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God's Faithfulness in Every Season

faithful in season

By Dennis Pollock

The other night I enjoyed a time with three of my children, two of their spouses, and three of my grandchildren. Although I do have a couple of grandkids in high school, these three were all young: one is two, one is around six months, and one was just born a couple of weeks ago. The little ones are just entering the world while I am on the way out. Granted, I could be around for a couple of decades yet if God wills, but without a doubt most of my years, challenges, and labors are in the rearview mirror.

I don’t mind that at all; in fact I’m glad of it. I’ve had my time in the sun and in the storms. I’ve known great joys and deep pain. I’m ready and willing to recede into the shadows and leave the challenge of making the world a better place to another generation. I am especially blessed to have discovered Jesus as a nineteen-year-old, which means I have known the Lord and walked with Him all my adult life. I have weaved in and out of many different seasons, many different jobs and ministries, and many different geographical locations. And wherever I go, Jesus goes with me, or rather goes before me, leading the way and assuring me that whatever the challenges, whatever the new scenarios, all will be well. He is to me and to all His people the great Immanuel, God with us.

The word that we Christians love to use in connection with God’s constancy in our lives is “faithful.” We say it and we hear others say it again and again and again. I can certainly testify that this is absolutely true. In this little article I want to briefly share several of my major life experiences where I have needed and received the faithfulness of God, and been sustained by His upholding and preserving grace. But before I do, I need to establish the true meaning of God’s faithfulness. Let’s begin with what His faithfulness is not and what it does not mean. We need to do this because some, especially in the case of relatively new believers, don’t seem to really get it.

What Faithfulness is Not

What God’s faithfulness does not mean is that He will never allow us to experience lean times, or difficult times, or severe challenges, or intense pain. Now I know that sounds pretty negative, but it has to be said. If your idea of God’s faithfulness is that: “I will never suffer, I will never have to face lean financial times, I will never experience exasperating, scary, frustrating times when I wonder, “Where is God in all of this?” all I can say is that you need to wake up and come out of your little fantasy world. God’s faithfulness does not mean that we do not go through hard times; it does mean that He carries us through them and brings us safely out to a better place in accordance with His divine itinerary for our lives. Now if you don’t believe this, you obviously just got saved, and all you have to do is ask anyone who has been a Christian more than one or two years. They’ll tell you.

So no, God’s faithfulness does not mean that He shields us from every temptation, every difficulty, and every scary circumstance. But what it does mean is that by the time we reach our latter years we can look back and find that every time, every single time, without any exceptions, He makes a way for us, and as our Good Shepherd, leads us on to happier and more blessed times.

As I look at the history of my own life, I seem to have alternated between seasons of feast and seasons of famine. Thank God the good seasons lasted longer than the bad ones, for sure. But those heart-pounding, sweaty-palm, dry throat times leave some pretty deep memories that I can never forget. I can say, with the apostle Paul, that through the years I have learned both to abound and to suffer need.

One of those times was when I was between jobs and had a wife and five children to support. Back in those days you couldn’t buy food with a credit card, and I’m not even sure I had one then, so when your wallet was empty, you simply didn’t eat. At one point we had a garage sale, not to get rid of some extra stuff, but to provide money to buy food. The sale didn’t do too well – I think perhaps it yielded twenty some dollars, but it was enough to buy a few meals and keep us going.

Timely Visit

Once when we were without money a friend and his wife stopped by our house. He didn’t live close but had a job where he and his wife traveled throughout the country, recording Christian conferences, and providing recordings on cassette tape to the attendees. They didn’t stay long, just a few hours, but we had a nice time reminiscing about old times and enjoying each other’s company. When the visit was over, we saw them to their vehicle and watched them drive down our little lane. But they hadn’t gone but a hundred yards or so when they stopped, turned around and came back. When he got out of his car, my friend told me that he felt God was moving on his heart to give us some money. He then opened his wallet and gave us every dollar that was in it – I think it may have amounted to eighty dollars or so, an enormous amount to us at the time. I wasn’t at all too proud to take it, and of course we thanked them profusely.

It was enough money for us to live on for another week or so. And I knew that this was not just money from a friend; it was provision from our best Friend, Jesus Christ, who was not about to allow His children to starve or go without a meal. In time I got a job, and then a better job, and then a better one still. Our faithful Father did not keep us from those lean times, but He carried us through them, and brought us out when that season was complete, and we had learned what we needed to learn.

At another point in my life I was teaching school in Albuquerque, New Mexico. I had a regular salary, but with our family of seven, the salary was barely enough to provide our needs. I was paid twice a month and by the end of each pay period we had almost no money to work with. But even when I was paid, I had to be incredibly careful just to make sure we had enough money to last us those two weeks. I can remember sometimes going to the store to buy our groceries for the next two weeks, and having only twenty-five dollars to spend to sustain our big family. Needless to say, we were not eating steaks. Our big treat in those days was to buy a package of cinnamon rolls at the local grocery store. You could get them for twenty-five cents apiece, but even at that price we couldn’t afford them too often. That season of scarcity lasted for an entire year. There was no instantaneous deliverance. But over time I moved on to better-paying jobs which provided a more comfortable lifestyle.

Devastating Blow

But no financial hard times could match the blow I experienced one evening in August, 2005. I had just started a new ministry and had come home from an office supply store where I was having our newsletter printed. When I got home, my wife was in our bedroom with the door locked, which was unusual. When she came out of the bedroom I noticed she was carrying our phone in a surreptitious manner, sort of hiding it by her side. It almost seemed as though she was trying to sneak it back to its cradle in our living area. I became curious and when I had a chance, I picked it up and looked up the last number that had been dialed. It was a local number. Shortly after that I asked her who she had been talking to, and she told me she had called her mother, who lived in another state. I knew this couldn’t be true, and confronted her, only to hear the news that no husband, no wife ever wants to hear. She was involved with another man. She didn’t admit it at first, but when I pressed her it all came out. She was in an adulterous relationship with a co-worker.

It was the most painful time in my entire life, made all the more so when it turned out there was no coming back for her. I ended up divorced after thirty years of marriage and found myself playing Mr. Mom to our three children who were still living at home, all of whom elected to stay with me. There was no instant deliverance from the intense emotional pain, the shock, and the bewilderment. There was no light from heaven, no divine visitation, no dynamic word from God that eased my pain. I had to work through it, day by day, and month by month. In time Jesus provided the healing balm I so desperately needed, but it took the better part of a year. God had not kept me from incredible agony, but He carried me through it and brought me back to a place of joy and peace in Him.

When Wheat Dies

Jesus said, “Unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it produces much fruit” (John 12:24). Those of us who eagerly desire fruitfulness are all going to have to die in some way or another, and that was my death. God’s faithfulness did not prevent Him from allowing it. Indeed it was His faithfulness that directed it and set the boundaries for it. I have been in the ministry, off and on, since my twenties, but I can honestly say that the fruitfulness of my years since that betrayal has far exceeded all the combined ministry efforts of my years before then. Multiple mission trips, hundreds of articles written, hundreds of videos produced, two YouTube channels established that are touching tens of thousands of people all over the world in such far away places as Africa, India, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Israel, Australia, Britain… all of this has happened since that traumatic, terrible time. In addition to all this, I met and married a lovely lady from Nigeria named Benedicta, who works by my side in the ministry, and is no small help. I could never have achieved what I have without her. Looking back, I can see that this experience of losing my first wife has resulted in far more kingdom fruit that would have been the case if it had not happened. My “death” has resulted in new life for many. As long as the grain stays in the bag, nothing happens, but when it falls to the ground and dies it produces fruit. And of course, the pain did not last forever.

Has God been faithful to me? You’d better believe He has! Has He kept me from all pain, hard times, and desperate circumstances? You’d better believe He has not! Indeed, leading us in and out of those valleys of “the shadow of death” is part and parcel of His faithfulness. But His greatest demonstration of faithfulness is not just the fact that I never starved or that my heart was healed. His greatest faithfulness to me was shown long, long ago, when as a nineteen-year-old college student, I took a Bible back with me from Christmas break.

I didn’t believe much of anything in those days, but somehow I became curious as to what the Bible had to say. I started reading in the gospels in my little dormitory room and I was almost instantly hooked. I read and believed in the Person of Jesus Christ: His life, His death on the cross for our sins, and His resurrection from the dead. I received Jesus as my Lord and Savior and gave my life to Him. This was no accident; this was no chance experience. This was my faithful God, who loved me from the foundation of the world, revealing Himself and His Son to me. And He has been demonstrating His faithfulness to me in thousands of ways ever since.

God is faithful, by whom you were called into the fellowship of His Son, Jesus Christ our Lord (1 Corinthians 1:9).

 

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