RUTH CHOU SIMONS TALKS ABOUT BEING IN THE SEASON OF RIGHT NOW.
Ruth Chou Simons is a Wall Street Journal bestselling and award-winning author of several books and Bible studies, including GraceLaced, Beholding and Becoming, When Strivings Cease, and TruthFilled. She is an artist, using each of these platforms to sow the word of God into people’s hearts. Ruth’s new book Now and Not Yet hit home with me, and I know it is a book that will elevate your heart and hope that we have in Christ.
SHIFT FROM EXPECTATIONS TO BEING EXPECTANT
All of us have struggled with our own expectations, and the expectations that we have placed on others. That is especially true when we feel we don’t measure up. We wonder why it’s taking so long for what we feel called to do to come to fruition.
Ruth encourages us that God is not finished with the passion he has placed within our hearts. Now is not the time to give up on what we are called to do. Stand fast and true in obedience, all while you are experiencing the Now’s and Not Yet. It is our faithful obedience and hope in Christ that provides nutrients to the gardens of our souls to grow.
I spoke to Ruth about how gardeners seasonally experience times of suffering and hope and about how God’s design is often a journey from being restless to truly knowing God’s peace through anticipation. Ruth shared, “like gardening there are seasons, and, in our lives, we experience many seasons, and we would really like to skip the hard seasons, the restless seasons, and the suffering seasons. We would rather be in the season where we are all a bloom, and the fruit is looking luscious, and our garden is really award winning. And yet like we see in nature and in gardening, God uses’ all our season to prepare us for the next one”.
WE GET TO CHOOSE WHAT WE’RE SOWING
In Ruth’s book Now and Not Yet she has a chapter titled You don’t have to be blooming to be growing. In this chapter Ruth brings tells how Paul in the Bible reminds the Galatians of their freedom in Christ and how they can only bear fruit by walking in the spirit. Ruth elaborates that this is a reminder and warning to the Galatians and us that though you can always sow right where you are, you must choose what you’ll sow. I asked Ruth to expand on Paul’s message:
Untruths can get wedged in my soul and take me away from cultivating the seed of truth being planted in my heart.
We can spend a lot of our time doing things that we think will be beneficial, but we will come to the realization that the things we think are beneficial are just a big waste of time. We find that all the things we try to do are not really sowing good seeds in our life.
Even thinking negative thoughts about our current season can take up a lot of time and end up being like sowing seeds that are not fruitful in our lives. So, if I am sitting around speaking untruths about who I am or who God is or God feels about me then those untruths get wedged in my soul, it will take me away from the fruitfulness of cultivating good soil, cultivating the seed of truth being planted in my heart.
It’s a false seed that ends up disturbing the peace that turns into the weeds that grow up and have to be delt with all the time. So often we need to remember it’s God who’s in charge of causing the harvest to happen, but when we sow, sowing with our time, and our resources, and our attention, and we get to choose what were sowing. We can be sowing the word of God into our lives.
We can be sowing a life of prayerfulness; we can be sowing ministry right where we are, or we could also be sowing seeds of trying to do things on our own or worrying our way to the next step. So, we do get to choose those things. God is still at work in our lives.
We get to choose what were sowing [but] it’s God who’s in charge of causing the harvest to happen.
George Muller wrote, “…the first great and primary business to which I ought to attend every day was, to have my soul happy in the Lord. The first thing to be concerned about was not, how much I might serve the Lord, how I might glorify the Lord; but how I might get my soul into a happy state and how my inner man might be nourished. For I might seek to set the truth before the unconverted, I might seek to benefit believers, I might seek to relieve the distressed, I might in other ways seek to behave myself as it becomes a child of God in this world; and yet, not being nourished and strengthened in my inner man day by day , all this might not be attended to in a right spirit”. (GerogeMuller.org)
As we move through our growing season, open our hearts to what God wants us to take stock of, and prayerfully consider the state of our soul while we tend our gardens. In doing so we will benefit others and glorify God.
To learn more about Ruth Chow Simons you can visit gracelaced.com.
MUSIC TO HELP YOU FIND SERENITY IN THE NOW
