Who experiences the dark night?

We have all experienced dark episodes in our lives, times of discouragement and disappointment and loss. We have all had times when we've faced the natural painful consequences of our own foolish mistakes. There are seasons, though, when people who love God – who are serving Him faithfully – go through extremely difficult, dark times. When that happens, it is easy to question whether the God we serve truly loves us, or whether we are really in the center of His will.

As we noted last week, the Lord allows the dark night to happen to His beloved children, and especially those who are the most faithful, the most loving, the ones who want all of Him. Again, remember Isaiah 50:10, "Who is among you that feareth the Lord, that obeyeth the voice of his servant, that walketh in darkness and hath no light?"

Great Christians are made by great trials. Pain, sorrow and failure are what produce men and women of God. Those with the greatest dreams are often the ones who receive the greatest trials. Eternal lessons seem to require hard places. As Scripture declares, the way we are made "perfect," or whole or complete, is by suffering or by barring ourselves from sin and self (Hebrews 2:10). First, God must take away all our external and internal supports other than Himself, then He can strengthen our inner man, enabling us to experience His fullness – that fullness of Himself we so desperately long for.

The dark night of the soul happens to people who have already accepted the Lord; those who have already given their lives to Him; those already filled with the Spirit; those who have already dedicated their lives to Him; those who have already asked for intimacy; and those who have already been set aside for God's purposes of ministry. Yet, like Job, people who are truly serving God and are in the center of His will can go through very dark times.

Why Does God Send the Dark Night?
There seems to be three things that God is looking for in each of our lives: our salvation, our conviction, and our sanctification.

God wants to prove us, to demonstrate our true heart. Will we be obedient in all things? (2 Corinthians 2:9) Will we obey Him, even when we can't see Him or feel Him? Will we hold on to His truths even though we don't understand what He is doing? Peter writes:
"That the trial of your faith, being much more precious than of gold that perisheth, though it be tried with fire, might be found unto praise and honour and glory at the appearing of Jesus Christ:" -1Peter 1:7
Can we all catch that? The trials of our faith are precious. They are never empty or meaningless, but are destined to have great value both in our personal lives and in the Kingdom. The Lord wants believers who have faith like Job, and who can utter like he did, "Though You slay me, yet will I trust You."
When Job sought the Lord to know why the bad things were happening to him, he got no answer from God. And it's often the same with us. God only tells us that He does have a plan for our lives and, even though we don't understand what that plan is or how it is going to work out, we must trust that He always has our best in view.

When seasoned believers enter this dark night, they are no longer in the beginning stages of learning about the reality of Christ's love and power. Those foundational bricks have been already laid. When dark nights come, we must learn to rely upon our Savior in spite of our circumstances, in spite of our logic and in spite of our human reason. We must trust that only God knows what is best for our lives; therefore, whatever He allows into them He will use it for our good.

God is teaching us that all that matters in this life is knowing and loving Him. He wants us to love Him and rely upon Him regardless of what we desire, regardless of what our intellect is saying and regardless of what we are feeling. He wants us to be able to echo what Paul declares in 2 Corinthians 4:8-11:
"We are troubled on every side, yet not distressed; we are perplexed, but not in despair; Persecuted, but not forsaken; cast down, but not destroyed; Always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our body. For we who live are always delivered unto death for Jesus' sake, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our mortal flesh."
For those who love Jesus and are dedicated to Him, to have His life manifested through us is the greatest thing that could be asked of our lives; it is worth any temporary suffering or difficulty or dark time that God puts in our path. And even during these terrible trials, when things look so very dark, we can still "rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory," (1 Peter 1:8) because we know that even then (and especially then), God is doing wonderful, precious work behind the scenes.

-Koinona House

HORATIO SPAFFORD AND THE NIGHT SEASONS

Horatio Spafford was a prominent lawyer and real estate investor in Chicago when the 1871 Chicago Fire hit and destroyed almost all of his property. Two years later, Spafford sent his wife and four daughters ahead of him to England, where his friend DL Moody would be preaching. On the voyage there, the ship sank and all four children were drowned. His wife alone was saved. The couple went on to have three more children, but tragedy struck again when their four year old son died of pneumonia in 1880. Near the end of his life, Spafford moved to Jerusalem and ran charitable ventures like soup kitchens, hospitals, and orphanages. He died in 1888 of malaria and was buried in Jerusalem.

While Horatio Spafford endured crippling tragedy after tragedy, he is most famous for having written one of the most beloved hymns of all time: "It Is Well With My Soul." In the midst of serious personal sorrow, God brought Spafford to a place of peace and security wholly independent of his circumstances.

It is easy to fear in life. There are no promises of happiness or fairness. If anybody promised you a rose garden, then they were either naive for downright dishonest. In fact, when things seem to be running smoothly, tragedy can and often strikes and knocks us off our temporary pedestals of comfort. In John 16:33, Jesus warned us that in this world we would have troubles. "But be of good cheer," he said, "I have overcome the world."

In 1 Peter 4:17, Peter tells us that as God begins to wrap up time as we know it, He will allow events to happen in the body of Christ that will try us and test us to the max. How will we make it through this time of testing, if we don't understand what God is doing, and if we crumble at the first hint of suffering? We desperately need to have a grasp of what God's purpose is for allowing these kinds of trials and, most importantly, we need to understand what to do and how to act in them.

Night Seasons
During a night season, God initiates a purging, a cleansing and a purifying of our souls from everything that is not of faith. At this time, God crushes our self will, so that He can merge it with His own. In other words, it's our own private Gethsemane. As Jesus cried in the garden, "My soul is exceeding sorrowful unto death...Nevertheless, not what I will, but what Thou wilt." (Mark 14:34-36) During this dark season, God teaches us to say, just as Jesus did, "Not my will, but Thine." (Matthew 26:39)

During this time, God can begin to transform our reliance on physical things to things of the spirit. He wants us to learn to walk by faith, not by our senses, our feelings or our understanding. God wants to teach us how to detach ourselves from all physical, emotional and spiritual supports, so that we will be able to respond with "Not my will, but Thine."

Because this season can often be a time of desolation, of dried bones and ruined hopes, many Christians - because they don't understand what God's will is or what He is doing - get so discouraged and defeated that they give up and turn back.

Many will feel like Job, who "looked for good" but only "evil came"; and for "light," but found only "darkness." (Job 30:26) Or like Isaiah, who uttered "We wait for light, but behold obscurity; for brightness, but we walk in darkness. We grope for the wall like the blind, and we grope as if we had no eyes; we stumble at noonday as in the night; we are in desolate places like dead men." (Isaiah 59:9-10)

If we can only remember during our night season that the Holy Spirit has led us into this darkness on purpose. God is not angry at us, and He has not abandoned us – He paid the ultimate price for us, how could He ever abandon us? He brought us to a necessary place where precious things can happen. As he told Mary, whose brother Lazarus had died, "Said I not unto thee, that, if thou wouldest believe, thou shouldest see the glory of God?" (John 11:40)

It is in these places, when our normal human securities are stripped away and all we have is Jesus, that He can begin to do in us those excellent things that can make all the difference in our lives and in our walk with Him. When the only thing we can do is cling to God, we come to that place where we see Him more clearly than ever before. That's when the fear goes away, and we can join Horatio Spafford in singing with greater appreciation:

When peace, like a river, attendeth my way,

When sorrows like sea billows roll;

Whatever my lot, Thou hast taught me to say,

It is well, it is well with my soul.

Though Satan should buffet, though trials should come,

Let this blest assurance control,

That Christ hath regarded my helpless estate,

And hath shed His own blood for my soul.

My sin, oh the bliss of this glorious thought!

My sin, not in part but the whole,

Is nailed to His cross, and I bear it no more,

Praise the Lord, praise the Lord, O my soul!

For me, be it Christ, be it Christ hence to live:

If Jordan above me shall roll,

No pain shall be mine, for in death as in life

Thou wilt whisper Thy peace to my soul.

And Lord haste the day, when my faith shall be sight,

The clouds be rolled back as a scroll;

The trump shall resound, and the Lord shall descend,

Even so, it is well with my soul.

-Koinona House