How to Recognize 3 Spiritual Winter Seasons and Stop Them in their Tracks → A More Beautiful Life Collective

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Today, we are continuing to look at triggers and glimmers in spiritual winter seasons. We’re going to be focusing on three different seasons: The seasons of sin, doubt, and busyness. We’ll talk about what these spiritual winter seasons are, triggers that help us to see when those seasons are beginning, and glimmers to help us get out of those seasons.

S2E15 – What You Need to Know about the Christian Creeds – A More Beautiful Life Collective Podcast

In this episode, we are talking about the high-church confessional documents and why you should engage with them. No matter what denomination you belong to, these confessional texts – like Christian creeds, confessions of faith, catechisms, and liturgies – have been incredibly influential in the history of the Church. We need to wrestle with what they say and determine how it fits in with our own personal statement of faith. Today, we are going to talk about why you should read these texts, and then, turn our focus to the Christian creeds in particular. Read more on the blog: https://amorebeautifullifecollective.com/what-you-need-to-know-about-the-christian-creeds/ Get a PDF copy of the Christian Creeds here: https://a-more-beautiful-life-collective.kit.com/d080819cc1 Get the Doctrine and Theology Cheat Sheet Here: https://a-more-beautiful-life-collective.ck.page/bd897d28d0 Get a list of the names of God here: https://a-more-beautiful-life-collective.ck.page/43d2d5cf6b Get a copy of our personal statement of faith creation guide here: https://amorebeautifullifecollective.com/product/we-believe-your-personal-statement-of-faith-workbook-pdf-download/ Get “Building Our Foundations: 10 Week Study” here: https://amorebeautifullifecollective.com/product/building-our-foundations-11-week-systematic-theology-book-bible-study/ Visit our Shop to get a copy of any of the resources mentioned in this episode: I’m your host, Cayce Fletcher, and you can learn a little bit more about me here. While you’re here, would you consider leaving a comment, rating, or review? You can find our podcast, A More Beautiful Life Collective Podcast, wherever you listen to podcasts. Listen on Spotify or Apple Podcasts, or watch on YouTube. Subscribe to the blog for access to our latest content and some freebies. I love creating and sharing resources with you. You can find all of our resources at A More Beautiful Life Collective Shop. Keep creating a life you love, and cultivating your heart for God.

Spiritual Winter Seasons We Cause Ourselves

This is Episode 27 of Season 1 of A More Beautiful Life Collective Podcast. I’m so glad you are joining me today. Don’t forget to subscribe to the podcast, and leave a rating and review wherever you listen to podcast. If you subscribe to the blog at the link below, you can get a copy of our Winter Season Survival Guide. This is part of our series on Winter Seasons.

This is part 3 of our series on winter seasons. In the last episode, we talked about the hard truth that sometimes we cause our own winter seasons. Whenever we put something above God, we will hurt our relationship with him. Idols always turn us away from him.

When we continue in idolatry, we will ultimately experience a lack of peace and freedom. We will experience a winter season.

In these spiritual winter seasons, we experience an emotional spiral. We slowly begin to fade into sin, doubt, or busyness. But, that slow fade accelerates. Eventually, we are circling the drain quickly. We feel out of control.

We want to learn to recognize the triggers that show us that we are going down these paths. These triggers are the first steps toward a path of idolatry. Sometimes, they are the things that spark that journey.

When we see that we are on a path of idolatry – headed toward a spiritual winter season, we should stop and turn around. A way to do this is to find glimmers. Glimmers are life-giving moments that point us toward God and away from disobedience and idolatry.

Today, we are going to look at three specific spiritual winter seasons and use our knowledge of emotional spiraling, triggers, and glimmers to get back on track.

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3 Different Spiritual Winter Seasons: What they are and how to stop them

I mentioned that there are three different types of spiritual winter seasons that we can cause. We are going to be discussing these seasons in more depth and giving you a few actionable steps to break the emotional spiraling and begin the process of getting out of the current season that you are in. In each of the following sections, I describe what this spiritual winter season is as well as triggers for this season and glimmers in this season. You can utilize the triggers and glimmers to help you get out of your winter season and grow.

Season of Sin

Sin is one of the main things that can get in the way of our relationship with God. Sin can be translated to “missing the mark” and I’ve heard an analogy that sin comes from an archery term of missing a target. Basically, sin means not living up to the standard of holiness God has set for us. We are falling short of being a people who honors and glorifies God. God is holy; he is the standard for what holiness is. To determine if our actions are righteous, we have to align them based on the purest form of righteousness there is God.

To help us with this, God has given us his word. The law described in his word demonstrates what is righteousness and what is sin.

When we choose to follow Christ, we are leaving behind a life of sin. It is paid for. We can live righteously. However, sometimes, we go back to sin. We are like the Israelites who grumble and complain after being saved: Oh, we wish we could go back to being slaves in Egypt! At least, there was good food there.

Continuing to sin after we have come to know Christ will cause our hearts to be hardened. It is a slippery slope where our understanding of what is good and what is wrong is eroded and chipped away. If we continue to sin, our understanding and discernment will become tainted. We will not be pure and holy, a set-apart people.

If you have an unrepentant sin in your life, you will be further from God than someone who doesn’t have that sin. It’s a fact.

Triggers for this season of sin:

When you surround yourself with people who minimize this sin.
When you begin to hide what you are doing around others.
When you feel like you might get caught, so you start to isolate yourself from others.
When you stop pursuing God, praying, and studying his word.

Glimmers in this season of sin:

You have to decide now to repent and turn away from your sin. To pursue righteousness.
Then, you need to immerse yourself in groups that will hold you accountable and will remind you of the importance of living a holy, righteous life.
You need to practice a daily confession time. You want your heart of stone to become a heart of flesh. This means coming to God daily with an understanding of your shortcomings.
Lean into the power of the Holy Spirit for sanctification.

Season of Doubt

In a similar vein, a season of doubt can also cause a spiritual winter season in your life. You could argue that doubt is a sin, and to some extent that is true. However, I think that there is a difference in how we should approach a season of doubt and a season of sin.

A new trend in culture is deconstructing your faith. A term taken from the identity politics and critical theories of academia, deconstruction means to strip down your faith and beliefs until there is nothing there. Though I’m not sure if people who ‘believe’ in the deconstructionist philosophy would say this, I believe the end goal of this is to leave you with no faith or beliefs at all. They want you to say, “Truth? What is truth?”

Deconstruction is like a plague of locusts. You have the good fields of crops and fruit that could produce abundance, but once deconstruction is released the locust chews up all the crops, every good green leaf. You are left with a barren wasteland. More importantly, a wasteland that produces nothing.

Why is it a moral good in our culture to have no truth?

Without truth, we are led to places we don’t want to go.

When you are in this spiritual winter season of doubt, you will grow farther away from God simply because you are questioning his existence. The dangerousness of this season is that the very thing that could sustain you – truth – is the thing that you continue to question and destroy.

Seasons of doubt can be caused by a variety of things, but most often it is a combination of questioning certain doctrines about God, the inerrancy of scripture, and a form of virtue signaling to modern (aka woke) culture. When you have these three things that occur altogether, it can create a perfect storm, a whiteout blizzard.

Triggers for this season of doubt:

When you surround yourself who glorifying doubting and virtue-signaling
When you begin to get combative and argumentative. You feel a sense of superiority over others who don’t feel the same way as you.
When you feel like you start to chaff against people and resources who espouse the values you know are right.
When you stop pursuing God, praying, and studying his word.

Glimmers in this season of doubt:

First, you need a support group. Find some people who are godly and who believe in core doctrines, the truth of scripture, and the importance of living out your faith authentically. Surround yourself with these people every chance you can get.
Begin bringing in clear voices of truth into your life. Start every day with a quiet time, listen to good biblical podcasts, and have worship music playing in the background when you can.
Go back to the basics of your beliefs. Start to learn the basics of your core doctrines, memorize scripture, and preach the gospel to yourself.

Season of Busyness

The seasons of sin and doubt are pretty clearly linked to the spiritual winter seasons of feeling far from God. However, there is another season that can be even more sinister to our relationship with God. It is a silent killer of our faith. This is the season of busyness.

In seasons of sin and doubt, you are clearly at odds with God and faith. Normally in this season, you recognize you are questioning what is right and what is wrong. But, in seasons of busyness, there doesn’t seem to be any kind of problem. You are just caught up in the daily grind, checking off task after task. In seasons of busyness, you prioritize the idol of work and productivity, and in doing so, you choose this idol over God. But, our society loves work and productivity. It seems like a moral good to choose busyness, even if this ultimately erodes our dependence and belief in God.

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Choosing busyness means that you are choosing to function independently of God. Often, your goals and decisions are made outside of God’s will.

In the Bible, we read about the prophet Haggai who criticized the people for focusing on building their own homes while the temple lay in ruins. We read in book and book how the Israelites neglected the sabbath. This is one of the main judgments God has against the Israelites. In neglecting the sabbath, the Israelites showed their priorities. They were not prioritizing trust and faith. The command of the Sabbath was one of the 10 commandments, coming only third in the list after honoring God as the only God.

When we neglect the sabbath, we choose to place ourselves as the center of our universe. We view our work as more important than God’s work, our created things as more important than the creator.

Crucially, busyness breeds more busyness. When we feel like we must accomplish more and more for our own pride, greed, and security, we will never feel satisfied. This pursuit will continually lead to a desire to pursue more. For the Israelites in the wilderness, when they neglected the sabbath, the manna they collected would be rotten, filled with maggots, and stank if they tried to accumulate too much.

When we try to continually get more and more – desperate for control, we end up only hurting ourselves. The things we accumulate will burn us out. They will grow rotten and stink.

Triggers for this season of busyness:

When you overload your to-do list.
When you start to make excuses for why you have no time to go to church or read your Bible.
When you keep cancelling spending time with people who point you toward God so that you can get more work done.
When you stop pursuing God, praying, and studying his word.

Glimmers in this season of busyness:

Slow down. Start doing this by taking a true sabbath. Turn off the phone, TV, and computer. Spend some time leisurely reading God’s word. Journal. Enjoy the light of a candle and just be.
Create space every day to savor the moment. You may want to begin doing an afternoon or evening walk in nature. Maybe you want to wake up early so you have time to spend a few quiet moments with God before the day begins.
Include some soul-care routines in your life. Do things just to glorify God. Just for their enjoyment. Don’t attach goals, projects, and to-do lists in every area of life.
Plan out your ideal schedule to incorporate work and rest. Include regular longer breaks in line with feasts, vacations, and holidays to include multi-day sabbaths.

Now you try:

We need to be aware of these spiritual winter seasons so that we can recognize when we are headed down the path of these spiritual winter seasons. By recognizing the triggers and first steps, we can stop the season in its tracks. We do this by including my glimmers of truth and goodness in our lives. These things will reorient our heart toward God.

Recap:

The season of sin happens when we choose disobedience instead of God. We need to confess our sins and turn back to God.
The season of doubt happens when we choose a worldly understanding of truth before God. We need to cling to truth and surround ourselves with people who will speak truth into our lives.
The season of busyness happens when we prioritize our to-do list over God. We need to honor a true Sabbath and make space for quietness in our lives.

What did you think? Would you add any other types of winter seasons to this list? Let me know what you think by leaving a short review or comment wherever you listen to Podcasts. You can subscribe to the blog for a Survive the Winter guide. The link is in the show notes.

We have lots of great resources that you can check out at our shop at amorebeautifullifecollective.com/amblshop/. You can find our wilderness wanderings bible study at the link in the show notes.

Until next time, keep creating a life you love and cultivating your heart for God.

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