A Lesson Learned During the Barren Season
Though the fig tree does not bud and there are no grapes on the vines,
though the olive crop fails and the fields produce no food,
though there are no sheep in the pen and no cattle in the stalls,
yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will be joyful in God my Saviour.”
Habakkuk 3:17-18
“When the ministry feels stagnant and there is no astonishing growth to show for long hours of hard work, on days I don’t receive extraordinary answers to prayer, He is still glorified in my faithful pursuit of Him.”
Katie Davis
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Early in my Christian walk, I experienced a very fruitful spiritual season. The inner transformation that God had begun in my heart was producing an outward passion to share Him with others. My non-Christian friends began to ask a lot of questions as they saw me changing. I started working with children in my city who were affected by many risk factors, and witnessed God do incredible things. There was also a revival in the youth group at my church, and I had the opportunity to invest into some of the teenage girls. Thus I became known among my friends as one who always had “God stories” to share with anyone that would listen about the number of ways that I was seeing God at work.
A couple of years later, once I had graduated University, God brought me through a very barren spiritual season. All of the areas that I had previously seen God working powerfully in were devoid of fruit. My non-Christian friends stopped asking me as many questions about God. The children’s programs that I had been working for ended. And some of the youth that I had been investing in seemed to be walking away from the faith.
I often wondered about the analogy that Jesus gave about the vine and the branches. Aren’t we as Christians supposed to bear fruit if we are connected to Him? If I’m not bearing fruit, is it because I’m not connected to the vine? Am I doing something wrong?
I really struggled with whether my “barrenness” was my own fault or ordained in God’s will as a season I was to go through.
I began to pray. Lord, if you wish to produce more fruit through my life, and if I am somehow hindering You, please make that clear and guide me to the place You want me to be. If this is just a season You are bringing me through that I can’t do anything about, please show me.
Soon after, I realized that something was very wrong inside of me. Without seeing God working around me, I lost a lot of my passion to share Him with others. I became discontent with life and began using escapism methods to help me to forget about my dissatisfaction. When I was compared with others who were yielding much fruit, I would get upset and feel like I was not doing or being “enough” even though I had been striving so hard.
What was the real reason that I was so upset about the lack of fruit being produced in my life? Had I changed – or in other words, did I have less faith in God during this season than during my past fruitful season? No, I did not think my level of faith had drastically lessened. Had God changed? No, but my concept of Him began to.
After months of feeling like God was not answering the questions that were dragging me down, I realized why I had been so discouraged. It was my own pride.
If I was living for God’s glory alone, I wouldn’t care so much about seeing fruit. I would trust Him with how He decided to use me. If I was living for God’s glory alone, I wouldn’t care so much when others judged me for my lack of fruit. I would have eyes for His approval alone. If I was living for God’s glory alone, I wouldn’t be so discontent with my life. I would surrender my own ideas for what I wanted my life to look like and trust in His plan instead.
Soon after this realization, I wrote the following:
It is a good thing that God is bringing me through this season of barrenness. I have been developing pride over how much fruit and success was being produced from my life. He had to strip away the fruit in order to root out my pride. When the pruning of a plant occurs, the fruit (or leaf) has to disappear for a bit. But only in order to get rid of the dead stuff so that it can grow more fruit in the future.
And all at once, God started bringing answers to the burning questions that had consumed me for the past several months. The first answer was through Katie Davis’ book, Daring to Hope.
“Could we know that beauty is in this whole process, the growing and the pruning and even in the waiting, not just the part with the beautiful flower?”
“He uses the bending and the breaking and the dying to prepare the harvest, to prepare more for us.”
I began to realize that this indeed was a season of pruning and barrenness that I was going through. I was still connected to the vine as much as I ever had been, and I still had faith as much as I ever had (though both of these have always been rather weak, so they were not the entire reason for my prior fruitfulness nor my current barrenness). And I realized that all seasons, even those of pruning and barrenness, are beautiful in God’s eyes and a part of His masterful plan for good.
The second answer came through a vlog called Bullet Proof Monk. The vlogger described wrestling with something similar: a desire to live a life of impact but a fear that he wouldn’t be or do enough to bring that to fulfillment.
"And it was during my attempts to carry out this desire in my own strength that I realized I would never be enough to accomplish it. Jesus would be the hero that I could never be. This doesn’t mean that I should stop striving to use every resource and opportunity that God has given me to the best of my ability. But it does mean that in the process of doing so, I can find rest and freedom in a radical shift of focus. Jesus calls us to simply abide in Him (John 15:4) and keep in step with His Spirit (Gal 5:25). And if we remain in Him, and if we are daily filled with the Holy Spirit, listening to His voice and keeping His commandments, the daily accumulation of our obedience will yield the fruit that we long for our lives to bear."
Our job as the branch is not to produce fruit, but to abide in the vine. If this is our focus, instead of on the fruit itself, we can trust that fruit will be produced through our lives, but we will also not need to see it to be satisfied or encouraged. For Jesus Himself is our satisfaction and encouragement.
And so I began to see my barren season through a different perspective. Though my non-Christian friends have not come to know God yet, I know that He is not done working in their lives. Though my time investing into those children has ended for now, I can trust that the seeds He planted are still there, impacting them and being watered by Him. Though many of the youth are gone, I can trust that they will forever remember the God that pursued them, and still is pursuing them, and perhaps will turn back to Him in the future.
Was the barren season that I went through my own fault, or was it a season that God wanted to bring me through? I realized that God’s answer to this question was “Yes to both. But I do not want you to do something about it. I want to do something about it.” God wanted to produce more fruit through my life. My pride was hindering Him from the potential impact that He could have through me. It was a season He was bringing me through to prune away my pride. But it was not His will for me to strive to fix myself in order to return to a fruitful season. Rather, He was the One pruning away my pride and teaching me how to abide in Him, both of which would allow Him to produce more fruit through me in the future.
And I realized that while I had been searching for external fruit, God was blossoming fruit within my own heart.
If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing. ~ Jesus
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