Spring: A Time of Renewal in Life #2

Everything is Budding and Growing. It Produces a Newness in Everything about Life. It Produces Vision in our Hearts.

This is a second thought about spring. There will be one more before June 21, which is the official beginning of summer.

Winter, beginning December 21, is a time of REVERENCE. Spring, beginning March 21, is a time of RENEWAL. Summer, beginning June 21, is a time of RESOLVE. Fall or Autumn, beginning September 21, is a time of REFLECTION. We’ll be looking at all of these seasons during 2021.

Spring is a Time of Renewal

Just look around you. Spring is a time of all new things. I take a 2–3 mile walk most days, and because we’ve had so much snow and rain this current spring in ‘Rocky Mountain High.’ Colorado USA, I’ve been seeing a lot of wildflowers that I usually don’t see until June. Everything is so new and renewed that it is breathtaking.

So it is in our lives too. Spring is a time when we feel renewed, just like new leaves on a tree. Our hearts are refreshed. Our souls rekindled. We feel more ‘new’ inside than we usually do during winter. Of course we’re all different and we all experience life differently, but this is true for most of us.

Spring is a Time of Dreams Rekindled

What happens during winter is that grass turns browner, and trees lose their leaves, and flowers stop blooming, and birds migrate south — and a lot of other things take on different forms and change. Even bears hibernate.

We hibernate too during winter, at least usually to some degree.

But in spring we have a new vision, new dreams, new aspirations for living a better life, being better people, doing more things, and responding and loving others more. We make plans for a better tomorrow. Part of a song I wrote says: “Many plans for great tomorrows, While today remains a mystery.” But in spring those plans for great tomorrows take on new meaning today.

In Spring We Tend to Listen to God More

God says, “I know the thoughts that I think toward you: thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope. Then you will call upon me and go and pray to me, and I will listen to you. And you will seek me and find me when you search for me with all your heart, and I will be found by you” (Jere 29:11–13).

God says, “If my people who are called by my name will humble themselves, and pray and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin and heal their land” (II Chron 7:14).

God says so many other things, but I won’t quote them. But the fact is we seem to be more willing to listen to God in spring because we are looking for leading, guidance, and direction. In winter we read and listen more for personal reasons and for more contentment.

In Spring We Look for More Positive Input

In winter, we’re often content with the status quo. We just had Thanksgiving, at least in the U.S. Then it’s Christmas, then it’s New Year’s. In my family, we have four birthdays between February 3 and March 1. So we kind of reach a state of status-quo.

In spring we want more motivation or the way I spell it: ‘motive-action.’ When we have a motive behind what we do, we do it better and harder.

The Parable of the Sower that Jesus told talks about us receiving God’s good seed, which to me means his gospel truth, into our hearts. When we do, the parable says this produces good fruit from us: 30, 60, or 100 times more. Later in Colossians, Paul says it’s the gospel truth that produces good fruit, or good things from us.

But regardless of the form it takes, we want more positive input — more good things coming into us so that we produce more positive results. God knows if we have apple seeds planted in us, we’re not going to raise pumpkins. The earliest truth in the Bible, in Genesis 1, says, “Things grow after their own kind.”

Spring Produces Life in Many Ways

We’ve talked about a lot of ways, but the truth is that spring does produce life in us. Like wildflowers that take bloom, we take bloom too. In winter it’s cold outside, at least if you live where I do and most people do. It’s also cold in our hearts. But in spring, it’s warmer and nicer outside, and in our hearts.

And this life isn’t just on the surface with the tree showing off its new leaves that are so beautiful. Trees also grow strong and deep roots, and we tend to do the same in spring more than in winter.

Psalms say that we are like strong trees planted in living water. And in John, Jesus later says that we have living water flowing out of us. This is the way it is, and when we live in it, we live better. We produce more. We respond more to life and other people — and even to God himself.

Strong roots stabilize us in life. They hold us firm. Jesus talked about the tree that withered and died: “It had a root problem” (Mark 4:6). Paul spoke about us ‘being rooted and grounded.’ It begins in the love of God, but then God’s love produces faith in us, as Paul says in Galatians. Spring has a progression to it, and our hearts then produce good fruit. As I said earlier, Paul also says in Colossians that the gospel is what produces good fruit from us.

Spring Even Produces New Birth

It’s like we get a new birth in life during the spring. Paul talks about ‘all things being made new.’ Well, all things are made new in us. Often times we’re like a newborn baby just opening its eyes. We see things we never saw before.

Things become more meaningful, and we know it all has to do with us. It’s like God shines the spotlight on us and says, “Now see what you can do.”

In the most general sense possible, I see life as having four dimensions to it: (1) birth (2) times of sorrow, sadness, hurt, and even tragedy (3) times of peace, joy, opportunity, and adventure (4) death

Well, spring is the time of peace, joy, opportunity, and adventure.

It does begin with a new type of birth. We don’t go back to the womb, but we are ‘born again,’ in a type of different way. In Corinthians, Paul says, “In Christ Jesus, I have begotten you (birthed you) through the gospel.”

As ‘The Gospel Life Coach,’ I have learned that when we weed out everything else that is not the gospel and only plant the gospel into us, amazing things begin to happen in us.

This is what Jesus said in the very first sermon he ever preached (which means it was the dearest thing on his heart). He says to repent and forsake all other beliefs and only believe and live his gospel.

Paul says ‘the gospel is THE power of God’ (Rom 1:16–17). It’s a definite article. The gospel is not one of many ways God manifests and imparts his power to us. It is THE way he does so.

Spring is an Amazing Time

We can’t control everything that happens to us in this life. We’re not meant to. The maxim says, “What happens to you in life, good or bad, is not half as important as how you respond to what happens to you.”

Spring is a time of us responding positively to what we know in our hearts.