Those Dark Times

How to Deal with Dark Times from Crossway on Vimeo.


From How to Deal With Dark Times by Mike Bullmore at Crossway

All of us are going to experience darkness in our lives. There’s no avoiding it and there’s no guarantee that because we’re in a saving relationship with God through Christ that we’re going to be exempt from it—we’re not.

But in the midst of this, Psalm 88 comes in and speaks to us in our darkest times, whether the result of disappointment, loss, betrayal, or any number of things. We're all going to experience what the writer of Psalm 88 experienced: the sense of a loss of inner strength, even to the point of despair. Psalm 88 is in our Bibles to let us know that, when we experience that sort of thing, we’re not alone; it’s not an uncommon human experience.

But far more important than letting us know we’re not alone, Psalm 88 tells us what to do in that experience. It embodies for us the right pattern of how to act in the darkness. Three times in the chapter, the psalmist cries out to God, and that structures the psalm. Psalm 88 is actually a turning to God in the darkness. It’s telling God about the darkness. It’s trusting in God despite the darkness.

Psalm 88 ends up reminding us we’re not alone in hard times and helps us to know what to do—turn to God.

Moving On in the Silence

We all go through seasons when our prayers seem to bounce off the ceiling. If you are in one now, read this excerpt from 5 Things To Do When God Seems Distant by Rebecca Rene Jones (via Relevant)

Know That What You're Experiencing Is Normal

It is so unshockingly normal that C.S. Lewis actually said our fluctuating feelings about God were perhaps the only constant of our faith. "The law of Undulation," he nicknamed it. In a nutshell, "undulation" implies that the Christian walk is a back and forth rocking between sweet "communications of His presence" and then, later: wilderness and soul-numbing silence.

In The Screwtape Letters, Lewis writes that God “withdraws, if not in fact, (then) at least from … conscious experience … He leaves the creature to stand up on its own legs—to carry out from the will alone duties which have lost all relish.” This may seem unpleasant, but it works in us something that's critical to our spiritual maturity: a decoupling of our faith from our feelings about it.

Undulation forces us to go beyond our own gut—and beyond our circumstances—and agree that God is good and attentive even when life suggests otherwise.

Embrace Boring Things

Today's temptation is to bide time by distracting ourselves. We are categorically bad at waiting, at welcoming quiet, at actively wanting from God. We are much better at filling in downtime and numbing our aches with Pinterest, Twitter and Netflix.

But God dares us to do something different: To stay expectant. To stay hungry. To practice hope, as Paul says, by patiently and confidently fixing our attention on the promises we don't yet possess (Romans 8:24-25).

Carve out quiet places to remember what you're hoping for. For me, after Dad died, that meant taking lots of lonesome bike rides and a tedious part-time job counting pills at a local pharmacy. It'd be a stretch to call these spiritual disciplines, but I'll go to the mat for this: they helped me protect a precious hush that God eventually spoke into.

Tell God What You Think

It's OK to be blunt. The great prophet Elijah even prayed to die. "I have had enough, Lord," he said (1 Kings: 19:4). His earnestness isn't exactly an anomaly, either: so many psalms echo some version of this, peppering God with the same rolling questions: Why haven't you moved sooner? Or in quite the way we'd hoped?

On the surface, they might seem presumptuous, but at their heartbeat, these questions are actually something different: They are appeals to God's good character. They're sincere questions that finger a perceived disconnect between who God says He is and why His action—or seeming lack of action—seems out of step with his nature.

Sometimes, we confuse waiting on God with plunking down until we're handed crisp itineraries.

Absence

From @DailyKeller

The Silence of God

Andrew Peterson- The Silence of God.  - Some of you will need these words today.




HT: Dane Ortlund

Hope For Those Dark Nights

Why do so many believers go through the experience known  as the "Dark Night of the Soul"?" J. I. Packer says:

[Sometimes] “God brings on dryness, with resultant restlessness of heart, in order to induce a new depth of humble, hopeful openness to himself, which he then crowns with a liberating and animating reassurance of his love – one that goes beyond anything that was sensed before. As Christ’s humiliation and grief on the cross preceded his exaltation to the joy of his throne, so over and over again humbling experiences of impotence and frustration precede inward renewing, with a sense of triumph and glory, in the believer’s heart. Thus, with wisdom adapted to each Christian’s temperament, circumstances, and needs, our heavenly Father draws and binds his children closer to himself.”

     - J. I. Packer, Rediscovering Holiness [Servant Publications, 1992], pages 100-01.

HT: Sam Storms

Dark Nights

(Update: I had posted that this quote was from R.C. Sproul, Jr. In fact, it was from his father, R.C. Sproul, Sr. Post corrected below )

The Dark Night of the Soul by R.C, Sproul:

The dark night of the soul. This phenomenon describes a malady that the greatest of Christians have suffered from time to time. It was the malady that provoked David to soak his pillow with tears. It was the malady that earned for Jeremiah the sobriquet, "The Weeping Prophet." It was the malady that so afflicted Martin Luther that his melancholy threatened to destroy him. This is no ordinary fit of depression, but it is a depression that is linked to a crisis of faith, a crisis that comes when one senses the absence of God or gives rise to a feeling of abandonment by Him.

Spiritual depression is real and can be acute. We ask how a person of faith could experience such spiritual lows, but whatever provokes it does not take away from its reality. Our faith is not a constant action. It is mobile. It vacillates. We move from faith to faith, and in between we may have periods of doubt when we cry, "Lord, I believe, help Thou my unbelief."

We may also think that the dark night of the soul is something completely incompatible with the fruit of the Spirit, not only that of faith but also that of joy. Once the Holy Spirit has flooded our hearts with a joy unspeakable, how can there be room in that chamber for such darkness? It is important for us to make a distinction between the spiritual fruit of joy and the cultural concept of happiness. A Christian can have joy in his heart while there is still spiritual depression in his head. The joy that we have sustains us through these dark nights and is not quenched by spiritual depression. The joy of the Christian is one that survives all downturns in life.

In writing to the Corinthians in his second letter, Paul commends to his readers the importance of preaching and of communicating the Gospel to people. But in the midst of that, he reminds the church that the treasure we have from God is a treasure that is contained not in vessels of gold and silver but in what the apostle calls "jars of clay." For this reason he says, "that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us." Immediately after this reminder, the apostle adds, "We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies" (2 Cor. 4:7­-10)

This passage indicates the limits of depression that we experience. The depression may be profound, but it is not permanent, nor is it fatal. Notice that the apostle Paul describes our condition in a variety of ways. He says that we are "afflicted, perplexed, persecuted, and struck down." These are powerful images that describe the conflict that Christians must endure, but in every place that he describes this phenomenon, he describes at the same time its limits. Afflicted, but not crushed. Perplexed, but not in despair. Persecuted, but not forsaken. Struck down, but not destroyed.

The Dark Night of the Soul

Below is an excerpt from a good article by R.C. Sproul on The Dark Night of the Soul:

"The dark night of the soul. This phenomenon describes a malady that the greatest of Christians have suffered from time to time. It was the malady that provoked David to soak his pillow with tears. It was the malady that earned for Jeremiah the sobriquet, "The Weeping Prophet." It was the malady that so afflicted Martin Luther that his melancholy threatened to destroy him. This is no ordinary fit of depression, but it is a depression that is linked to a crisis of faith, a crisis that comes when one senses the absence of God or gives rise to a feeling of abandonment by Him.

Spiritual depression is real and can be acute. We ask how a person of faith could experience such spiritual lows, but whatever provokes it does not take away from its reality. Our faith is not a constant action. It is mobile. It vacillates. We move from faith to faith, and in between we may have periods of doubt when we cry, "Lord, I believe, help Thou my unbelief."

After discussing several Scripture passges about discouragement and despair, Sproul concludes:

"This coexistence of faith and spiritual depression is paralleled in other biblical statements of emotive conditions. We are told that it is perfectly legitimate for believers to suffer grief. Our Lord Himself was a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. Though grief may reach to the roots of our souls, it must not result in bitterness. Grief is a legitimate emotion, at times even a virtue, but there must be no place in the soul for bitterness. In like manner, we see that it is a good thing to go to the house of mourning, but even in mourning, that low feeling must not give way to hatred. The presence of faith gives no guarantee of the absence of spiritual depression; however, the dark night of the soul always gives way to the brightness of the noonday light of the presence of God."

I've been through some times like this; I can remember exact dates when they began and ended. I've watched my wife go through it also and suffered with her. Christians in general, and Charismatic Christians in particular, don't seem to know how to handle these experiences or how to help and support those going through them. It does not always just go away with a quick prayer and an encouragement to "look on the bright side" or "rejoice in the Lord, Brother!" You can't always command it away. Sometimes we just suffer, sometimes for long periods of time. I do know this: the Lord Jesus suffers with us in these times.

May the Lord be with any of my readers who are going through one of these times right now. Weeping may endure for the night, but joy will come in the morning.