me so hard that I fly backwards, and human nature just kicks in, and you grab a hold of something to keep yourself up, and I just grabbed a hold of my own quarterback and pulled him down.

So I was the only offensive center with a sack in history, I think.

Suffice it to say that after that year I hung up the cleats.

I retired that jersey and I was done with football.

I moved on to basketball, and that's where I stayed.

Because, see, basketball makes sense to me.

I'm a little guy, I'm five foot nine.

This stage may make me look taller, I'm not.

Five foot nine.

And in basketball, if a big guy hits a little guy, he gets penalized for that.

He gets a foul called on him, and the little guy gets to shoot free throws and gets to sit there and being like, Yeah, that's right.

You can't do that to me.

In football, if a big guy hits a little guy, he gets high-fived and slapped, and his coach hugs him and Gatorade gets poured on him.

I'm like, this is not my sport.

And so I switch to basketball, and basketball just speaks to my soul.

And so I love basketball season.

I live for basketball season, I get obsessed with basketball season.

The problem, though, is it's not basketball season.

It's the off season for me.

And so I am I am just waiting for basketball season.

I am wishing it was basketball season.

I am pining for a different season.

And if we're not careful, that's very much how we tend to live life in general.

Always wishing we were in a different season.

Pining for a new season in life.

We're like that from birth.

It's very hard for us as people to just accept and enjoy the season that we're in.

My son Judah is seven months old.

He's our youngest of three.

And already it's so obvious that he wishes he was in a different season.

He wants to be big.

He watches his older brother and sister run around and he just he just like leans toward them and he gets real excited, but he can't do what they can do, and you know he wants to, you can see it in his face.

And that's how it's gonna be for the next several years.

I know it.

He's always gonna want to be bigger because he's the smallest.

So when they're both driving and he's not, that's gonna be hard.

When he's still living at home and they've they've moved out at 18, I pray to the Lord.

Uh when that happens, he's gonna he's gonna feel left behind.

He's always gonna want to be a season ahead.

We're all like that.

All of us wanted to be 16 way before we were 16.

All of us wanted to be 21 before we were 21.

And then at some point in time, we start looking back and wishing we were in a season that's already gone.

For a while we want to be older, then we want to be younger.

We start saying things like, hey, remember, remember when we were in our 20s?

We just wake up in the morning and we weren't sore for no reason whatsoever.

Our back didn't, we didn't even know we had a back.

The only time we felt our back was when we laid on it.

Now we feel our back all the time.

Remember then?

That was so good.

Remember back before we had kids and we could think uninterrupted, like, oh, remember that?

It was just peaceful and calm.

We could stay up late, we could sleep in, it was great.

Like we tend to live wishing we were in a different season.

And maybe even believing that the answers to life and the results that we want, the things that will really bring us joy, are in a season that we're not in.

So we just gotta figure out how to get to that season.

And so we try to speed seasons up, we try to delay seasons, we try to skip seasons.

We struggle to just be in season.

But living out of season sabotages joy.

Living out of season sets us up for major frustration and for major, major mistakes.

Just think about financial frustration alone.

I'm sure most of us are dealing with some type of financial frustration.

That's just everywhere.

How much financial frustration is simply the result of someone trying to do something they can't afford to do in this season of life?

Right?

Buying something that doesn't make any sense in this season.

We all want the dream house.

It's just that we all want the dream house right now.

And we watch these TV shows with dream houses, and we're like, I need a dream house, and you can go and you can you can get a dream house.

They'll qualify you for way more than you can afford, and you can, you know, pay very little down and walk away, and you've got your dream house, and you're happy for a little while until the bills start to pile up, and then uh not so much.

So much frustration in life just comes from us trying to live out of season, and it's dangerous.

There are people in the Bible who made big-time mistakes, doing nothing more than living out of season, not doing what they should have been doing in the season they were in.

That's all it takes.

David's a classic example.

If you know much about David, he gets talked about a lot in church because he's he's a big player in the story of the Bible.

He was the king of Israel for 40 years from about 1010 BC to 970 BC, long, long time ago.

And David's one of these guys that just did amazing things.

Every single one of us would love to have David's highlight reel be our own.

Because David just did incredible things.

He did incredible things for God.

He did incredible things, period.

He was just, he was awesome.

At the same time, there's not one of us that would like to have David's list of failures.

There's not one of us that would look at our life and look at the mistakes we've made and go, ooh, I'd rather have David's mistakes than my own.

No, no, David, David made some big time mistakes.

For all of David's very high highs, there were some very low lows.

The most famous is his affair with this woman named Bathsheba.

She was married.

David has an affair with her, she gets pregnant, David panics.

He panics and he has her husband who's fighting for Israel at that time.

He's in the army, he has her husband moved to the front line of the battle and then abandoned on the front line so that her husband dies.

David didn't hold the sword that killed Bathsheba's husband, but David is the one that killed Bathsheba's husband.

And all of this happens, and there's major consequences in his life.

By the way, as a short aside, it's one of my favorite things about the Bible.

It doesn't spin anything.

It doesn't give us this PR shine on all the people in it.

So we get to see their failures.

It records all of that for us and it gives us great hope because the Bible's not the story of an amazing God doing incredible things through.

Sorry, it's not the story of amazing people doing incredible things for God.

It's the story of an amazing God doing incredible things through people that are broken and messed up.

Does that make sense?

If you're broken and messed up, you should have a lot of hope.

Because if there's one thing we get from the Bible, it's that there's never been one person that's too messed up to be used by God.

And so if you feel like you've missed it, you feel like you've blown your chance, you've made too many mistakes, you're too far gone to be useful to God, that is not God talking to you.

God actually seems to enjoy using broken people to do great things.

David was one of those people.

David was a mess.

This whole situation with Bathsheba, this sin, this struggle, it had massive consequences for his life.

It haunted him for all of his years, and none of it, none of it would have happened had he simply been living in season.

2 Samuel 11 gives us the story.

In the spring of that year, when kings normally go out to war, David sent Joab in the Israelite army to fight the Ammonites.

They destroyed the Ammonite army and they laid siege to the city of Rabbah.

However, David stayed behind in Jerusalem.

Late one afternoon after his midday rest, David got out of bed and was walking on the roof of the palace.

As he looked out over the city, he noticed a woman of unusual beauty taking a bath.

So David's being a creep, essentially.

Like I said, the Bible doesn't spin things.

And see, here's what's going on.

In that day and age, there's no indoor plumbing.

And so people would bathe in their courtyards, and their courtyards were private, unless someone happened to be from a very high vantage point, like David was at his palace.

So he's he's walking on the roof of his palace.

He's just checking out all his land, all his subjects, his city, and he sees Bathsheba, and that's when the whole mess starts.

But he shouldn't have even been there.

Notice that it said, in the spring, when kings normally go to war.

It's actually a pretty new phenomenon in human history to have leaders of nations, kings, rulers, authorities that are not warriors, that haven't led armies.

It's really, in fact, there's been very few presidents in our nation's history that were not great soldiers, that did not have military experience, only a handful.

See, in that time, it wasn't a situation where kings would say to their armies, hey, you guys go fight.

You guys go fight, you guys go and win the battle, and I'll stay back here, I'll make sure things are safe for you when you get home.

I'll support you, I'll pray for you, I'll strategize from afar, but you guys go fight.

No, in those days, kings were were the best warriors.

Kings were the ones that would lead their armies into battle.

They were the ones fighting, they would fight on the front.

That's the way it worked.

You couldn't claim credit for a military victory if you didn't fight in the battle.

And see, David, he's he's a warrior.

David is as decorated and as gifted as a warrior as anyone in Israel.

David's literally the best warrior that Israel has, and he is not, he's not fighting with the army.

We don't know the exact reason why, but it's clear that it's not because he had a lot of things to attend to in Jerusalem.

He's taking a midday nap.

And it says it like it's his usual thing.

It says, then after his midday rest, after his siesta, he gets up, and he gets up to what?

To go deal with all the pressing matters of being king?

No, he goes and is like, what am I gonna do?

I'll I guess I'll go walk on my roof.

And if you see a man in your neighborhood walking on his roof, he's bored.

He has nothing to do.

You should go up to him and say, Hey, you I got some things that you can help me with.

Clearly, you need something to do.

David's just walking around on his roof because he has nothing to do, because he's not doing what he should be doing.

He's living out of season.

He should be with his men, he should be fighting in the battle.

That's what kings did.

And it was the season to do that.

But David, he's living out of season.

And because he's living out of season, he puts himself in this situation and in this place, and the results are disastrous.

When we live out of season, we sabotage.

Sabotage our ability to be happy, to be successful.

That's one of the great things about Jesus, is that he always lived in season.

Always.

Jesus very much understood Ecclesiastes chapter 3, verse 1, which says, for everything there is a season, a time for every activity under heaven.

Ecclesiastes 3:1

Another translation puts it this way there's an opportune time to do things, a right time for everything on the earth.

And you can see that Jesus got this.

He understood this.

Time and time again in Scripture, Jesus references the time, the right time to do something.

We see it in John 12.

Jesus replied, Now the time has come for the Son of Man to enter into his glory.

In John 17, after saying all these things, Jesus looked up to heaven and said, Father, the hour has come.

Glorify your Son so he can give glory back to you.

In Matthew 26, he says, As you go into the city, you'll see a certain man tell him, the teacher says, My time has come, and I will eat the Passover meal with my disciples at your house.

Time and time again, he's saying, Look, this is the hour, this is the time, this is the season to do what I'm doing.

One of the things that made Jesus so successful at life is not simply what he did, but when he did it.

Jesus did what needed to be done in the season that he was in.

We have these lost years in Jesus' life.

If you ever hear someone talk about the lost years of Jesus, they're talking about the time between Jesus being about 12 and being 30.

He didn't begin his public ministry until he was 30 years old.

And we have stories in the Bible of Jesus as a baby.

We have stories of Jesus as a young child.

We even have stories of Jesus at 12.

And we understand when we read the story of him at 12 years old that he knew who he was to some degree.

He understood that he was Jesus, that he was the Son of God.

And then we have nothing from 12, 13, all the way until he's 30.

We don't know what he was doing.

And there's some crazy theories out there about what Jesus did.

But it's not hard to figure out what he did.

This was not a time when 17, 18-year-olds would go find themselves.

Go discover who they really were.

This is a time when if you're 13 years old, you're a man and you work.

And so Jesus would have been working with his dad.

He would have been working as a carpenter, being taught the trade that his father had.

We know that Joseph, his earthly father, died sometime between him being 12 and 30.

And Jesus was the oldest in his family.

So at some point during that span, Jesus would have had to take over the responsibility of providing for his family.

He would have been working and supporting his mom and his younger siblings.

We know that from 1213 to 30, Jesus is just living life.

He's just working.

He's doing the mundane, he's doing the monotonous.

Because he's Jesus and he can do anything.

It had to be so hard for Jesus to see people like his dad, sick, hurting, dead, knowing that he has the power to change that.

Knowing that all he has to do is say, get up, and the dead rise.

But he didn't do that with Joseph.

He didn't do that with other people that I'm sure were close to him because it wasn't the right season.

It wasn't the right time.

I think about Jesus going to church.

You know, Saturday was the day they went to the synagogue, and so he would have gone to the synagogue every single Saturday.

And he would have listened to these people teach about God.

And he's God.

And it's very clear that he did not agree with the teachings of his day.

It's very clear that he did not think that the Pharisees and the religious leaders had it right.

And so you can just imagine Jesus in this season where he's just waiting for 17, 18 years, just waiting to come forward, sitting there in church, just going like, no.

No.

Like he he had to want to scream from the back, wrong.

I'm so sorry, but I can't listen to it anymore.

You're wrong.

You're wrong.

When you read Jesus in his ministry, you see him say all these unbelievable things, and it's like he has this huge collection of things he's wanted to say for years, and that's because he's had this huge collection of things that he's been wanting to say for years.

But he sat there, humble, listening, week in, week out, for 18 years.

Because that was his season.

Luke 2.52 puts it this way.

It kind of sums up what Jesus was doing in that season of life.

It says that he grew in wisdom and in stature and in favor with God and with all the people.

That's what was necessary for Jesus at that time.

He needed to grow.

He needed to mature.

He needed to mature emotionally, he needed to mature spiritually, even physically.

I mean, God's so wise, he knew that no one would take a 21-year-old Jesus seriously.

Jesus needed to mature even physically before people would even respect what he had to say.

That's just the way our world works.

And so for Jesus, that was not a pointless time in his life.

For Jesus, that was a season of maturation.

It's very important for us to always remember that in every season of life, there's something that God wants to do in us.

In every single season of life, there's something that God has for us.

In every season of life, whether it's a season that we're enjoying or a season that we feel like is really frustrating, maybe you feel like Jesus for those 17, 18 years, just doing the same thing every single day, wondering what the point of all of it is.

And God wants you to know I have a big point.

It's that you're gonna need to learn something in this season.

You're gonna need to know something through this season so that you have the maturity to handle what I'm gonna bring you in the next season.

I got up really early this morning, and I got up to pray and just think about the message.

Usually on Sunday mornings, I'm I'm kind of going through it one more time and I'm praying, I'm asking God what He wants to change, and I'm wanting to be by myself and just be alone.

Me and God.

But I'm in this season of life where my children wake up at 4:30, 5 o'clock in the morning, and they're ready to go.

And so as I'm trying to have my God time, my son is up and he's doing what six-year-olds do at 5:30 in the morning.

He's building Legos.

And he lays right next to me.

I'm in the floor, I've got my computer, I'm praying, I'm making notes, I'm changing some things, and he's right next to me.

He's like, Dad, can I lay right next to you?

I said, sure.

And he's laying next to me on our carpet, which is just filthy because our kids spill stuff on it left and right.

It doesn't matter how many times we vacuum it, it's just there's a Cheeri over there, there's fruit juice that spilled yesterday there.

We're laying on the floor.

He's Playing with Legos, and every five seconds he stops to ask me to help him with the next piece.

You know, he's like, Dad, these don't they don't fit together, these aren't working.

And I'm like, son, I promise they fit together.

Just be patient, just line them up and push.

And he's like, No, look, they don't work.

And he's getting all frustrated.

I grab it and I put it together.

I'm like, here.

And he keeps asking me to help him with the next step.

And I'm sitting there going, God, I'm trying to do this.

I've got important things to do.

Can you please do something with him?

So I can do what I need to do.

And then God did what he tends to do with me.

Just sort of reminded me that, hey, maybe, maybe I'm trying to get your attention right now.

Oh, okay.

I get it.

And so I start to think, hey, God, do you have something to teach me through this?

And he said, yes.

You're thinking about seasons in life.

Your son's over here, he's building Legos.

Can he skip a step and at work?

And the answer is no.

If you're building something with Legos, you can't skip a step.

He's building this car this morning, this Lego car, and he can't skip to step five.

Every single step's important.

Every single step is building a foundation for the next.

And that's how it is with the seasons in our life.

Every single season of life is vital for you.

The season you're in right now may be one that you want to skip, it may be one you want to speed up, it may be one you just want to ignore or change or whatever.

But this is a season of life that God has you in for a reason.

He wants to teach you something right now that will be foundational for you in the next season.

Because he loves you and he wants it all to work.

It's so hard for us as people to accept and understand and enjoy our season.

But it's so, so important.

Because if we if we do that, we begin to look like a person described in Psalm chapter 1.

Psalms 1 · chapter mention

It says, Oh, the joys of those who do not follow the advice of the wicked, or stand around with sinners, or join in with mockers, but they delight in the law of the Lord, meditating on it day and night.

They are like trees planted along the riverbank, bearing fruit each season.

Their leaves never wither, and they prosper in all they do.

I mean, who wouldn't want to be that person?

Oh, the joy.

That's how that begins.

Oh, the joys of being that person.

And notice that it said they're like trees who do what?

Who bear fruit in each season.

I don't know your season right now.

I don't know what season you're in.

But God does.

And I do know that whatever your season right now, it's a season that God intends you to be in.

It's a season that God has something for you to learn.

It's a season that God has something for you to do, to produce, to produce fruit, to grow.

This season right now, this is purposeful for your life.

The hardest thing that Megan and I have had to do this year is just accept our season.

Because we have three kids, six and under, and I talk about them a lot.

I talk about my family a lot.

I love my family, and they just provide so much material, and so it's very convenient.

And some of you have been in this season, some of you have been in it years ago, and you can remember what it's like, but it's just everything's hard.

Everything, like if you don't have kids, and you decide, hey, it's time to go.

It's time to go to work, it's time to go wherever I'm going, it's time to go hang out.

You just all you do.

You go, okay, you grab your keys, you get in your car, you sit down, you go.

I used to be that person.

Now, now we have to leave.

That's like that's like a DEF CON raise.

Like we go, it's time to go.

Is there a diaper bag?

Are there wipes?

Are there diapers?

Are there passies, blankets?

Do the kids have all the stuff that the kids need?

Okay, do we have this child or are they buckled in?

Yes, they're buckled in.

Okay, this child are they buckled in?

Not really.

We've got to buckle them in, and this other kid, you know, Liam's six, and he can buckle himself in, but he'll sit there going, it's not working, it's not working, and we're like, oh, just stop.

And he'll always pull it so hard that then it locks up, and you're like, oh my gosh, now I have to go and do that thing and get it to release, and so you get him buckled in.

And there's always an emergency that happens right when it's time to go.

It's amazing how often this happens.

My daughter Lily, she's two.

I talk about Lily a lot because she is a lot.

And Lily does not struggle with self-confidence.

She there's she doesn't have any self-importance issues.

Lily believes that she is a very important person.

So she's not afraid to tell you what she needs.

A couple weeks ago, I was just having a father-daughter moment with Lily, and I looked at her and I said, I said, Are you a princess?

And she said, No, I'm a queen.

Like, that's that's my daughter.

That's Lily.

And so Lily has this thing in her queen mentality.

I don't know if she's seen shows about royalty or something, but she thinks that a queen should be carried wherever she needs to go.

Her legs work fine, she can walk, but but she'll say, Dad, I want to go downstairs.

Just like, go downstairs.

You've mastered this skill.

We worked on this, you can do this.

And she'll just go, carry me.

She wants to be carried everywhere.

So a few weeks ago, we're headed out the door, we've got all the kids in the car, we're ready to go, everything's packed up.

And Lily goes, Dad, I have to pee.

And I said, Okay, then go.

And she says, No, carry me.

And then I'm having a parenting moment.

I'm thinking, no, I'm not gonna carry you to the bathroom when you can walk to the bathroom, you're gonna walk to the bathroom and go yourself, and she's fighting me on it, and finally I surrender and I say, fine, and I pick her up, and then she pees on me.

Like that's and now she has to change, and I have to change, and now we're late, and that's this stuff happens every day.

Something like this happens.

Every day.

And so Megan and I have these moments right now where we, you know, we put our kids to bed at night, which is like a whole other battle.

And then we sit down in our basement, it's where our family hangs out, and we'll we'll we'll just sit for the first time, and we'll turn on the TV.

And sometimes there'll be a show on about a home or a house.

There's so many shows about house renovations and selling houses and buying houses, and and we'll turn on the TV, and it'll be on one of those shows because those are the channels Megan watches, and there'll be this beautiful home.

And it's it's calm and it has like beautiful flooring, like beautiful hardwood flooring.

And I'm looking around at our carpet, and it's just like I said earlier, Cheerios and toys and stains, and and I'm looking at the walls, and this this house has like beautiful walls, and just the paint's beautiful, and there's all this detail.

And I look at our walls, and our kids have just I don't know how our kids do this.

They just they get things on their hands and they just they touch the wall.

Like they high-five our wall.

We have hand prints everywhere.

Kids are good at that, by the way.

If you have children, they can get they can get stuff on anything.

I'll make my son a peanut butter jelly sandwich, and he will have jelly in his hair.

Like in the back of his hair, and I have no idea.

I don't even, I can't even envision, I have no idea how it happens.

He doesn't either.

I'm like, how'd you get jelly there?

He's like, I don't know.

Right?

Our kids, they just touch everything with their messy hands.

And so we have all these handprints going down our stairs.

And I tried to fix it by by touch-up painting it, but the touch-up paint didn't match.

So it looks way worse than it did with the fingerprints in the first place.

And I look at our home and I look at these homes on TV, and I'm just like, why is is our home not this?

Why can't why can't we have that?

Why can't we have beautiful floors?

And why can't we have this nice, calm, organized, peaceful home?

And sometimes I try to manufacture that, I try to make it that.

I try to get onto everybody and try to make them clean more and organize more and all this stuff, but here's the truth.

That's just not our season.

That is not the season that we're in.

And if I try to make it our season, if I try to speed things up and have what is meant for a different season in life, because those homes are meant for people with no children.

Because they have things like white couches on them, right?

What is that?

So if I try to make that season this season, all I will do is miss this season.

And I know that there will be a day when my kids are out of the house, and maybe we do have beautiful hardwood floors, there's not gunky carpet, and I'll be, I'll be on the floor, and I'll be wishing that my son were next to me with Legos.

And if I if I miss those moments now, because I'm so focused on a season I'm not in, all I'm gonna do is miss the joy that's intended in this season.

Whatever your season right now, God intends you to enjoy it.

It doesn't mean it's easy.

Because joy and ease are not the same thing.

In fact, most of the time, great joy comes in very difficult situations.

Real joy, anyway.

What's your season?

That's the question to ask this morning.

I wish I could give you an answer.

I really can't.

Because I don't know your season.

I'm still trying to figure out mine.

I don't have the answer for you, but I do have a question for you this morning.

What is your season?

What is it that God wants to produce in your life right now?

What's the fruit that he's trying to make grow in your life this season?

You may not know what that is, I may not know what that is, but God does.

He does that.

That's why we need Jesus so badly.

If you don't know Jesus, I just want you to understand, without Jesus, I would just be rolling dice through life.

That's all I'd be doing.

I'd be guessing.

Heck, with Jesus, half the time I feel like I'm guessing.

Without Jesus, I would just be trying to do whatever seems like it should work.

And rarely does anything that seems like it should work actually work in practice.

That's just how life goes.

But with Jesus, with Jesus, I have the person with the answers.

So that's the beauty of it.

If you have Jesus, you don't have to have the answers.

You have the person that has the answers.

That's better than having the answers yourself.

Here's what the Bible says in Proverbs 2.6 the Lord grants wisdom, from his mouth come knowledge and understanding.

In other words, if you don't know what your season is or how you can even enjoy it, maybe you, maybe if you're honest, you're like, I hate this season.

I do not enjoy my life right now.

So I can't even figure out how in the world I can find joy in this.

God does.

He knows.

And if you will seek him and if you will ask him, God, what is my season?

What am I supposed to learn right now?

What do you want me to do right now?

He will show you because he loves you.

And he has the answers that you need.

The Lord will grant you the wisdom and the discernment to understand your season.

David prayed this in Psalm 5, verse 8: Make your way plain for me to follow.

Just make it clear.

If every single one of us walked out of here today with this prayer on our hearts, God, show me my season.

God help me discern my season.

God, show me what it is you want me to produce in this season.

Make me a person that lives for this season.

If every single one of us did that, we would save ourselves so much frustration.

If we could just learn to live in season, we would avoid so many pitfalls, so many detours.

And we could live with a joy, a joy that can only come from being where we're meant to be right now.

Have you ever had fruit out of season?

It's not good.

But fruit in season, you get you get like really fresh fruit in season, might as well be candy.

Is that good?

That's what God intends for you.

To have what you need in the season that you need it.

But you gotta trust him.

And you've got to ask him to show you the season that you're in.

Pray with me.

Jesus, thank you so much for being faithful in every season.

There's literally not a moment of our lives, Lord, where you are not with us.

The Bible says that you hold all things together.

You are always working, you are always moving, you are always with us, you are always here, and you always love us.

And Jesus, you know our hearts so well.

You know how hard it is for us just to live in the season that we're in.

You know how hard it is for us, Jesus, to just accept the season that you've given to us.

Help us trust, Lord, that you have a purpose in this season.

Help us understand, Lord, what it is you want us to do.

We want to be people who just cry out to you, show us.

Show us your way, show us your plan, show us your path, and we'll walk it.

Give us the wisdom and the strength to do that this week, just to seek you, to understand our season and to live with the joy that comes from it, Lord.

We love you.

We ask all this in your name, Jesus.

Amen.

Would you all stand with us for the last song?

We're