Shall we pray:
Our Father, we thank you for your loving kindness towards us all through our lives, especially today. We thank you for your faithfulness in keeping us and showing up for us continually. We’ve come with an open heart and we ask that you cause your name to be glorified in today’s meeting in Jesus name. Amen!
Okay, I would also like to thank Mr. Lawal Kolade, the convener of this group. It is indeed a privilege to be here again. I thank him for his consistency with this mandate given him. May the Lord reward your labour sir.
To the topic of tonight: Seasons of the Day and Night and I encourage us to contribute as I generally enjoy interactive classes
So… What is a season? A season simply refers to a period or phase within which a specific thing is expected to happen. From this definition, we can make a few deductions. Some of which are:
1. A season is deliberate. In other words, every season comes with a purpose. And our teacher for last week dealt extensively on the purpose of seasons.
2. A season is often repetitive or cyclical. If the Teacher in ecclesiastes who said there’s nothing new under the sun, is to be judged correct, it then means that seasons, though transient, are repetitive.
1 Cor. 10:13 says whatever temptation you go through isn’t new. Heb 4:15 explains that Jesus was tempted in every way but didn’t sin. This buttresses the point that seasons are repetitive in nature. If you were to evaluate your life, you would discover that everyday you face similar circumstances but as you mature physically, mentally, and emotionally, your responses to these seemingly constant events are different and they ultimately help to shape your life as an individual.
3. Seasons are transient: However good or bad a particular phase of life is, it is transient. So your main job is to identify your season, understand its purpose and utilize it. Here’s why this is important:
2 Cor 1:4 describes the God of all comfort who comforts us in our tribulation so that we too can comfort others in similar situations even though that particular scripture talks about tribulations, the same principle is to be applied to every other aspect of our lives. So we can’t afford to fail, because God is counting on us to pass on the legacy to those yet to come, just like we are currently benefiting from the legacies passed down by the patriarchs.
Moving on to the next keywords which are day and night while looking at the word day in Gen 1:5, God called the day Light and called darkness Night. When I first read it, I was wondering what the relationship was. But when I meditated on it, I learned a few things which I will be sharing with us.
The day represents a period of clarity and insight. In John 11:9-10, Jesus speaks of the benefits of walking in the day. He says one is less likely to stumble during the day because he has light to see, the night on the other hand, represents a period of seeming darkness. In our relationship with God, we may have observed phases where we feel especially close to God and where we seem to be in unbroken fellowship with Him. There are other times too, when it seems like God is far from us. Our text Psalms. 22:2 explains one of such times where the psalmist felt “alone”.
In Ps. 16:7, he’s pretty confident in his relationship with God. God is the last thought on his mind before he goes to bed and probably the first when he awakes. But in chapter 22, the story appears to be different; He feels alone and outrightly forsaken. Do we have people who have gone through, or are going through any of these phases here?
In Jeremiah 33:20, God likens his commitment to us with His covenant with day and night. Clearly, I doubt there is anyone here who has not witness the day or night of any period of his life. Our God is that faithful. But if you read through the entire chapter, you would see that God is never far from His children,
even when they sin or go astray. Heb. 13:5 says God will never leave or forsake us. So it means we can always count in Him to be there for us whether we are in our day phase or night phase. So how then can we apply these phases to our personal lives? Here’s how:
We will all experience phases of clarity in our walk with God. Those are the phases when we’re certain of God’s leading and instructions per time. Those words, I believe, prepare us for the night phase, which is like a period of incubation so to speak. We are expected at such times to hold on to those promises given us, with the knowledge that God is always with us. I believe part of the reasons we have to go through these phases of life is to develop us and make us better vessels for God’s use.
In Heb 5:8, 12:7 & James 1:2-4 the Bible sheds light on the benefits of the night season to a believer. But what keeps us going in such times is the knowledge of God’s presence even in those really dark times.
As I stated earlier, the better developed we allow ourselves to be in those night seasons, the more usable we become in God’s hands, 2 Cor. 1:4
I would like to stop at this point. It is my prayer that God will flood our hearts with His light and strengthen us as we go through the seasons of life. I also would like to encourage each and everyone of us with the message that God’s presence and love is always with us and that in Christ we are always victorious. So stay where God has put you per time.
I thank our convener Mr Lawal Kolade for this wonderful opportunity. Thank you all for your time too.
