Manifesto of Frutifulness | The Fruit of Seasons

There's a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens. A time to be born, and a time to die. A time to plant, and a time to uproot. A time to kill, and a time to heal. A time to tear down, and a time to build. A time to weep, and a time to laugh. A time to mourn, and a time to dance. A time to scatter stones, and a time to gather them. A time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing. A time to search, and a time to give up. A time to keep, and a time to throw away. A time to tear, and a time to mend, a time to be silent, and a time to speak. A time to love, and a time to hate. A time for war, and a time for peace. What do workers gain from their toil? I have seen the birding God has laid on the human race. He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart. Yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end. This is the word of the Lord. You may be seated. Hello. My name is Regan. If we have not met yet, I have the honor of serving as the youth pastor here at Church of the City. And I am excited to step into this topic tonight on the fruitfulness of seasons. This is a fun sermon to get to teach right now in New York, because if you have gotten to get to the park, or you got to watch any of the marathon today, fall is starting to just make the city so beautiful. We are starting to see the trees reach peak color, and we are going to get to just bask

in that for a few weeks. So it is a time where we are really aware of the beauty of seasons, and I hope you get to take that in our city over the next few weeks. But we are also headed into some months that conjure up some strong feelings in New York City. Winter. This is the time of year that make New Yorkers a little bit angry, a little bit sad. We can tend to just buckle down and hope to make it through until spring. These are the months where we put on our winter coats and we don't take them off for three, four months, except for when we get on the subway, and then we have to take them off, or else we will sweat through them. This is the time of year where we sit down at our desks for the workday and we watch the sun go down while we're still working, where the leaves fall off the trees and the park gets bare. And here we are in a series on fruitfulness, each and every week talking about how God longs for us to live fruit-filled lives. But we are going into a season marked by barrenness, by death, by darkness. We don't expect much fruit from winter. People close to me know that I oddly love winter. My hot take is that I think it's better than summer. I enjoy the cold. I love the snow. There's something oddly refreshing about it to me. Surprisingly, I'm from Houston, Texas, and in Houston, winter is really just a slightly less hot version of summer. There's not much change from season to season as most of the trees are evergreen. And because of this, even after eight years in New York, I am still in awe of living in a place with four distinct seasons. I think there's so much beauty in each one. I think that each one reveals deep spiritual truth. I think that it's a part of God's creative design that just as it is in creation, so it is in our lives.

Each season, whether abundant or barren, carries remarkable purpose within the fruitfulness of a year. Even the death and the darkness of winter plays a distinct purpose in the fruit that comes in the spring and summer. And this is the spiritual truth that we see in today's teaching text in Ecclesiastes 3, that every season is a part of our own fruit-bearing process. Again, the text says that there is a time for everything, a season for every activity under the heavens, a time to be born and a time to die, time to plant and a time to uproot, a time to kill and a time to heal, a time to tear down and a time to build. It goes on and on, laying out the full spectrum of the human experience, and then it says that God has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart, yet no one can fathom what they are somehow woven into something beautiful, something fruitful by a God who sees the full picture of eternity. But here's the problem. I don't think we like this very much. I don't know if we love the idea of God using both the good seasons and the really hard ones, because we live in a culture that idolizes and up into the right trajectory. We strive for constant progress and production, and we tend to evaluate the success of our lives through that lens. Each season, each year, we want for it to look better than the last, and if that's not the case, then we feel like either we have failed or God has failed us. But maybe what I hope we can see today is what we see in creation and in scripture is that this was just never meant to be true. When God thought of the fruitful lives of his people, he never pictured an up and to the right trajectory. The fruit he longs for our lives to bear, it doesn't come from success and victory stacked one on top of the other. Maybe the seasons of grief, of waiting, of stepping into something new despite fear, of abundant joy, of dying to yourself. Maybe these were all meant to be a part of the fruit that God wants to cultivate in your life. Derek Kydner in his commentary on Ecclesiastes describes this experience of longing for life, just to stay in a state of perfection, because we can't see the full picture of what God's doing. He says, "The trouble for us is not that life refuses to keep still, but that we only see a fraction of its movement and of its subtle, intricate design. Instead of frozen perfection, there is a kaleidoscopic movement of innumerable processes, each with its own character, its own period of blossoming and ripening, beautiful in its time, and contributing to the overall masterpiece,

which is the work of one creator. We are like the desperately nearsighted, inching their way along some great tapestry or fresco in the attempt to take it in. We see enough to recognize something of its quality, but the grand design escapes us, for we can never stand back far enough to view it as its creator does whole and entire from beginning to end. We see each season of our lives up close. We're desperately nearsighted, and we judge it without the full picture. But God is showing us that he sees each and every season of our lives as contributing to a grand tapestry, that both in the good and the hard, he sees that each one holds value, holds its own deeply important fruit. This is the truth that we find in the book of Ecclesiastes. Ecclesiastes, you may know, is most famous for saying that all of life is meaningless, which may seem a little odd in what I'm saying here, but I think when we look at the book as a whole, what we end up seeing is that each and every season of life can be deeply meaningful. In the book we find a teacher who's imparting wisdom to his readers, and the phrase he just comes back to over and over is meaningless. Chapter 1 verse 2 says, meaningless, meaningless as the teacher, utterly meaningless, everything is meaningless. But this word in Hebrew is the word "hevel," which means vapor or smoke. It evokes the picture of something fleeting or temporary, something that if you try to grasp it, it will escape you. You cannot control it, you cannot hold it. What he's saying is that the more we try to grasp at a fruitful life or an up into the right trajectory, the more it will escape us. Our efforts are meaningless, or you could say fruitless. Verse 3 continues on. What do people gain from their labors at which they toil under the sun? Generations come and generations go, but the earth remains forever. No one remembers the former generations, even those yet to come, will not be remembered by those who follow them. Throughout the chapters of Ecclesiastes, the same point is made over and over again. You could gain all the wisdom in the world. You could have all the success that you go after. You could chase after a fruitful life. And still, death will come. The generation after you will forget who you are. The patterns of the world will continue on. You will suffer. Pain will come into your life. Winter will cause the fruit of summer to pass away and be forgotten. There's no escaping these realities, so trying to grasp after a good life, it's meaningless. It's fruitless. It's like grasping. Why are we here talking about fruitfulness if it's also meaningless? I'm happy to tell you that the Bible is not suggesting we all become nihilists, though it would

be if it were not for God. The claim that Ecclesiastes will ultimately make is summed up in the last two verses of the book. It says, "Now all has been heard and here is the conclusion of the matter. Fear God. Keep His commandments. For this is the duty of all mankind. For God will bring every deed into judgment, including every hidden thing, whether good or evil." The teacher is telling us that the answer to the apparent meaninglessness of life is to fear God. It's to seek God as the only one who can truly bring about lasting fruit in our lives. So the duty of man, it's not to grasp at fruit in our own strength. It's to fear God. It's to obey His commandments. It's a call to love and faithfulness. In the terms of this series, it is a call to abide. And from that place of abiding, God writes deep meaning into our lives. He makes every season beautiful in its time. He produces fruit in us, not that we've grasped for, but that He has produced in us. It says in verse 14 that every deed, even the hidden moments of our lives, both the good and the bad, will be judged by Him, or considered by Him. No part of our lives is out of His sight or meaningless to Him. And this is what we see in today's teaching text, that each and every season will be made beautiful in its time, if it is submitted to Him, if it is lived from a place of abiding. But when we take success into our own hands, then no season, the good or the bad, will be truly fruitful. And I think this is why we often despise the winter, the winter seasons of our lives, because when we are just grasping for fruit for ourselves, then suddenly the diagnosis, the layoff, the times of grief and loss, they can feel suffocating as though they're stripping fruit from our lives. But that is just because we were under the delusion that the good seasons were all that fruitful to begin with. But none of it was if not lived from a place of abiding, if not submitted to God. But we have a God who can take every season, the winter, the spring, the summer, the fall, and He can make it beautiful in its time. He has said eternity in our hearts, revealing to us that there is a larger story that we are a part of, and absolutely no part of our stories is wasted when surrendered to Him. So the book of Ecclesiastes, it makes this claim that life can either be totally meaningful, meaningless, or every

season completely meaningful. The deciding factor is submission to God. It says in Jeremiah 17, that blessed is the one who trusts in the Lord, whose confidence is in Him. They will be like a tree planted by streams of water that sends its roots out by the stream. It does not fear when heat comes. Its leaves are always green. It has no worries in the year of drought, and it never fails to bear fruit. God gives us this picture of abiding, and relates it to a tree. That because it is rooted in water, or this picture of being rooted in God, it doesn't have to worry in the drought, in the heat. Whatever season comes, it bears fruit in every season, because it is abiding in the Lord. God's written this truth into creation. And I think He's written this truth as we look at the four seasons that we see in creation. So today we're going to look at the four seasons of the year, and we're going to use this metaphor of a fruit-bearing tree to understand what God might have for us in the seasons of our lives. So I hope as you go through this with me, you might see yourself in one of these. You might see your life right now or or something you've come through in these seasons and be able to see what's possible if you submit this season to God. We're going to start with a fan favorite, Winter. Ecclesiastes says that there is a time to die, to tear down, to mourn, to be silent, to refrain. There is a time and a purpose for Winter. Winter seasons are seasons of loss and grief, a season of waiting, wondering why God has not answered your prayer, a season where the voice of God a season of weakness, of letting go of old habits or crutches in your life. Winter in creation seems like the least fruitful season. A fruit tree appears to be dead as it loses its leaves and ceases to bear fruit. But winter plays a distinct role in the fruit-bearing process of creation. In the rest, in the cold, in the death, powerful processes are taking place that will lead to a fruitful harvest.

Few fun facts about trees in the winter. Did you know that a tree enters into this state of rest that looks like death, but that state of rest is actually what allows it to withstand freezing temperatures? If it didn't do that, it would truly die in the winter. The tree also needs a certain number of hours in the cold to be able to properly bear fruit in the spring and summer. We probably don't want to hear this, but if winter is cut short, then the fruit that is meant to bear in spring and summer will not fully come to be. It will not produce the proper amount of fruit. It is actually written in creation that this time of death, of rest, of pruning, it is necessary for new life to spring forth. So as we look at creation and ask what God might want to do in our seasons of winter, I think we see two clear invitations. The first is an invitation to rest in the Lord instead of strive, and the second is an invitation to receive pruning instead of trying to escape it. So first, winter invites us to rest in God. In winter seasons, we often don't actually have the ability to force fruitfulness in our lives. If we could in our own strength get out of the grief, the waiting, the spiritual dryness, we probably would. But God allows these states and he invites us not to grasp at fruit in our own striving, but to wait on and rest in him. Winter seasons are seasons of waiting, waiting for the breakthrough,

waiting for the answered prayer, waiting for the relief from the grief. And just as trees, when they are waiting for spring, enter into a state of rest. And that is what allows them to withstand the harsh temperatures. We are invited in our seasons of waiting to rest in the Lord. Trees enter into a season that's not marked by rapid growth. They slow down, and it prepares them for a harsh season so that they can blossom and grow new fruit in the spring. So often, when we enter into winter seasons, we just try to keep running at the same pace. We try to grasp at fruit in our own grit and strength. We don't quiet our spirits, but instead fill them with more noise. And in this harsh season, our inability to rest in God, it just then rips us apart. What we were intended to withstand through resting in God ends up killing us as we fight forward in our own effort. So how do we allow ourselves to rest in God, in winter seasons? Think Matthew 11 gives us the key. Matthew 11, 28 says, "Come to me, "all who are weary and burdened, "and I will give you rest." God promises rest to our souls if we just come to Him. If we press into rhythms of solitude and silence, meditating on His promises on who He is,

rather than filling our lives with more noise, trying to press through in our own strength, allowing an unreasonable pace of busyness to rule our lives, running to other voices instead of Jesus's. Make sure that in seasons of pain, you are going to Jesus. This may mean that you have to change your schedule. It may mean that you have to wait to talk to a friend or complain to a friend until you've sat with the Lord. It may mean you have to delete an app or stop scrolling Instagram or turn off the TV, but we are promised. If we come to the Lord, He will give us rest. Resting in the Lord in seasons of hardship, it forces us to stop idolizing fruit for fruit's sake and instead to look to and love the giver of the fruit. He allows us to enter into these states of rest in Him, and maybe that actually is the fruit He longs to bring in our lives that we will need in every season of our lives. It's a gift produced in us in the winter seasons. Secondly, winter is a time of pruning. Winter brings with it one of the most vital pictures that we see in scripture for a fruit-bearing life. that will produce more fruit in the warm weather. John 15 tells us that every branch that bears fruit, God prunes. And it's so that it can bear even greater fruit. That means if you're a believer and you have not allowed God to prune you in your life,

you will be limited in the amount of fruit that you're able to bear. And I don't think it's a coincidence that we see in creation that pruning is most effective in the winter seasons against this backdrop of pain and darkness. So often when we face pain in our lives, when faith is dull or dry, when grief hits, when we're stuck in a period of waiting for the answered prayer, it confronts us with the sin in our hearts, with the things we're trusting in other than God, with the self-reliance and pride, with the bad habits that have been ruling our lives, these things are really easy to miss in the good seasons. But sometimes the pain of life that holds up a mirror to our brokenness, and it allows God to prune us in a way that will ultimately allow us to bear even greater fruit. And this isn't fun. I don't assume you hear this and think just, okay, bring on the winter, this is the season I want, but a tree is pruned so that it can bear greater fruit. Unfortunately, we often fight against God's pruning in the winter seasons by just trying to escape the pain. The temptation of winter is to escape to Florida. As God works to do the pruning in our lives, we avoid his merciful correction by watching more Netflix scrolling on Instagram, distracting ourselves, bypassing pruning through numbing,

but this will ultimately keep you from shedding the dead branches, the sin patterns, the idols that are ultimately robbing you of true life and of richer fruit. If you're in a winter season, are you allowing yourself to be pruned? Are you willing to trust God that it is ultimately for your good and could end up being the greatest gift to your life out of this hard season? God has used seasons profoundly in my life in the last year. He's really used the cycle of the year to speak to me, and I'm excited to share some of that with you, but it all really started with the winter. As I've shared here before, my dad passed suddenly almost exactly a year ago. My dad collapsed on November 15th, and my husband and I quickly went out to Nashville to be with him. When we got there, the last leaves of fall were hanging on the trees. And as we spent time with him day after day in the hospital, the leaves just slowly began to fall. I think I have a couple of pictures from that time. Day after day, the trees began to fall, and then when he passed on November 30th, the trees were totally bare, winter had come. My family and I talked about how this was actually oddly comforting to us. It felt like God was using creation to usher us into our own winter season,

into our own season of grief. The temptation very well could have been in this time for us to just try to numb, for us to strive in our own strength to us, to bypass the pain or refuse to rest in the Lord. But as we watched these trees enter into a state of winter rest, I felt invited to allow myself to enter into the pain of death and to rest in the Lord. It felt like permission to sit in the pain, to not rush past it, to wrestle through it with the Lord. A lot of pruning happened in me in this season. God removed things from me that truly could not hold the weight of my grief, only God could. And God used this example of the trees to invite me, to rest in him, to invite me to receive pruning. I'm so grateful that he did. But I also remember this moment that was so profound, where I went on a run one morning before going to the hospital, and I stopped in my tracks as I came up against a winter tree, totally bare, but on it were a few pink blossoms. And I was like dumbfounded by this tree. I had never seen anything quite like it. Sitting on this winter tree, these blossoms, and God reminded me in this moment of Jeremiah 1. This was a passage that had been significant to me in my life. In Jeremiah 1, God brings Jeremiah to an almond blossom. And he shows it to him, and he says that this blossom is a sign that he is watching to fulfill his word.

Jeremiah would have known that the almond blossom was the first blossom to bloom in the spring, and that it was often said that the almond blossom watched for spring. for spring, I am watching to fulfill my word. This was such a clear invitation from the Lord for me. This winter does not have to be hopeless, but I can rest in the Lord, I can wait on Him, I can allow Him to prune me because I can know that there is hope, that even this deeply painful season He will make beautiful in its time. Spring will come. As I prayed over this gathering specifically, I just felt like there was probably someone in the room that the Lord just wants you to know tonight. If you are in a winter season and you have gotten to a point of absolute hopelessness and thought there's no way I'm getting out of this, like this picture is for you, that you can watch for spring, you can trust, that even this deeply painful season, God will make beautiful in its time. Because the good news is that winter seasons they do not last forever. Winter serves a purpose, but without fail, as the weather begins to warm, buds appear on the trees, flowers bloom, leaves return, fruit is promised. Spring comes with deep sighs of relief. Ecclesiastes says that there is a time to heal, a time to mend, a time to be born.

In our lives, spring seasons are the seasons where we start to see promises fulfilled. When breakthrough, after long seasons of sowing and prayer, starts to show up. These are the seasons when light in life break into places of darkness and death. But here's what we see in creation. We see that spring is both fleeting and it's fragile. These spring blooms, they only last a week or two, and if you're not paying attention, you can miss them. Spring is also the most fragile season of the four. High amounts of energy and nutrients are expended to grow these new leaves, to grow these buds. And if not tended too carefully, they could die off before reaching their full potential and actually producing fruit. So as we look into spring and creation and ask what God might have for us in our lives, I think we see a clear invitation. And it's the invitation to step into the new thing God has for you and to not miss it out of fear or self-reliance. It's easy to think that because the spring is this joyful, beautiful season where we see breakthrough, of course we're not gonna miss it. Why would we do that? But I don't know if that's true. Isaiah 43 19 says, "See, I am doing a new thing. "Do not perceive it. "I am making a way in the wilderness and streams

"in the wasteland." This passage suggests that there is a way to miss the new thing that God is doing. We see this play out in the Israelites after they have been freed from slavery in Egypt and they are literally being given away through the wilderness towards the promised land. They get there and they wanna turn back out of fear because there are giants in the land. They were willing to sacrifice the new thing God was giving them to sacrifice the breakthrough because they were scared. They were unable to perceive the new thing God was doing because it just didn't look like what they expected. We should not always assume that we will easily step into the breakthrough without deep dependence on and trust in God. Sometimes stepping into what God has for us, what he offers us is scary. It takes trust. It doesn't look exactly like we thought it would and we have to rely on God to make it beautiful in its time. If you don't have your eyes fixed on God, if you are not living in a biting with him, you may miss out on what he has for you. And what we see in the Israelites is that this fear was stemming in many ways from self-reliance. One thing that's formed in us in the winter is reliance on God because we know

that we're not producing fruit in our own strength. But often when we see the first buds of spring, we suddenly become prayerless again. We wanna take the breakthrough and then start relying on ourselves again. But if at the first sign of spring flowers in our lives, we stop relying on God. They will quickly die off and the fruit may never come. Spring is a fragile season. If you're praying for a spouse and you stop seeking God the second you have a ring on your finger, you will not see the fullness of fruit he longs to bring through your marriage. If you're asking God for a job and you stop seeking him, the second you sign the job description, you will not see the fullness of fruit he longs to bring in your career. While I was in my winter season of grieving my dad, I was also contending for a baby. And the weight was longer. This was another part of my life that felt like winter, that felt lifeless. But in that time of waiting, God developed in me a strong sense of dependence on him. And the wild part of this story, as it relates to this sermon specifically, is that as I was waiting on the Lord through the actual winter in the year,

God kept reminding me of Jeremiah one. He kept inviting me to watch for spring and putting in my mind those pink flowers on that dead tree. I felt this invitation from him to pray that when the season changed outside, my personal season would also change. And there was one morning where I had pre-planned I was gonna go out and sit under the cherry blossoms in Central Park because they were supposed to be at peak. So I had said, okay, I'm gonna go out and I'm gonna sit under them and I'm gonna pray. And that morning I got a positive pregnancy test. And I think there's a picture of the trees that I then got to go sit under and just praise God for this baby, spring had come. God had invited me to watch in hope for spring and he had come through. And you would think that I had seen this miracle, like I'm never going back, I'm never trusting anything but God ever again. But let me tell you so quickly, I wanted to flip into self-reliance. I had learned in this season of waiting, part of the pruning that had happened in me was I learned that I could not trust myself, I could not produce life in my own body, even through my good planning, my perfect health, my willpower, whatever I tried to do, it wasn't gonna work, only God could do this. But then when I got pregnant,

I immediately wanted to switch to self-reliance. Something in my brain told me, okay, now it's your job to optimize your health, to research every topic, to make sure that you don't miss any warning sign. My trust in God, the author of life, who had answered my prayer, it went out the window and anxiety came rushing in in its place in the form of self-reliance. This is the temptation that will rob you of the fruit of spring. When you start to see the breakthrough, enter into a place of praise and then trust, God with that breakthrough. Fight to stay in that place of trust and abiding, and do not switch into fear and self-reliance. Remember that once you try to grasp onto fruit for yourself, it will be meaningless. If you stop abiding, the spring flowers will not turn into the fullness of summer fruit. But if you abide, if you remain in God, you will get the fruit of stepping into the new thing that he has for you. And after the first plumes of spring, creation enters into the long days of summer, the full expression of life. Central Park bursts with green everywhere you look, trees enter into their season of ripening, of flourishing, of growing. Summer is a season of abundance.

Ecclesiastes says that there's a time to laugh, a time to dance, a time to speak, and a time to build. These are the seasons when life feels abundantly joyful. When you're living the dream you prayed for, working the job you long to have, surrounded by friends after a time of loneliness, in the marriage that you dreamt of, holding the baby that you prayed for. It doesn't mean that it's all easy or perfect. Life pretty much never is, but it's a season that's marked by abundance, by expedited growth. And I think as we look at creation, there are two opportunities for fruit in these summer seasons. The first is awe towards God, and the second is hunger for more. Similar to spring, we might think that because the summer seasons are joyful, of course, we are not going to miss what God has for us. Of course, these are gonna be times of spiritual high, but that's not necessarily the case. These times of laughter, of dancing, of abundance, they come with a very real threat, of taking fruit from God, and rejecting Him as the giver. The very season that ought to foster the deepest love of God, and reveling in His goodness, comes with a very real threat of becoming the most self-centered,

and self-dependent seasons. Many of us switch too quickly into enjoying God's gifts, and are completely weak at enjoying God through His gifts. Tish Harrison Warren says that the best things in this world point to something greater, something better than anything we've ever actually found. It is good and right to enjoy the things of this world, the nourishment and light to be found here. the feeling of cool water on a hot day or laughing with a friend. But each good thing is a foretaste, intended to wet our appetite for true life. The gifts God gives, the abundance they can so easily become idols rather than fuel for deeper desire for the giver of those good things. Billy spoke about praise a couple of weeks ago. Praise ought to flow from us in these summer seasons, each and every gift lifting our eyes up to the giver. When you are in seasons of abundance, does praise flow from you? Or do you quickly jump over to idolizing the gift rather than the giver? And then, if we can step into this place of awe towards God, I believe what happens is we realize that we actually still have not seen the fullness of what's possible in him and hunger is fueled. The second opportunity for fruit in the summer season is deeper hunger for God. Zechariah 10.1 invites us to ask God for rain in the seasons of rain.

This rain after a season of drought, the summer after a winter, it ought to remind us that the fullness of life in God is still not realized. There's always more. Our seasons of abundance should not take hunger from us, it should fuel it. So if you are in a season of abundance, do not neglect rhythms of praise and gratitude, and then as you revel in God's goodness, let that fuel in you hunger for more, and then seek God for it. And after the summer of abundance comes fall, the season when the fruit that has brought abundance to the trees, it fully ripens and then it drops from the trees and is given away unto new life. Leaves blaze in red and gold more beautiful than ever before and then they fall. They die and they nourish the ground. Fall is a season of giving away. Ecclesiastes says that there is a time to die, a time to build, to scatter stones, a time to love. Fall seasons in our lives are the times when we are invited to give away all that God has done in our lives. The seasons of disproportionate sacrifice, pouring into the life of another, building something outside of yourself. Fall is a season that reminds us that all the fruit that comes through our lives, it is not unto our own enjoyment,

it is unto the kingdom of God. Our seasons of abundance are meant to send us into an overflowing harvest that is given away. But here's the beautiful thing, when we offer up the fruit of our lives and sacrifice. John 12, 24 says very truly I tell you, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds. True fruitfulness is meant to come through giving away of yourself, dying so that greater life can spring forth. We will see greater fruit than we could have imagined when we allow the fruit that God has produced in us to be given away unto his kingdom. Jesus lived an unbelievably fruitful life, but his most fruitful act was his death. He laid down his life so that resurrection life could spring forth in every person that would follow him. And this is true for our lives. And it's not just a seasonal truth, right? We don't only have seasons of sacrifice, every fruit that God produces in us is meant to be given away unto the kingdom of God. But in our lives following Jesus, there will be seasons of disproportionate sacrifice, where we'll be asked to lay down our own desires, to serve others, and we may feel like we are giving away more than we are receiving. There may be an invitation to take the raise

or the bonus and give it all away in generosity, to offer a disproportionate amount of your time to care for a friend or to raise up children who love Jesus. Unfortunately, we often just wanna keep God's fruit and gifts for our own benefit. We cling to our own fruit and then it just rots on the vine when it could have gone and produced way more fruit. But God promises us that if we release this fruit unto the kingdom of God, new fruit will come and it will be greater than we could have imagined. Is there fruit that has been produced in your life that you need to give away? Have you lived in abundance, but then refuse to step into a harvest of sacrifice? Here is what I think we see as we look. that no matter where you find your life right now, whether in a winter season of waiting, a spring season of beginning to see the breakthrough, a summer season of abundance, or a fall season of giving your life away, or somewhere in between. If you offer up your season and choose to abide in the Lord through it, God will make each and every season beautiful in its time. Each peace will play a part in the eternal story that he's writing. He wastes absolutely nothing if we are living a life abiding to him. But if we hold on to these in our own strength, if we try to grasp it for ourselves,

it will be meaningless. And as we come to a close, there is one final point that I just wanna bring us into, 'cause I think it's important. God will use each and every season of our lives for the end story of eternity. But he will also never exclude us from the larger collective season of what he is doing on the earth. Our personal season will never exclude you from the collective season of what God is doing. Our teaching text reminds us that God has put eternity in our hearts. And I think that reminds us to trust God with our season, but also to know that we are a part of a much larger story than just our personal lives. Joel two talks about God moving in power on the earth and gives this command. It says, gather the people, consecrate the assembly, bring together the elders, gather the children and those nursing at the breast, let the bride groom leave his room and the bride her chamber. I love this invitation because God is laying out all of these different seasons and then saying, see, I am doing something great on the earth and I want every person regardless of their season to come be a part of it. The old people, the children, the mom, with the nursing baby, the newlyweds,

I don't care what season you are in, I invite you to come call out to me for more. I love that he doesn't tell the nursing mom to leave her baby, find child care and get to church. Now he says, bring your baby, you can nurse while you're here, your season does not exclude you from the larger thing that I am doing. The need to breastfeed, the needs of elderly people or children, it does not keep you from participation in what God is doing on the earth. Sure, it will look different for different people in different seasons, but you, regardless of your season, are invited into what God is doing. He will use you if you lean in and ask him to. We are seeing God do amazing things in our church right now and in our city. We're seeing God draw people, we're seeing salvation, we are seeing abundance in many ways as he answers prayers that we have cried out for years. And I just want to invite us, regardless of where we are in our personal lives to trust God with our personal season, but also lean into what he's doing collectively. God's really shown me in my own season of winter, that that season he is going to give me rest, but it's also not gonna be in competition with what he is doing in our church as a whole.

He's shown me a way, kind of beyond what I could have thought of in my own strength to both be in my current season and he will honor and meet me there, but also to allow me to lean into what he's doing in our church collectively. The ultimate question, whether in our personal season or collective season is this, will you offer it up to him? Will you live a life that is offered up to him? Will you live from a place of abiding? Will you allow him from that place to make every season beautiful in its time? Or will you miss out on the fruit he wants to produce in you by grasping at fruit in your own strength, ultimately making each and every season meaningless? I'm gonna take us into a time of response and just take a moment to pray and just allow us to ask the Lord, what do you want to do in my season? What fruit do you wanna produce in me? You just take a moment to listen to God, to ask him to reveal in your season how he might be inviting you to abide, to press in with him. So Lord, we just come to you. God, I recognize that in this room, there is such a wide array of personal seasons. God, we thank you that you want to make each and everyone beautiful in its time.

in this room that is hidden from you, that is not a part of what you are doing. So God, we just invite you to come speak. I invite you not to leave this room without having sat with the Lord, drawn near to Him, brought Him whatever it is that you are in the midst of right now, offered it to Him, submitted it to Him. If you've been grasping at fruit in your own strength, you right now can step into a place of abiding. You can release your season up to Him, and He will make it beautiful in its time. So God, we just drawn near to you. We invite you to come speak. Let's go into a time of response.