Be ready in season and out of season. - 2 Timothy 4:2 NKJVWe live our lives in seasons, and seasons have beginnings and endings. So, diversity is the key to longevity. If you don't understand this, you can lose your sense of purpose, because when one season is over you've nothing left to carry with you into the next. That's why successful farmers keep rotating their crops. They plant corn in one field, then when it goes out of season they plow that field and let it rest. At the same time they're busy elsewhere harvesting alfalfa to make hay, after which that field goes through the same process. In spring they change the order of things so the field where corn once grew now produces alfalfa, and so forth.
When Paul told Timothy, "Be ready in season and out of season," he was encouraging him to broaden his spiritual horizons. In Timothy's case he needed to understand there's a time to correct people, and a time to comfort them (See 2 Tim 4:25 NKJV). Timing is so important. The Psalmist compared the blessed man to "a tree... which yields... fruit in season" (Ps 1:3 NIV). To succeed, you must recognise what season you are in!
And you must also understand that God is more concerned with the depth of your roots than the height of your branches; more interested in quality than quantity. With God 'the quality goes in before the name goes on'. That's why He takes your struggles and uses them to cultivate the kind of soil (and soul) necessary to produce good fruit. And one more thing: from time to time He will permit storms to blow away those people and things that hinder what He's working to produce in you.
Note: The article is taken from The Word for Today", by Rhema Broadcasting Group in association with The Vine - www.thevine.co.nz.
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