May 30, 2025
Fall of The Soul
Galatians 6:7-10 - 7 Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows. 8 Whoever sows to please their flesh, from the flesh will reap destruction; whoever sows to please the Spirit, from the Spirit will reap eternal life. 9 Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up.10 Therefore, as we have opportunity, let us do good to all people, especially to those who belong to the family of believers.
Early fall has always been one of my favorite times of the year. The weather is perfect. There’s still warm, beautiful, sunny days, accompanied by cool, crisp evenings.
When I think of Fall, I think of going to apple houses, fall festivals, leaf watching, going on hayrides with family, watching football and many more favorite activities. And of course later on there’s Halloween festivals and family gatherings at Thanksgiving.
Fall conjures up all kinds of exciting things that we embrace with expectancy.
But Fall is a very sneaky season.
Every year without fail there comes a day in November - usually after the time change where it starts getting dark early - where suddenly the skies are gray and all the colorful leaves have fallen off the trees, it’s dark at 5:30 and the once beautiful oriental carpet of fall foliage is now a desolate landscape.
And we ask ourselves, “What happened?”
It’s a transition that can be sudden and jarring as we settle into the reality that winter is not too far away.
In a very real sense, that’s what the spiritual season of fall can be like as one moment God was blessing and moving in our life and then suddenly you sense this shift where the flow of God’s blessing has gone from drinking from a fire hose to only a steady trickle.
We’ve been looking at the spiritual seasons of the soul and we’ve come to our last one - the spiritual season of fall.
And like the actual fall season, there’s still a harvest coming in. Many fruits and vegetables are harvested in the fall, including apples, cranberries, pumpkins, carrots and winter squash to name a few. Likewise, God can still produce a harvest in your life in the spiritual season of fall, but it’s just clear that things are slowing down on that front. The bounty of God’s favor seems to be waning.
And there can be multiple reasons, including circumstances like spiritual storms rolling into your life. Someone has said you’re either coming out of a storm, in the midst of one or heading into a storm and sometimes it feels like it’s that way. God may be allowing you to go through something to prepare you specifically for an assignment He has planned for you. And so we sense a transition letting us know that the winter of the soul is not far away. Sometimes God has to allow the storms to put steel in our soul to ready us for a big assignment that He has in store for us.
The primary reason, however, that we find ourselves in the spiritual season of fall has to do with the passage we began examining in Galatians 6:7-10 in our last devotion.
Fittingly, the passage has been coined as the Law of the Harvest and the principles are:
You reap what you sow.
You reap more than you sow,
You reap later than you sow.
Truthfully, one of the reasons we begin to transition from spiritual summer to fall is we have ceased sowing to the spirit like we once were. What opened up the floodgates in the first place was a return to God’s Word and obedience to His Word. It didn’t show up right away (because you reap later than you sow) but when it did it was an awesome thing (because you reap more than you sow). But as fallen human beings, we have a tendency to become complacent in our walk with God. In our pride, we can even take credit for God’s favor, foolishly believing that the bounty of blessings is because of what we bring to the table rather than God. Been there, done that, bought the T-shirt and I don’t recommend it unless you’re craving a huge helping of humility. Because I can assure you it’s coming.
Since we reap later than we sow and more than we sow, that’s why the harvest seems plentiful early in the spiritual season of fall. But the transition is coming.
As the passage in verse 7 indicates, “Do not be deceived, God cannot be mocked. A man what he sows.” So if you have grown complacent, if you’ve wandered away from God, just know that the bounty of the harvest is coming to an end soon.
As the beautiful hymn Come Thou Fount of Many Blessings so eloquently describes it, we are “prone to wander, Lord I feel it, prone to leave the God I love.”
So what do we do when we see the transition coming?
Realize that it’s a warning sign that something has shifted in your heart. (Ask yourself, “Who moved?”)
Take the advice that John gave the Church of Ephesus in Revelation 2: “Remember the height from which you have fallen and repent. Repent of your complacency, waywardness and pride.
Pray as David did in Psalm 51 after he was convicted of his sin: “Restore in me a pure heart, oh Lord.” Pray for God’s help for returning to a desire for His Word and obedience to His Word. Ask that He would restore in you a desire for the things of the Spirit.