Reasons and Seasons

One of the greatest obstacles Christians face is when they do not recognize the season they are in.


If it is a spiritual winter do not expect the summer harvest. Do not be anxious or concerned when there fruit is not appearing, don't commit to this and that to try to make it happen, or try to forcethe fruit to bear because it just CANNOT BE FORCED. No matter how hard you try, you won't produce fruit until the right seson and conditions are around or more so within. And it is God who produces the climate and the seasons we have not the power to command immediacy of fruit. But what is worse is that we play the blamegame and point the finger AT GOD for the lack of fruit! How many times have you heard whinging and complaining to the effect of "BUT I did everything right and this and that and me and me and I and I .....BUT God did not come through."

Really........... this is your your faith ?

God does not fail; we fail.

We fail to to recognize what the seasons are we are in and we fail to work with God through those seasons REMEMBER a time for this.....and a time for that ....SEASONS

It not about what we do or say or pray or give or dont do or say or pray or give , and its not about what we think we are sacrificing either.......... IT is about what He is doing in our life.

So in a pruning season , be pruned, it a blossoming season, blossom, in a season where you are dormant, rest and in the fruiting season Be the best possible fruit around. Seize thae day people.

I dont know much about fruit trees and flowers and vegies and the lkike my thumb is not gree but this I do know.............Just like the natural seasons and planting and harvestings, we as the kids God loves and is always for, go through spiritual seasons and plantings and harvestings and OUCH prunings too.
In Spring we can be aware and observant and se ethe leading of God into new adventures into new opportunities. A season of preparation and the planting if you will .... a season to enrich and airate the soil....Sound good to me .

In Summer we need to take the time for learning and development and plumping up our fruits maturing if you like is a good analogy

During Autumn we may be feeling a need to return to the basics of our relationship or maybe its a new level of commitment to new or revisited disciplines; or a time for reflection and out with the old things A time for seeking and prayer and planning, which in themselves seem to the naked eye to produce little fruit but are in essence the fertiliser spurring on and norishing the fruit to come .

Lastly, there is winter - AHHH Winter is it not the most uncomfortable time for manyof us , Yeah and Christians too. In our society we tend to value people based on how much they produce. This "work equals value" culture is not godly and it is wrong to commend such people who are over committed as much as it is wrong tojudge those who are under committed, or complacent or blind or this or that
God does not in the first instance value your works HE values YOU....people - and we should adopt this too to value first the person not the status of the things or the works.
Spiritual winter is like alot of sundays.Reating Realxing Soaking in the Rain......Warming yourself and God instructed people to keep thier rest special and to Him..... To spend time reflecting on the things of God, to be thankful for all things, for His son for this life for who not what you are .

As you work speading and shaking out His God Salt (you are the salt of the Earth) and go about promoting His Kingdom come and His will be done, remember to work, or rest, to restore and refresh, according to the season you are in.

This will be the underlying development of the best fruit in your life that will be so ready for the harvest.
So Season are you in right now? and what season are you acting and operating as if your in .....

Gal 5:22 Msg ...........But what happens when we live God's way? He brings gifts into our lives, much the same way that fruit appears in an orchard—things like affection for others, exuberance about life, serenity. We develop a willingness to stick with things, a sense of compassion in the heart, and a conviction that a basic holiness permeates things and people. We find ourselves involved in loyal commitments, not needing to force our way in life, able to marshal and direct our energies wisely.
Colossians 1:5 Msg ......The Message is as true among you today as when you first heard it. It doesn't diminish or weaken over time. It's the same all over the world. The Message bears fruit and gets larger and stronger, just as it has in you.

See you next time

Glenda

Late Have I Loved You, Augustine

This is an amazing piece .....
I was led to this by one of my daughter's who is a songwriter/singer  and lyracist .
Here's the thing, though I have read this  several times already,  I think I could almost keep reading again and again,  and keep unpacking it for days ... I almost feel a fast and study coming on ......Enjoy friends Enjoy


Late Have I Loved You - Augustine

Where did I find you in order to make your acquaintance in the first place?
You could not have been in my memory before I learned to know you.
Where then could I have found you in order to learn of you, if not in yourself, far above me?
“Place” has here no meaning: further away from you or toward you we may travel, but place there is none.
O Truth, you hold sovereign sway over all who turn to you for counsel, and to all of them you respond at the same time, however diverse their pleas.



Clear is your response, but not all hear it clearly.
They all appeal to you about what they want, but do not always hear what they want to hear.
Your best servant is the one who is less intent on hearing from you what accords with his own will, and more on embracing with his will what he has heard from you.


Late have I loved you, Beauty so ancient and so new, late have I loved you!


Lo, you were within,

but I outside, seeking there for you,

and upon the shapely things you have made

I rushed headlong – I, misshapen.

You were with me, but I was not with you.

They held me back far from you,

those things which would have no being,

were they not in you.





You called, shouted, broke through my deafness;

you flared, blazed, banished my blindness;

you lavished your fragrance, I gasped; and now I pant for you;

I tasted you, and now I hunger and thirst;

you touched me, and I burned for your peace.



When at last I cling to you with my whole being there will be no more anguish or labor for me, and my life will be alive indeed, alive because filled with you.

But now it is very different.
Anyone whom you fill you also uplift; but I am not full of you, and so I am a burden to myself.
Joys over which I ought to weep do battle with sorrows that should be matter for joy, and I do not know which will be victorious.
But I also see griefs that are evil at war in me with joys that are good, and I do not know which will win the day.
This is agony, Lord, have pity on me! It is agony!
See, I do not hide my wounds; you are the physician and I am sick; you are merciful, I in need of mercy.


Is not human life on earth a time of testing?
Who would choose troubles and hardships?
You command us to endure them, but not to love them.
No-one loves what he has to endure, even if he loves the endurance, for although he may rejoice in his power to endure, he would prefer to have nothing that demands endurance.
In adverse circumstances I long for prosperity, and in times of prosperity I dread adversity.
What middle ground is there, between these two, where human life might be free from trial?
Woe betide worldly prosperity, and woe again, from fear of disaster and evanescent joy!
But woe, woe, and woe again upon worldly adversity, from envy of better fortune, the hardship of adversity itself, and the fear that endurance may falter.
Is not human life on earth a time of testing without respite?

On your exceedingly great mercy, and on that alone, rests all my hope.

Is that not poetic and truth ......does that just cause you to stand to attention ....Captivated for the KING 

In this famous excerpt from his Confessions (Lib. 10, 26. 37-29, 40: CSEL 33, 255-256), St. Augustine wrestles like Job with the problem of suffering, adversity, trial, and the sorrow that comes from God's apparent absence in times of trouble. "Late have I loved you," read on the Feast of St. Augustine, August 28, laments a bishop who did not finally yield to faith and baptism till his thirties, whose enthusiasm for the created things of this world held him back from their Creator. But now, having breathed the fragrance of God's Truth and Beauty, he pants for God and burns for the peace that only the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ can provide. He finds his peace on doing God's will and being his servant. This selection appears in the Roman Office of Readings for Wednesday of the 8th week in ordinary time with the accompanying biblical reading from Job 7:1-21.

 Dr. D'Ambrosio

My Christmas Message

Thank You Jesus ~


He was concieved and born contrary to all biological law.......

As a babe He terrified a King......

As a yougster He puzzled scholars......

As a man He intimidated the Roman Governer......

He is the long delayed but always expected we live for ........

He was constantly in hot water, and He did not seem to mind..........

He had/has no training in Psychiatry and yet, he has healed and cured more minds and spirits that anyone on earth..........

His name is spoken in honour and praise and frequency by more than one billion followers daily.........

He spoke one last night to small band of men some whom were illiterate as tho that ceremony of "take, eat , drink would go thoughout all History.....and He was correct........

He had nothing to prove, nothing.......

He remains forever a question mark with which people are never finished .......

After almost more than a century, He is seen freely and walks openly in Moscow, Kiev and St Petersburg no one is suprised.....

He had no interest in people theorising Him, but rather He wants us to REPRODUCE Him in our lives .......

His name is not so much written in the History of the world ....as Ploughed into it......

Angels rush to Him , Devils flee from Him......

No one can portray History without giving Him the formost place .......

He is the Hero you could never even invent ......

Unlike people who tend to jump in front of the parade and go with the flow, He jumped in front and took us in a whole NEW direction .........

He changed BC, to AD

In His lifetime He had no equal ....that it continues unto today

It is not He who needs us. but rather IT is we who need Him ..........AMEN

Merry Christmas friends and loved ones.

Blogger aquaitences and those dear to me .....Loving what is coming in 2010.

Joy n peace n much laughter may you have this season and ahead

love n stuff

Glenda
xxx