Seasons of Ceasing: A Doer's Guide to Dormancy
When Obedience Means Doing Nothing.
There are two types of people: those who have a hard time starting and those who have a hard time stopping.
I find myself in the latter group.
My therapist asked me recently, "What are some things that come to you easily?" Among several items on my list was "starting/doing/executing."
If God tells me to start a business, I can probably have the name, business registration, logo, and website ready in 24 hours.
I'm an ideas person but I'm also good with my hands, resourceful and hardworking. When God says jump, usually I'm saying "how high."
Usually—except when God is telling me to sit down.
The Productivity Paradox
I think a lot of my anxiety around productivity comes from an incomplete understanding of the Parable of the Talents—the one where we're taught that God is expecting a return on His investment in us. I want to hear "well done good and faithful servant," which drove me to do as much as possible so that on judgment day I could show God everything I had done with the skills, talent and time He gave me.
A key piece of the puzzle I was missing, though, was the context that 1 Corinthians 3:13 adds to the parable:
On judgment day, not only will God want to know what we did with what He gave us, He'll test our works by fire and reveal the quality of each work.
In other words, on that day if you bring work to Him that He didn't ask you to do—or worse yet, work you did when He told you to do nothing—it may just come out as wood, hay, or straw instead of the gold, silver, and precious jewels you imagined.
The Spiritual Time-Out
After much reflection, I realized that something about the instruction to stop feels like being benched or being put in time-out. Every time an instruction comes for me to stop or slow down here’s what tends to happen:
First, think it must be the devil
When I realize it's not the devil, I throw a full-blown "I don't want to go to sleep" toddler tantrum, just like my son.
I eventually realize I don’t have much of a choice because God has forced me into a season of non-productivity or slowness.
This journey is far from linear. More often than not it looks like 1 - 2 - 3 - 1 - 2 - 1 but ultimately I always end up at 3.
Most recently when this happened I found myself asking questions like:
"But I did everything you told me to do, why am I being punished??"
"How can this be the reward for my obedience?"
"Did I miss the mark? Is that why I'm being benched?"
And so on, until God led me to John 15. A passage I'm familiar with, but this time He told me to look specifically at verses 1 & 2:
"I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener. He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful."
Suddenly I realized that pruning actually isn't a punishment—it's a reward.
Lessons from the Vineyard
In order to understand how and why I was being pruned, God told me to learn about pruning from an objective agricultural perspective, with no biblical allusions or religious motives.
Here's what I learned:
Less growth, better fruit - Vine pruning is an essential gardening technique done before spring that shapes plants, promotes health, and maximizes grape production. Without pruning, plants waste energy growing in all directions rather than focusing on producing good fruit. Sometimes our activities or commitments need similar evaluation.
Balance matters - Plants need the right balance of leaves (which produce energy) and fruit (which use that energy). Too many fruits with too few leaves means nothing ripens properly. Too many leaves with too little fruit wastes the plant's energy and resources. Good growth requires finding the right balance between doing and supporting. It’s the vinedresser’s job to maintain a healthy ratio or else risk low quality fruit, reduction in the harvest and loss of income.
The vinedresser is intentional about timing - Pruning is done in winter to give the plants the time they need to recover from the “wounds of pruning” before they can produce fruit. The waiting period isn't wasted time—it's necessary healing time.
Removing the unhealthy parts - Pruning cuts away the dead and diseased wooden calluses that form after the previous fruitful season and would otherwise drain energy from the plant. Just because we were fruitful doesn’t mean we are healthy.
Rest seasons are essential - Just as plants have winter dormancy periods where growth pauses but doesn't stop, we need seasons where we appear inactive but are actually gathering strength for future growth.
Practical Wisdom for Doers in Dormant Seasons
For my fellow doers struggling with God-ordained seasons of rest, consider these agricultural principles applied to your spiritual life:
Recognize not all production is good production - Just as vineyards focus on producing fewer leaves in order to produce better grapes, ask yourself: "Is God pruning away good activities to make room for the best ones?"
Trust the process - If winter is looked at in isolation the temporary dormancy might seem like death. Pruning only seems punitive when you don’t understand the full vineyard cycle and the vinedresser’s reasoning.
Make the most of the dormancy - Vines appear inactive in winter but are actually strengthening their root systems. Your season of apparent inactivity is probably when God is doing the deepest work in your heart and perfecting you for an even greater harvest in the coming season. Rest is not taken when gifted can quickly turn to burnout in the full bloom of spring.
Trust the Gardener's timing - The vineyard doesn't set the pruning schedule and is not the best assessor of success; this is the experienced gardener’s job. Trust that God's timing for your dormant season is perfect and out of his love. (Jer 29:11)
The Spiritual Lesson
As a doer, I realized God could trust me to execute—but can He trust me to be still?
Lordship is seen in both the doing and the ceasing.
The vine doesn't question the gardener's shears; it simply trusts that spring will come again—more abundant than before. Perhaps the ultimate test of our faith isn't what we accomplish when we're working, but how we surrender when we're called to stop.