In trying to decide what to write next, I considered that "The Dark of the Night" was kind of a heavy blog post. Not my usual light-hearted tone. Wouldn't it be nice to write about the dawning of a new morning, and the arrival of joy, on the heels of such darkness? But that often is not how life works. The night lingers on sometimes. It has for me, in the process that has spurred the thoughts and reflections I journal here. So to mirror my own journey, here is something to chew on regarding the Lord's discipline, which often accompanies or follows or perhaps even causes a dark night of the soul.
Hebrews 12 is such a beautiful explanation of the Lord's discipline, most especially the assurance that, "[t]he Lord disciplines the one He loves, and chastises every son whom He receives," (verse 6). (In fact, just go read the whole chapter now; no, really.)
Did you hear that, Christian? Every son whom He receives. Every one of us who belong to Him will be disciplined by Him at some point. But why? Aren't we washed in the blood, adopted into the family, guaranteed a crown of glory and eternal life? I love Romans 8:28-30 for this reason: it's all in the past tense. Beloved, it is finished! Christ's work on the cross atoned for our sins, each one of them, including the worst ones and the ones that you keep going back to. Christ's sinless life was imputed to us, a righteous robe to cover our nakedness. Listen to the verbs in the passage, which apply to us, His children, in this order: God foreknew us; predestined us; called us; justified us; glorified us. Would God in His holy word speak of something in the past tense, which was not guaranteed and etched into eternity? From a heavenly standpoint, not only have God's foreknowledge, predestination, calling, and justification been accomplished, but so too our glorification. Ok, so we are washed and sealed. Done deal. Why, then, discipline?
The verse right smack in the middle of those finished, accomplished verbs tells us why we were predestined: to be conformed to the image of God's son, in order that He might be the firstborn among many brothers. Elsewhere we are told not to be conformed to our passions (1 Peter 1:14) or to the world, but transformed by the renewing of our minds (Romans 12:2). God indeed chose you before the foundation of the world (Ephesians 1:4) to be adopted as His child. He promised you to Christ as an inheritance from eternity past, and as Christ stepped into history and died on the cross, He closed His almighty fist around you for eternity to come. Bought and paid for, nothing shall separate you from His love! (Romans 8:37-39) And.
AND. In this life, we are not immediately sanctified and sinless upon receiving new life in Christ. The New Testament, especially Paul's letters, are brimming with exhortations to put off the old self and put on the new. Lay aside your sin and strive for Christlikeness. In fact, if you spend much time trying to discern God's will for your life, consider 1 Thessalonians 4:3 which states it plainly. "For this is the will of God, your sanctification," and goes on to list specifics.
How does the Lord discipline us? Here is the heart of this post. Previously, I mentioned the observation that His discipline is perfect in its measure, its meticulousness, and its mercy. Would you bear with me while I unpack those aspects of the Lord's dealings with us? These are my reflections. Bear with me.
If you've experienced what you believe might be the Lord's discipline, consider its measure. Did the Lord chastise you tenfold for your sin? Or did He bring a measure of spiritual burden sufficient to get your attention, to motivate you to identify and lay aside the sin, but limited to what you with His grace could endure? Indeed, "a bruised reed He will not break, and a faintly burning wick He will not quench," (Isaiah 42:3). I reflect on my own experience of this, and how marvelously the Lord fitted the discipline to His child and to my sin. I felt the long heaviness of night, struggled deeply with negative thoughts, temptations to sin. It felt intense, and were it not for the promises of Scripture, I might have believed myself to be alone with my burdens. Was it too much? I am what some might call strong-willed. Hard-headed, even. The measure required to change my heart and humble me before the Lord...well, it might take for me a bulldozer where for another it would only require a thimbleful of rebuke. I acknowledge the Lord's good measure of discipline.
When I use the word "meticulousness" in reference to God's discipline, it is admittedly for the sake of alliteration, and what I mean is precision. The nature of my struggle, my discipline, my dark night, was directly related to the nature of my besetting sins. The Lord uses the sharpest scalpel, His word, to divide flesh and sinew, soul and spirit. One such instrument He used to teach me was the first chapter of Romans, wherein He reminded me that the judgement of sin is often, in fact, the sin itself. Or the fruit of that sin. Now God does not abandon His chosen ones utterly to our sin (mercy!), but does He give us a taste of its bitter fruit as a lesson? I believe He allowed certain negative thought processes and temptations in my heart in order that I would see the result of not repenting of tiny sins while they were yet tiny. It was like Alice down the rabbit hole: without the anchoring of God's truth, my thoughts were for a season tossed about, lies appearing lovely, and truth appearing unattainable. But with the purpose of tracing and excising one particular thread of sinful thought and action.
(And on lies appearing lovely: this relates SO MUCH to spiritual warfare, and after all, couldn't the Lord's discipline take the form of sending us into battle in order to learn our weakness and need of His strength?)
So what I mean is, God didn't give me financial poverty (to pluck a hardship out of a hat) in order to discipline me for impatience and anger toward my children (again, just a for-instance, I don't know anybody at my house who struggles with patience...). That doesn't match up at all. Not that he couldn't work that way at times, I suppose, but He isn't out to stump us. Rather, He graciously took the budding leaves of my sin and with surgical precision, drew out my inner thoughts and feelings tracing that one stem directly to its ugly root. One was directly related in cause and nature to the other. Who would have thought.
By the way, all these thoughts are meant less in a teaching sense and more in a marveling sense at the perfectness of God as our Father and Shepherd. God has been doing these things in my life, and I wonder if anybody else has had such a staggering sense of God's divine (wonderful, terrible) attention upon their sin? Yet to come are some thoughts on the mercy of the Lord's discipline. How kind of Him to press us into the mold of Christ! Soli deo gloria.
The Dark of the Night
Friend, have you ever had to fight for your joy? You know, the joy of the Lord that is our strength (Nahum 8:10) and the fruit of the spirit (Galatians 5:22). As God's children, we are called to live a life characterized by a number of qualities, one of which is a steadfast joy. The Psalms in particular are rife with allusions to joy (see Psalm 4, 21, 43, and 66 among myriad others).
Thankfully, though, the Scriptures are also overflowing with reassurances that life is HARD. To be human is to wrestle with sorrow, with pain, and with our own sin. Unendingly, with our own sin. As I type this, I feel my spirit groan with all of creation at this awful truth (Romans 8:22). I've been through childbirth thrice. I am familiar with the focused, purposeful groaning referenced here. A groaning as one summoning every ounce of inner strength to withstand some suffering which is promised to end, but feels at the moment infinite. What a wonderful metaphor, childbirth: such travail, ending in a joyful cry of life! Have you wept with joy or relief at the birth of a new child? The long wait, and the long-burgeoning discomfort of the mother, are all but forgotten. Two of my own children were born soon after morning's first light, bringing to mind the Psalmist's words: "Weeping may tarry for the night, but joy comes with the morning." (Psalm 30:5)
But what about the night, when you are long in it? When your soul weighs heavy within you? The first half of the verse above says that, "his anger is but for a moment, and his favor is for a lifetime." It's really, incredibly hard to make sense of suffering. Is the Lord angry at me? I ask you, are you a child of His? Or is this night of yours so dark that you despair even of your salvation? Beloved, if you are wrestling in the dark of night, know for certain that you would not struggle in this way if you were not alive in the spirit. Those who truly walk in the dark have no knowledge of it; "God gave them a spirit of stupor, eyes that would not see and ears that would not hear." (Romans 11:8). They might suffer trials, but as ones with no knowledge of the hope of Christ.
But if you feel that you are far from the Lord, and it gives you any anguish at all, or any tiny desire that He would shine His face upon you and give you peace, then take courage. You might be yet in the throes of childbirth, but you possess the heartbeat of life! I take this wisdom from R.C. Sproul, a brilliant Reformed thinker and teacher, who teaches that if you have any inkling of struggle with sin, the tiniest affection for Christ all, then you are completely and irrevocably His. What blessed assurance! So, belonging to Him, in your suffering, rest in the knowledge that He is not angry at you. His divine wrath was poured out to the uttermost, its flames burned themselves out, on Jesus at the cross. No, God is not angry at you.
So how then to understand the dark night of the soul? Greater minds than mine have expounded on this. My little litmus test is this: have I invited the Lord's discipline upon me in some way, or is He allowing a chastening time in my life in order to purify my soul and glorify His name? I think of either Job, whom the Lord gave to be tested for seemingly no earthly reason (but have you read the end of the book? Was all of Job's testing a set-up for God's awe-inspiring, mouth-shutting, heart-quivering glorification of Himself? And why not?), or Hebrews 12 speaking of all discipline feeling painful rather than pleasant at the moment, but yielding the peaceful fruit of righteousness.
Discipline: not divine anger. We earthly parents do sometimes discipline out of anger, but sinfully so. The Lord's discipline is perfect in its measure, its meticulousness, and its mercy. Much more on this in another post, but know that when the Lord disciplines you, it is as one tenderly yet irresistibly swelling you toward repentance. Think more of being enticed toward Him, and your sin clinging painfully though you tear freer with each obedient step. Or, even, His gentle fingers wresting that sin from your own...yet your tight grasp on sin might cause great pain in the letting go. Yes, He causes pain, but so tenderly, and always, always, always supplies the balm of His grace right behind the wounding.
What then if it is not discipline? I daresay there is always some sin to locate in my own heart, so first off, it is probably fair to presume that most of life's trials provide a means of discipline. That is not to say, again, that the Lord is constantly bemoaning or punishing my shortcomings, but rather that His will is to conform me to the likeness of His very Son! What better use could there be for my life than to spend it in the consuming fire of my Creator's holiness, so that when I meet Him face to face, it is with the purest, finest gold to offer Him (Malachi 3:2-3). For those whom He has chosen to be His, He has predestined to be conformed to the likeness of Christ (Romans 8:29). So if suffering is not discipline for one particular overt sin, perhaps it is to be felt as the general pressing in of the soul to the mold of Christ.
But again, perhaps it is not discipline per se, but a sifting, a testing such as what God permitted to happen to Job (Job 1:6-12). The book of Job reads to me as if God is pleased sometimes to seek His own glory through the challenging of His people. He does not abandon Job, nor does He permit Satan to have ultimate power over Job's life. With Satan's power as with the ocean: "Thus far you can come, and no further." (Job 38:11) Yet look at how magnified God is through Job's suffering! He is magnified in Job's own heart, He receives glory as Job answers his friends, and He engineers a marvelous opportunity to deliver a thunderous diatribe of His own majesty and omnipotence. If your soul is suffering, know that God is doing something mysterious for His own glory, and trust Him. Again, what better use for my life than to bear firsthand witness to God's glorification of Himself? This is the ultimate in "It's not about me." In fact, if anything in this writing sounds harsh or unfair from a human perspective, be reminded that it's not ultimately about us. God's love for us and divine, eternal plan of reconciliation, though it benefits us infinitely, is at its uttermost a grand narrative of glory, meant for us to marvel, to raise our hands in exuberant "Amen!" and to bow low in adoration. Soli deo gloria!! (The five solas of the Reformation)
Before I ramble far beyond the scope of this first post, let me return to my opening question. Have you ever groaned under the weight of spiritual darkness, whether in the guise of loss, trial, or temptation to sin? Then you know that this is a fight in the most somber and dreadful sense of the word. There on the pages of your Bible are all God's promises of joy and light and the pleasure of His countenance, when all you feel is weak and dark and doubtful. Maybe you even feel certain that you are bent to the point of breaking, or sure that you are about to buckle to the weight of temptation, or grieved that you have already succumbed to sin. Perhaps you are reduced to a sense of numbness or depression, an ache for just a glimpse of light over the horizon.
Then fight for your joy, beloved, with the full armor of God at your disposal.
(Ephesians 6:11-12)
If you feel too weak to fight, then stand firm in Christ.
(Galatians 5:1)
If your burdens are so heavy you cannot stand, then cry out from the depths!
(Psalm 130)
And if even your voice is too much to raise, lift your eyes, beloved.
(Psalm 121)
As the Israelites who in the wilderness looked to the serpent and were healed, look to Jesus and have hope.
(John 3:14)
For you once were dead in your sin, but God made you alive together with Christ! (Ephesians 2:1,5)
Moreover, "He delivered us from such a deadly peril, and He will deliver us. On Him we have set our hope, that He will deliver us again."
(2 Corinthians 1:10)
This is the first in a series on things like the dark night of the soul, spiritual dryness, the Lord's discipline, what it means to fight for joy, and how He uses sin and suffering in the life of the believer. I don't claim to be an authority on these things, but have felt led to share what the Lord has been teaching me in His walk with poor, slow-to-learn me. I'm not sure what all I plan to write just yet, but it's my prayer that someone out there would feel encouraged and that God would be glorified. Indeed, soli deo gloria!
Thankfully, though, the Scriptures are also overflowing with reassurances that life is HARD. To be human is to wrestle with sorrow, with pain, and with our own sin. Unendingly, with our own sin. As I type this, I feel my spirit groan with all of creation at this awful truth (Romans 8:22). I've been through childbirth thrice. I am familiar with the focused, purposeful groaning referenced here. A groaning as one summoning every ounce of inner strength to withstand some suffering which is promised to end, but feels at the moment infinite. What a wonderful metaphor, childbirth: such travail, ending in a joyful cry of life! Have you wept with joy or relief at the birth of a new child? The long wait, and the long-burgeoning discomfort of the mother, are all but forgotten. Two of my own children were born soon after morning's first light, bringing to mind the Psalmist's words: "Weeping may tarry for the night, but joy comes with the morning." (Psalm 30:5)
But what about the night, when you are long in it? When your soul weighs heavy within you? The first half of the verse above says that, "his anger is but for a moment, and his favor is for a lifetime." It's really, incredibly hard to make sense of suffering. Is the Lord angry at me? I ask you, are you a child of His? Or is this night of yours so dark that you despair even of your salvation? Beloved, if you are wrestling in the dark of night, know for certain that you would not struggle in this way if you were not alive in the spirit. Those who truly walk in the dark have no knowledge of it; "God gave them a spirit of stupor, eyes that would not see and ears that would not hear." (Romans 11:8). They might suffer trials, but as ones with no knowledge of the hope of Christ.
But if you feel that you are far from the Lord, and it gives you any anguish at all, or any tiny desire that He would shine His face upon you and give you peace, then take courage. You might be yet in the throes of childbirth, but you possess the heartbeat of life! I take this wisdom from R.C. Sproul, a brilliant Reformed thinker and teacher, who teaches that if you have any inkling of struggle with sin, the tiniest affection for Christ all, then you are completely and irrevocably His. What blessed assurance! So, belonging to Him, in your suffering, rest in the knowledge that He is not angry at you. His divine wrath was poured out to the uttermost, its flames burned themselves out, on Jesus at the cross. No, God is not angry at you.
So how then to understand the dark night of the soul? Greater minds than mine have expounded on this. My little litmus test is this: have I invited the Lord's discipline upon me in some way, or is He allowing a chastening time in my life in order to purify my soul and glorify His name? I think of either Job, whom the Lord gave to be tested for seemingly no earthly reason (but have you read the end of the book? Was all of Job's testing a set-up for God's awe-inspiring, mouth-shutting, heart-quivering glorification of Himself? And why not?), or Hebrews 12 speaking of all discipline feeling painful rather than pleasant at the moment, but yielding the peaceful fruit of righteousness.
Discipline: not divine anger. We earthly parents do sometimes discipline out of anger, but sinfully so. The Lord's discipline is perfect in its measure, its meticulousness, and its mercy. Much more on this in another post, but know that when the Lord disciplines you, it is as one tenderly yet irresistibly swelling you toward repentance. Think more of being enticed toward Him, and your sin clinging painfully though you tear freer with each obedient step. Or, even, His gentle fingers wresting that sin from your own...yet your tight grasp on sin might cause great pain in the letting go. Yes, He causes pain, but so tenderly, and always, always, always supplies the balm of His grace right behind the wounding.
What then if it is not discipline? I daresay there is always some sin to locate in my own heart, so first off, it is probably fair to presume that most of life's trials provide a means of discipline. That is not to say, again, that the Lord is constantly bemoaning or punishing my shortcomings, but rather that His will is to conform me to the likeness of His very Son! What better use could there be for my life than to spend it in the consuming fire of my Creator's holiness, so that when I meet Him face to face, it is with the purest, finest gold to offer Him (Malachi 3:2-3). For those whom He has chosen to be His, He has predestined to be conformed to the likeness of Christ (Romans 8:29). So if suffering is not discipline for one particular overt sin, perhaps it is to be felt as the general pressing in of the soul to the mold of Christ.
But again, perhaps it is not discipline per se, but a sifting, a testing such as what God permitted to happen to Job (Job 1:6-12). The book of Job reads to me as if God is pleased sometimes to seek His own glory through the challenging of His people. He does not abandon Job, nor does He permit Satan to have ultimate power over Job's life. With Satan's power as with the ocean: "Thus far you can come, and no further." (Job 38:11) Yet look at how magnified God is through Job's suffering! He is magnified in Job's own heart, He receives glory as Job answers his friends, and He engineers a marvelous opportunity to deliver a thunderous diatribe of His own majesty and omnipotence. If your soul is suffering, know that God is doing something mysterious for His own glory, and trust Him. Again, what better use for my life than to bear firsthand witness to God's glorification of Himself? This is the ultimate in "It's not about me." In fact, if anything in this writing sounds harsh or unfair from a human perspective, be reminded that it's not ultimately about us. God's love for us and divine, eternal plan of reconciliation, though it benefits us infinitely, is at its uttermost a grand narrative of glory, meant for us to marvel, to raise our hands in exuberant "Amen!" and to bow low in adoration. Soli deo gloria!! (The five solas of the Reformation)
Before I ramble far beyond the scope of this first post, let me return to my opening question. Have you ever groaned under the weight of spiritual darkness, whether in the guise of loss, trial, or temptation to sin? Then you know that this is a fight in the most somber and dreadful sense of the word. There on the pages of your Bible are all God's promises of joy and light and the pleasure of His countenance, when all you feel is weak and dark and doubtful. Maybe you even feel certain that you are bent to the point of breaking, or sure that you are about to buckle to the weight of temptation, or grieved that you have already succumbed to sin. Perhaps you are reduced to a sense of numbness or depression, an ache for just a glimpse of light over the horizon.
Then fight for your joy, beloved, with the full armor of God at your disposal.
(Ephesians 6:11-12)
If you feel too weak to fight, then stand firm in Christ.
(Galatians 5:1)
If your burdens are so heavy you cannot stand, then cry out from the depths!
(Psalm 130)
And if even your voice is too much to raise, lift your eyes, beloved.
(Psalm 121)
As the Israelites who in the wilderness looked to the serpent and were healed, look to Jesus and have hope.
(John 3:14)
For you once were dead in your sin, but God made you alive together with Christ! (Ephesians 2:1,5)
Moreover, "He delivered us from such a deadly peril, and He will deliver us. On Him we have set our hope, that He will deliver us again."
(2 Corinthians 1:10)
This is the first in a series on things like the dark night of the soul, spiritual dryness, the Lord's discipline, what it means to fight for joy, and how He uses sin and suffering in the life of the believer. I don't claim to be an authority on these things, but have felt led to share what the Lord has been teaching me in His walk with poor, slow-to-learn me. I'm not sure what all I plan to write just yet, but it's my prayer that someone out there would feel encouraged and that God would be glorified. Indeed, soli deo gloria!
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