Showers In Season Order Printed Copy
- Author: Beverly Lahaye | Terri Blackstock
- Size: 1.8MB | 348 pages
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About the Book
"Showers In Season" is a Christian fiction novel that follows the lives of four women facing challenges and struggles in their marriages, careers, and relationships. As they navigate through their difficulties, they find strength and guidance through their faith and the support of each other. The book explores themes of forgiveness, redemption, and the power of friendship.
Jeanne Guyon
All I had enjoyed before was only a peace, a gift of God, but now I received and possessed the God of peace." It was on July 22, 1680, that Madame Jeanne-Marie Guyon experienced a flood of joy. She believed that God revealed his presence within her and altered her completely. As she described it, "A readiness for doing good was restored to me, greater than ever. It seemed to me all quite free and natural..." In her autobiography she added wryly, "If one may judge of a good by the trouble which precedes it, I leave mine to be judged of by the sorrows I had undergone before my attaining it." This included the deaths of two of her children from smallpox and a wretched marriage. Jeanne-Marie Bouvier was married to Jacques Guyon when she was just sixteen. She had wanted to be a nun, but her parents forbade it. Her twelve years of marriage proved unhappy. Both her husband and mother-in-law harassed her. Consequently, Jeanne-Marie withdrew into prayer. Her husband and mother-in-law did everything in their power to keep her from devotions, even setting one of her own sons as a spy over her; but all they succeeded in doing was to drive her to prayer in the wee hours of the morning when everyone else was asleep. The years of marital misery ended with Jacques' death. At 28, Jeanne-Marie was a widow, free to chart her own course of action. However, she had lost all appetite for spiritual things. She continued to do right, but only from a dreary sense of obligation. It was after several years of this new misery that she experienced God's glorious filling with peace. Now she saw herself as an apostle, bound to share with others the secrets of deeper spiritual life. She became influential at the French court. Her disciples in the palace lived lives of such purity that they stood out in contrast to the greed and sexual debauchery of the majority. Archbishop Fran�ois Fenelon became her close friend. But at court, Madame Guyon's writings came under attack. She asked that they be submitted to the church for examination. Bishop Bossuet condemned them. He demanded that Fenelon do the same. Fenelon refused. He owed much of his own spiritual development to Jeanne's influence. He compiled The Maxims of the Saints, which showed that saints of all eras held views similar to Guyon's. Under pressure from King Louis XIV, the pope censured Fenelon's book. Madame Guyon went to prison. Madame Guyon still divides people. Modern critics say that Jeanne-Marie used self-hypnosis to achieve her "spiritual" states and trances and point out that she used "automatic writing" which suggests spiritualist practice. But among some Protestants in Northern Europe and some Methodists in America, her mysticism is highly regarded. Years later, Madame Guyon insisted that the joy she found on this day still remained with her. "When Jesus Christ, the eternal wisdom, is formed in the soul, after the death of the first Adam, it finds in Him all good things communicated to it.
the sluggard in me - four lies that lead to lazy
Come, follow closely, and gaze for a moment upon a rare creature in his native habitat. There he is, drooling upon his pillow an hour before lunchtime, creaking over the bedsprings like a door on its hinges. âHow long will you lie there? When will you arise from your sleep?â his mother shouts from the kitchen. Quiet, now: she has roused him. Here he comes, stumbling into his chair, and begins to feed. âWhatâs wrong with a little sleep, a little slumber?â he mumbles between mouthfuls. A dozen handfuls later, however, he stops, his hand submerged in his cereal like a sunk boat. He breathes heavily, chin against his chest, and begins to snore again. Meet the sluggard (Proverbs 26:14; 6:9â10; 19:24). He is a figure of âtragi-comedy,â Derek Kidner writes ( Proverbs , 39): comedy, because the sluggardâs laziness makes him ludicrous; tragedy, because only sin could so debase a man. The image of God was never meant to yawn through life. Yet those who are paying attention will also see something more in this tragi-comic sloth: themselves. We all have an inner sluggard, counseling us to sleep when we should rise, rest when we should work, eat when we should move. âThe wise man,â Kidner goes on to write, knows that the sluggard is no freak, but, as often as not, an ordinary man who has made too many excuses, too many refusals, and too many postponements. It has all been as imperceptible, and as pleasant, as falling asleep. (40) We donât need to look far, then, to see the sluggard in his native habitat. We only need to hear his âexcuses,â ârefusals,â and âpostponements,â and then listen for their inner echo. âI need just a little more.â A little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to rest. (Proverbs 6:10; 24:33) The words sit in the mouth of the sluggard more than once in Proverbs. They are, perhaps, his motto, his favorite response to the wisdom of the diligent. âEarly to rest, early to rise . . .â they tell him; âA little sleep, a little slumber . . .â he answers. âAn ordinary man becomes a sluggard one small surrender at a time.â Sluggishness often hides beneath that eminently reasonable phrase âjust a little more.â What harm could a little  do? Whatâs one more snooze cycle? Whatâs one more show? Whatâs one more refreshing of the timeline? Not much, in itself: but much indeed when piled atop ten thousand other littles  and one mores . They may seem like âsmall surrendersâ (to use a phrase from Bruce Waltke, Proverbs , 131) â and they are. But an ordinary man becomes a sluggard one small surrender at a time. How do the wise respond? They know that diligent Christians are not a special species of saint. Like the sluggard, the diligent daily face unpleasant tasks. Unlike the sluggard, the diligent speak a different motto: âA little labor, a little energy, a little moving of the hands to work.â Instead of building a stack of small surrenders, they build a stack of small successes â taking little step by little step in the strength that God supplies. Over time, how we handle little  is no little matter. Little drudgeries, little tasks, little opportunities: these are the moments when the sluggard gains ground in our souls, or loses it. âThereâs always tomorrow.â The sluggard does not plow in the autumn; he will seek at harvest and have nothing. (Proverbs 20:4) Often enough, âjust a little moreâ achieves the sluggardâs purpose. But if, for some reason, his conscience should protest, he has another word at his disposal that rarely fails: tomorrow . Autumn was the season for plowing and planting in ancient Israel, and summer the season for harvest. We donât know exactly why the sluggard took it easy while his neighbors plowed their fields. Maybe the difficulty of the task daunted him, or maybe, as the King James Version suggests, the seasonâs chill deterred him: âThe sluggard will not plow by reason of the cold .â Either way, he no doubt fell asleep on many autumn nights warmed by the thought, âThereâs always tomorrowâ â until one day he woke up in winter. When the sluggard finally arrived at his chosen tomorrow , the time for plowing and planting had escaped his grasp. How often have we too discovered that tomorrow is too late? The conversation we should have initiated yesterday proves more awkward today. The essay we should have begun last week overwhelms us this week. The forgiveness we should have sought last month feels harder to seek this month. Autumn has passed, winter has come, and opportunity has slipped through our fingers. The wise learn to take the farmerâs view of life: when the time comes to plow, a farmer pays more attention to the season than to his feelings. And when the time comes to tackle our own difficult tasks, the wise do the same. âI would be putting myself at risk.â There is a lion outside! I shall be killed in the streets! (Proverbs 22:13; see also 26:13) Indulging a bad excuse is a little like feeding a pigeon: give bread to one, and twenty more will soon coo at your feet. Bad excuses breed bad excuses â and even worse excuses over time. And so, when a friend, family member, or boss refuses to entertain the sluggardâs littles  and tomorrows , he takes more radical measures: âHavenât you seen the lion roaming the streets? Iâll die!â Did any sluggard ever attempt such an excuse? Maybe. âLaziness is a great lion-maker,â says Charles Spurgeon. âHe who does little dreams much. His imagination could create not only a lion but a whole menagerie of wild beastsâ (âOne Lion: Two Lions: No Lion at Allâ). For our own purposes, however, we can consider a tamer version of the sluggardâs beast: âI would be putting myself at risk.â To our inner sluggard, a scratch in the throat is cause for a sick day, a little tiredness is reason to nap instead of mow, and a long day at work is justification for skipping small group. After all, our bodies and minds need  the rest, donât they? Care is required here, of course. Some people really do  work their bodies into the dust, forsaking the rest God gives and âeating the bread of anxious toilâ (Psalm 127:2). The sluggard, however, is prone to label as âanxious toilâ any work that meets with inner resistance. He forgets that overcoming such resistance is part of what makes diligence diligence . God made our bodies to bend and strain, our minds to crank and labor, our souls to strive and press. The lion called âLazyâ will counsel us to avoid the strain, but diligence will slay the lion. âWhat do you know about the pressures Iâm under?â The sluggard is wiser in his own eyes than seven men who can answer sensibly. (Proverbs 26:16) Confront a sluggard in his sluggishness, and you may find that he has a penchant for euphemisms. âHe has no idea that he is lazy,â writes Kidner on Proverbs 26:13â16. He is not a shirker but a ârealistâ (13); not self-indulgent but âbelow his best in the morningâ (14); his inertia is âan objection to being hustledâ (15); his mental indolence a fine âsticking to his gunsâ (16). ( Proverbs , 156) Our own sluggishness, then, often appears in our defenses against the charge. Once, as a single man, I told a mentor, âI need more time to myself.â âYou donât need  it,â he responded. Immediately, I raised the drawbridge, manned the ramparts, and launched inward mortars against the attack. What could he, a husband and father of three, possibly know about the pressures I was under? The self-defense is laughable now, but back then, wise in my own eyes, I couldnât accept that much of what I called âalone timeâ was better labeled âsluggishness.â The sluggard sees his own work as the hardest work, his own excuses as the best excuses, his own diversions as the most reasonable diversions â no matter what his friends, wife, or pastor may say. But the wise learn to develop a self-distrustful posture. Rather than responding to requests or challenges with an inward Donât you see my burdens?  they remember their proneness to folly, and learn to call the sluggard by his real name. The Christian and the Sluggard Between the Christian and the sluggard, Spurgeon says, âthere should be as wide a division as between the poles.â Heâs right. âChristianâ and âsluggardâ go together like âhusbandâ and âplayboy,â like âjudgeâ and âthiefâ: the latter destroys the integrity of the former. âIn Christ we find our pattern for work. In Christ we find our power for work. And in Christ the sluggard dies.â And why? Because Christians belong to Jesus Christ, and Jesus Christ was not sluggish. He was no workaholic, of course: he could feast, rest, sleep, and develop deep relationships. But oh did he work. In the Gospels we find not the sluggishness but âthe steadfastness  of Christâ (2 Thessalonians 3:5): the diligence of one who never entertained âjust a little moreâ or âtomorrow,â but worked while it was day (John 9:4). He plowed in the autumn cold of life, forsaking every excuse not to save us. And he never cried âlion!â though he walked into the den (Psalm 22:21). Therefore, the apostle Paul can say to the sluggish, âSuch persons we command and encourage in the Lord Jesus Christ  to do their workâ (2 Thessalonians 3:12). In Christ we find our pattern for work. In Christ we find our power for work. And in Christ the sluggard dies.