In Christ, you can live in every blood-bought season of life fully communing with your God, and growing in godliness through intentionally crafted habits, hobbies, and traditions.

All sexual sin pursues a pattern to life that’s contrary to God’s design for seasonal living. Thus, fighting sexual sin involves our submission to God’s ordered seasons and rhythms in life. But what is seasonal living?

Seasonal Living Defined

I define seasonal living as the art of recognizing and submitting to God’s intentionally ordered rhythms as revealed in Scripture and nature. Ecclesiastes 3 is the pinnacle proof-text for seasonal living. In this chapter, the wise King Solomon lists many of life’s rhythms which we observe consistently in nature: life and death, reaping and sowing, embracing and refraining, laughing and weeping…to name a few.

Every human observes and experiences these rhythms in some way. Yet, it is only by the regenerative work of God’s Holy Spirit that Christians can interpret the fullness of seasonal living. We don’t just observe these natural patterns of life, but we also recognize the purposeful hand of God upon them, crafting in us, through our submission to these divine rhythms, something eternally beautiful (Eccles. 3:11). Puritan minister Matthew Henry captures this well: “God thus changes his disposals [what he brings into our lives], and yet is unchangeable in his counsels, not to perplex us, much less to drive us to despair, but to teach us our duty to him and engage us to do it.” Seasonal living is intentionally living out every experience of life glorifying and enjoying God forever.

Seasonal Living and Fighting Sexual Sin

To embrace seasonal living is to intentionally experience the seasons of life God gives us. God provides stability, come what may, and resting in his order provides peace that makes room for a balanced and whole life. In contrast, a life patterned towards sexual sin leads to an unbalanced way of living, full of misplaced and destructive obsessions, driven by compulsiveness and an absence of self-control. These conflicting rhythms of life fight for a foundational place of influence within our hearts. Will your heart worshipfully march along trusting in the rhythms of God or march to the beat of your own drum?

Since God is the true Creator, Sustainer, and Lord of all things (Col. 1), no one can overthrow his established structure for life’s seasons. The best that evil can do is conjure up illusions. When we engage in sexual sin, we depend upon fantasized escapism; we attempt to numb our emotions and construct a false sense of control over our own lives. This is the great deception of sexual sin—it’s the lie that sin offers us anything that is, to any degree, good and true (Phil. 4). It’s like artificially flavored and processed foods. In an unnatural way, those potato chips might be made to taste like pickles, but you also taste the deception. It leaves you with a sour aftertaste of dissatisfaction, feeling a bit unwell, and longing for the crunch of a real pickle.

Living on the diet of illusions never nourishes or satisfies the soul. It is always to our detriment because we can only rightly handle the unfolding of our lives when we embrace reality. Seasonal living is the only means by which we live according to reality, where we navigate through life without persistently propping up the grand illusion that is our futile rebellion against God. In seasonal living, we embrace the consistency of coram Deo, where we live all of life’s seasons before the face of a God who is intimately active in the lives of his people (Ps. 23, 73). Seasonal living is vital for fighting sexual sin.

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