Gbolahan put the envelope on my desk before he sat down. It was a plain white envelope, slightly creased from the three weeks it had spent in the side pocket of his laptop bag, and inside it was a letter of resignation, typed, dated and signed. He was thirty-eight, and for seven years he had covered the Lagos mainland for a paint manufacturer in Ikeja. He knew every hardware dealer from Ojuelegba to Ikorodu by name.
“Pastor,” he said, “my season at that company is over. I just want you to pray with me before I submit it.”
The story came out slowly. A new regional manager had arrived from Abuja in October, a sharp young man with a laptop full of spreadsheets, and in his second week he had questioned Gbolahan’s figures in front of the whole sales team. Then, at the crossover service on the first night of January, the guest minister had stood on the platform and declared, “Whatever place has been holding you, hear me: your season there is finished! This is your year of new beginnings!” Gbolahan had shouted his amen with everything in him. He typed the letter the following week.
I listened, and I believed that he was hurting. But I also remembered something he had probably forgotten telling me. In 2017 he had sat in the same chair and said almost the same sentence about a job at a bank. He had been there eleven months. His supervisor had been difficult. His season, he said then, was over. He resigned, and he spent the next six months without work, selling recharge cards from his car while his wife carried the rent.
So I did not pray over the envelope straight away. I asked him a question instead. “Gbolahan, how do you know it is a season ending, and not a hard month?”
He was quiet for a long time. “I don’t,” he said. “I just know I want to leave.”
The word everybody is using
Few words are used more freely in Nigerian church life than season. We speak of a season of lifting, a season of waiting, a season of harvest and a season of new things. There is real truth in that language. Lives do move through distinct periods, with different demands and different graces, and a believer who never recognised that a season had changed would keep parenting a twenty-five-year-old as though he were seven.
But the word can also be stretched until it means almost nothing. It can become a spiritual label for whatever we already wanted to do. When we are tired of a job, our season there is ending. When a friendship becomes demanding, the season of that relationship has closed. When a church asks something of us that we would rather not give, we sense that God is moving us on. The language sounds devout, and it quietly removes the decision from examination. Who can argue with a season?
This teaching is about recovering the word so that it helps us to discern rather than excuse. Some commitments should continue through difficulty; others should be reconsidered or laid down with gratitude. Scripture helps us tell the difference, alongside honest attention to our circumstances, our motives and the counsel of people who know us. The Bible never asks us to stop thinking when we start praying.
A time to every purpose
The best-known passage on seasons in the Bible is the poem at the start of Ecclesiastes 3:
To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven: A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted; A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up; A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance; A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing; A time to get, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away; A time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak; A time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace.
The poem moves in pairs: fourteen of them, each setting one experience against its opposite. Birth and death. Planting and uprooting. Weeping and laughing. Keeping and casting away. The pairs are a way of saying everything. From one end of human experience to the other, there is an appointed time.
Notice the phrase in verse 1: “a time to every purpose under the heaven.” The Preacher is not handing out a menu from which we may choose. He is observing that human life is set within a pattern larger than ourselves. We do not decide when we are born. We do not decide when the rains come. We do not decide when a loved one will die. Much of the poem describes things that happen to us, and the believer’s task is to recognise the time and respond to it rightly.
That changes how we use the passage. Ecclesiastes 3 is often quoted to justify a change: there is a time to break down, so I am breaking down. But read the verses that follow the poem. “He hath made every thing beautiful in his time: also he hath set the world in their heart, so that no man can find out the work that God maketh from the beginning to the end” (Ecclesiastes 3:11). The Preacher concludes that God’s times are real and good, and that we cannot see them whole. The poem is meant to humble us. It tells us that seasons exist and are in God’s hand. It does not tell us that we can always identify them with confidence from inside our feelings.
Think about how a farmer in Oyo knows the planting season has come. He does not decide it in his heart during a vigil. He watches the sky, feels the soil and notices when the first rains have soaked deep enough. Seasons are usually recognised in the same way, by patient attention to what has actually changed, much more often than by a sudden inner announcement.
There is a second lesson. Every pair includes something hard: a time to die, to weep, to lose. Some seasons are meant to be endured, and the poem gives no hint that they are mistakes to escape quickly. If we only recognise God’s timing when it brings relief, we have misread Ecclesiastes 3.
Seasons are real, and they belong to God. That is exactly why we should be slow to announce them and careful to test what we believe has changed.
When “season” becomes an excuse
PunchlineLet us be honest about the ways this language can be misused, because each misuse has a cost.
The first is impatience. A commitment becomes difficult or dull, and we reach for the word season to explain why we should leave it. A course of study becomes hard in the third year, or a ministry assignment stops being exciting. The difficulty is real, but difficulty alone does not mean a season has ended. Sometimes difficulty is the season, and the call is to remain faithful through it.
The second is conflict avoidance. This was Gbolahan’s pattern. A hard relationship with a supervisor, a colleague or a fellow church worker becomes unbearable, and rather than address it we announce that God is moving us on. But we take ourselves with us, and the same unresolved pattern turns up at the next job and the next church. A man who leaves every place where he is corrected will spend his life leaving.
The third is borrowed prophecy. A preacher declares a new season over a congregation of three thousand, and each person applies it to whatever they were already hoping for. A general encouragement becomes a specific instruction. I believe God speaks prophetically to His church, sometimes with great precision. But a word given to a crowd at a crossover service is not a personal instruction to resign from your job. Specific decisions need specific discernment.
There is an opposite misuse too, and it deserves equal honesty. Some people use spiritual language to justify staying where they should not stay. God has not released me can be a cover for fear of change, love of familiar comfort or reluctance to admit that something has failed. A minister may cling to a position long after he should have handed it to someone younger. Faithfulness and stubbornness can look alike from the outside.
And let me say plainly: no talk of seasons or covenant should ever keep a person in a situation of abuse or danger. If you are being harmed, the faithful step is to get to safety and to seek help from the authorities and from people qualified to protect you. That is not a failure of patience.
The good you already know
James wrote to believers who had become very confident about the future:
“Go to now, ye that say, To day or to morrow we will go into such a city, and continue there a year, and buy and sell, and get gain: Whereas ye know not what shall be on the morrow” (James 4:13-14). He reminds them that life “is even a vapour, that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away,” and he tells them what they ought to say instead: “If the Lord will, we shall live, and do this, or that” (James 4:15).
That teaching speaks directly to our subject. These merchants had their next season fully planned: the city, the duration, the trade, the profit. James does not condemn planning. He condemns the presumption that treats tomorrow as already in hand. When we announce the end of one season and the shape of the next with great certainty, we can fall into the same presumption. We do not know what shall be on the morrow. Our readings of the times should be held with the same humility as our business plans.
But it is the last verse of the paragraph that I want you to notice, because it is often skipped. “Therefore to him that knoweth to do good, and doeth it not, to him it is sin” (James 4:17).
James has just been talking about the uncertainty of the future. Then he turns abruptly to the certainty of the present. You may not know what tomorrow holds, but you often know quite clearly what good is in front of you today. And failing to do that known good is not a matter of timing. It is disobedience.
This is one of the most useful questions in all discernment about seasons: what good do I already know to do here? Very often, when we are agonising over whether a season has ended, there is a plain duty we are avoiding. Gbolahan did not know whether God was moving him on from the paint company. He did know that he had never had an honest conversation with his new manager. He did know that his own sales figures had been slipping for a year, and that he had stopped visiting some of his smaller dealers. Those things were not mysterious. They were simply uncomfortable.
The same question works the other way. Sometimes the known good requires a change. If staying in a role would require you to falsify records, or to neglect a dependent parent who now needs your care, or to keep making promises you cannot keep, then the good you already know may be pointing you towards the door. Either way, James brings the discussion back from speculation about the future to obedience in the present. Begin with what is clear.
Paul kept the assignment while the map changed
Luke gives us a detailed account of a change of direction in the life of Paul. It is worth reading slowly, because it shows a man who was continuing faithfully at the very moment God redirected him:
Now when they had gone throughout Phrygia and the region of Galatia, and were forbidden of the Holy Ghost to preach the word in Asia, After they were come to Mysia, they assayed to go into Bithynia: but the Spirit suffered them not. And they passing by Mysia came down to Troas. And a vision appeared to Paul in the night; There stood a man of Macedonia, and prayed him, saying, Come over into Macedonia, and help us. And after he had seen the vision, immediately we endeavoured to go into Macedonia, assuredly gathering that the Lord had called us for to preach the gospel unto them.
To understand this passage we need to see where Paul was coming from. His second missionary journey did not begin with a vision. It began with a commitment to continue. “Let us go again and visit our brethren in every city where we have preached the word of the Lord, and see how they do” (Acts 15:36). Paul’s plan was pastoral follow-up: returning to the churches he had already planted to strengthen them. And it was working. Luke tells us that “so were the churches established in the faith, and increased in number daily” (Acts 16:5).
So when the Spirit closed Asia and Bithynia, Paul was not a restless man looking for something new. He was a faithful man doing what he had been given to do, and the redirection came in the middle of obedience. The clearest changes of direction usually come to those who have been faithful in the previous assignment.
Notice too what changed and what did not. The geography changed completely. Paul ended up in a different continent from the one he had planned. But the assignment did not change at all. In verse 10 they conclude “that the Lord had called us for to preach the gospel unto them.” He was doing in Macedonia exactly what he had been doing in Galatia. The calling was constant. Its location shifted.
That distinction will save many believers from confusion. When you ask whether a season has ended, separate the assignment from its present form. A woman called to teach may move from a primary school to a training college to her own children at home, and the calling continues through each change. A season ending rarely means that God’s purpose for your life has been cancelled. More often it means that the same purpose is being given a different shape.
There is one more detail in Acts that I find very comforting. The Spirit forbade Paul to preach in Asia in chapter 16. But read what happened a few years later in Ephesus, the great city of that same province:
And he went into the synagogue, and spake boldly for the space of three months, disputing and persuading the things concerning the kingdom of God. But when divers were hardened, and believed not, but spake evil of that way before the multitude, he departed from them, and separated the disciples, disputing daily in the school of one Tyrannus. And this continued by the space of two years; so that all they which dwelt in Asia heard the word of the Lord Jesus, both Jews and Greeks.
“All they which dwelt in Asia heard the word of the Lord Jesus.” The door that had been closed was opened, and opened wide. Asia was never refused. It was postponed. What Paul experienced in Acts 16 as a closed road turned out to be a matter of timing. The season for Asia had simply not yet come.
Notice also that when opposition hardened in the synagogue, Paul neither stayed stubbornly where the door had shut nor fled the city. He moved to the school of Tyrannus and continued daily for two years: a change of setting within a continuing assignment.
Some of what you are experiencing as never may be not yet. And some of what feels like the end of an assignment may only be a change of room.
The prophet who announced an early end
There is a sobering story in the book of Jeremiah about a man who declared a season over before God had ended it. Judah was under the power of Babylon, and many of its people had already been carried into exile. Jeremiah had been wearing a wooden yoke on his neck as a sign that the nation must submit to Babylon’s rule for a long time. Then another prophet, Hananiah, stood up in the temple:
Then Hananiah the prophet took the yoke from off the prophet Jeremiah’s neck, and brake it. And Hananiah spake in the presence of all the people, saying, Thus saith the LORD ; Even so will I break the yoke of Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon from the neck of all nations within the space of two full years. And the prophet Jeremiah went his way.
It was a thrilling message. Two years, and the yoke would be broken. The exiles would come home. But it was false. God told Jeremiah that the yoke of wood would be replaced with a yoke of iron, and Jeremiah said to Hananiah, “thou makest this people to trust in a lie” (Jeremiah 28:15).
Hananiah announced the end of a hard season that God intended to continue. Those who believed him were tempted to treat Babylon as a brief interruption. Why build or plant if you will be leaving in two years?
So Jeremiah wrote a letter to those exiles, and its instructions are remarkable. “Build ye houses, and dwell in them; and plant gardens, and eat the fruit of them” (Jeremiah 29:5). Marry. Have children. “And seek the peace of the city whither I have caused you to be carried away captives, and pray unto the LORD for it” (Jeremiah 29:7). Then he added a direct warning about voices promising a quick end: “neither hearken to your dreams which ye cause to be dreamed” (Jeremiah 29:8).
NuggetThe exile would last seventy years. God would bring them home, but in the meantime He wanted them to live fully where they were.
That passage has a word for anyone who has been told that a difficult season is about to end. It may be; God does turn captivity, sometimes suddenly. But be wary of anyone, including the voice in your own heart, who tells you to stop building because you will soon be leaving. If you are still in Babylon, plant the garden. If you are still in the job, do it well. If you are still in the church, serve it. You lose nothing by being faithful in a place you later leave. You can lose a great deal by living half-heartedly in a place God intended you to stay.
Long enough in this mount
None of this means that changes of direction are rare or suspect. Sometimes God says plainly that a season of staying has ended. Moses reminded Israel of one such moment as they stood on the edge of the promised land:
The LORD our God spake unto us in Horeb, saying, Ye have dwelt long enough in this mount: Turn you, and take your journey, and go to the mount of the Amorites, and unto all the places nigh thereunto, in the plain, in the hills, and in the vale, and in the south, and by the sea side, to the land of the Canaanites, and unto Lebanon, unto the great river, the river Euphrates. Behold, I have set the land before you: go in and possess the land which the LORD sware unto your fathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, to give unto them and to their seed after them.
Horeb was holy ground, where God had given the law and made the covenant. Israel had good reasons to stay. But the purpose of Horeb had been fulfilled, and now it was time to take the journey towards the land God had promised.
“Ye have dwelt long enough in this mount.” There are times when the most faithful thing a believer can do is to leave something good. A season of preparation is complete, or a role that was once right has become a place of comfort rather than service. Remaining would mean refusing the next step God has set before you.
How do you recognise such a time? Here are some questions that I have found helpful, both in my own life and in counselling others. They are not a formula. They are ways of paying honest attention.
- Has the purpose of this commitment been fulfilled, or am I simply tired of it?
- What has actually changed in the facts of my situation, apart from my feelings about it?
- Am I moving towards something God is setting before me, or only away from something I find hard?
- Is there good I already know to do here that I have been avoiding?
- What do the mature people who know me best, including my spouse if I am married, see in this?
- Can I leave in a way that honours my commitments and the people affected?
The fifth question deserves emphasis. “Without counsel purposes are disappointed: but in the multitude of counsellors they are established” (Proverbs 15:22). Seasons are hard to read from inside, and others often see what we cannot: that we are exhausted rather than released, or that we have outgrown a role we are afraid to leave. Paul and his team discerned the Macedonian call together. Do not make significant changes of direction alone.
The last question matters too. When a change is right, it should still be made well. The psalmist describes the righteous person as one who “sweareth to his own hurt, and changeth not” (Psalm 15:4). That does not mean we can never leave a commitment. It means we take our word seriously. We give proper notice, finish what can reasonably be finished and hand over carefully. A right change made carelessly can leave damage that takes years to repair.
Beginnings need the same honesty
Most of what we have said concerns continuing and leaving. But beginnings need discernment too. Many believers start new ventures, ministries and relationships on the strength of a single moment of enthusiasm. Then, when the work becomes hard, they conclude that it was never God’s will at all, and they move on to the next beginning. The result is a life full of starts and very few finishes.
Before you begin something significant, ask whether it fits what you already know of your gifts, responsibilities and circumstances. Count the cost, as Jesus said a man must before building a tower. Ask whether this beginning requires you to abandon an existing commitment, and whether that commitment is truly complete.
And when you have begun something in good faith, after prayer and counsel, give it a fair season before you judge it. A new church plant, business or marriage will have early months that are harder than expected. Difficulty in the early stages is not a reliable sign that you misheard God.
Through all of this, remember who holds the times. The believer does not carry the impossible burden of reading every season perfectly. “My times are in thy hand” (Psalm 31:15). You will sometimes stay too long or leave too soon. God is gracious with sincere mistakes, and He is able to redirect a willing heart, as He redirected Paul. What He asks is honesty, humility and obedience to the good you already know.
Gbolahan did not submit the letter that week. We prayed together, and I asked him to carry the envelope for one more month without opening it, and in that month to do two things he already knew he should do. He was to ask his manager for a private meeting and listen properly, and he was to visit every one of the small dealers he had stopped calling on.
The meeting was not easy. The manager told him bluntly that his figures had been falling for eighteen months. Gbolahan went home angry, then went through his own records and found that the man was right. He started visiting the dealers again. Within six months his territory had recovered, and the manager, to Gbolahan’s great surprise, recommended him for a regional award.
Fourteen months after he first came to my office, he came back. This time things were different. His mother in Abeokuta had suffered a stroke and needed someone close by. A distributor there, a man he had known for years, had offered him a partnership in a new outlet. The company was restructuring its mainland territory anyway. He and his wife had prayed about it for weeks. His elders agreed. He had already spoken to his manager, who had offered to help him train a successor.
He gave three months’ notice. His colleagues gave him a send-forth, and the manager made a speech. On the morning he left Lagos, he came by the church and put a familiar creased envelope on my desk. It had never been opened. “I wrote a new one,” he said. “This one I am tearing up.” And he did.
PunchlineThe season had changed, and this time he knew it differently: real circumstances, tested in prayer, confirmed by counsel, and stepped into after he had been faithful to the good in front of him.
If you are holding an envelope of your own, wait a little. Ask what good you already know to do, and do it. Pay honest attention to what has actually changed. Invite others to look with you. And trust the God who has made every thing beautiful in His time.
Teaching Companion
For Reflection
- Have you ever used the language of seasons to explain a decision that was really driven by impatience, conflict or fear? What did you learn from it?
- In your present situation, what good do you already know to do, whatever tomorrow holds?
- How might separating your assignment from its present form change the way you think about a possible move?
- Is there an area of your life where you have stopped building because you believe you will soon be leaving? What would it mean to plant the garden?
- Who are the mature people who could help you read your present season honestly?
This Week
If you are weighing whether to continue or change direction in any commitment, write the six questions from this teaching on a sheet of paper and answer each one honestly in writing. Then identify one piece of known good in your present situation that you have been avoiding, and do it before the end of the week. Finally, share your written answers with one mature believer who knows you well, and ask them to tell you plainly what they see.
A Prayer
Father, my times are in Your hand. Thank You that You have made every thing beautiful in its time, even when I cannot see the whole of Your work. Forgive me for the times I have used spiritual words to cover my impatience or my fear. Give me the humility to say, “If the Lord will,” and the courage to do the good I already know. Where You want me to stay, help me to build and plant and serve with my whole heart. Where You are moving me on, make it clear through Your Word, through honest circumstances and through faithful counsel, and help me to leave well. Keep me faithful to the assignment You have given me, whatever shape it takes. In Jesus’ name, Amen.
Truth received brings freedom. Truth believed establishes the heart.
Scripture quotations are from the King James Version. · Illustrations using first names only are composites unless stated otherwise.