As winter and spring come in nature, so is there a spiritual winter and spring.
Carole and I live in the Northwestern United States. The winter season lasts until April or May, and it’s filled with snow and cold weather. Finally, though, springtime does come.
With this background, read on to see what I think about a spiritual winter and spring.
Have you noticed that a month ago the trees that blossom began to grow buds? This signals that spring really is coming. Spring means trees and flowers will bloom into beautiful displays of God’s creation. God, the Heavenly Father has the most dazzling flower displays imaginable. We all get spring fever because we are so tired of cabin fever. It’s time to get out and mow lawns, plant gardens, and walk in the woods. People lie down on a grassy hillside and look at the blue sky filled with sunlight and warmth. Spring gives a person faith that winter isn’t forever, and that is a comfort for sure.
Spiritual seasons
There is also such a thing as spiritual seasons. Just as spring brings change, so spiritual changes come into each believer’s life. They have to come, or a Christian is held in the icy stillness of spiritual winter when life stays deep inside and nothing grows. God, at times, brings spiritual winter into the lives of His children just as He brings it to nature every year. Some winters seem to last eons and are mostly dark times with hardly any sunny days to dispel the gloom, even for a moment. During these times, it is often the Father’s intention for His child to be inwardly very close to Him, and this can only happen in what seems to be a spiritual death. Yet the child of God is not dead but is being rejuvenated deep within, one seemingly minuscule increment at a time.
Two types of spiritual winter
Type one
Some of His children want to live in a spiritual Arizona continuously. They have forgotten to “cease striving and know that I am God.” (Psalm 46:10) Some have neglected to be still that they might be in the presence of Holy God. Others have refused to give God undistracted time. Many have neglected to make worldly activity of jobs, friends, or family take a lower priority than God—even for just fifteen minutes a day. This kind of winter is often unwelcome but divinely ordered. It comes as forced on a child of the King because there was no voluntary setting aside the material world to concentrate on the spiritual world. There is a time each day that should be as carefully given as one’s tithes to God. There should be a tithe of giving our spirit worshipfully to God.
Type two
There is a second kind: a voluntary winter. During this time, worldly friends believe your life is being wasted as they look at your daily devotions, weekly attention to worshiping God, reading His Word, and prayerfully fellowshipping with the Creator. It seems a winter. But in those quiet times of withdrawal, you will walk with Jesus and hear His Spirit in certainty. What appears to the world as winter—because there is no flurry of frenzied activity recognizable to its followers—will blossom into spring, beautifully adorned with a crown of spectacular spiritual glow.
In closing
I’m glad when winter is over, but oh how necessary and beneficial it can be in the life of the yielded, submitted child of the Lord God. There is a time for feeling as though we were in spiritual winter, as though we had all but died. Let us in those times remember winter is part of life. Let us in the winter of life know that when God brings forth the buds of change that He will soon cause them to blossom forth into genuine works of a mighty and magnificent beauty. Let us be thankful in the winter when it seems so hard, for God will surely let us March On in the Glory and New Life of Spring.
If you are a child of Jesus Christ Immanuel, your spring in His creative will may be just around the bend of life.
“I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills,
Psalm 122:1-2
from whence cometh my help.
My help cometh from the Lord.”
Would you share any winter or spring experiences you have had?
For another take on spiritual winter and spring, see Dr. Matthew Fretwell’s article.
FJ writes about spiritual questions and healing in chapter 14 of our book, Sunbreaks in Unending Storms.
