The Discipline Of Darkness

Scripture

Who among you fears the Lord and obeys his servant? If you are walking in darkness, without a ray of light, trust in the Lord and rely on your God.

~Isaiah 50:10, NLT

Quote

At times God puts us through the discipline of darkness to teach us to heed Him. The nightingale sings in the darkness part of the night.

~Oswald Chambers

Faith is not as difficult when we are walking in the light. When everything around us makes sense and we have a clear vision of what God is doing in and through our lives. But there are times we don’t have the light nor the answers we are seeking. When we ask God for direction, we don’t hear His voice or see any light that will give us guidance. We honestly pour our heart out to God but there is no response. The older preachers called this experience the “Dark night of the soul.” Every man of God has or will experience this test of faith. When tragedy hit Job, he was overwhelmed with grief. Nothing made sense. He was the best man on the planet, why was all these bad things happening to him? Job went straight to God but heaven was silent. Job begged God for answers but God left him in the dark. Why does God do this? I’m not sure I know but I believe He is teaching us to trust HIM alone. Not Him and our intellect, not Him and our spiritual gifts, not Him and our experience and certainly not Him and our feelings. God wants our absolute trust. He wants us to rely on Him and nothing else even when things don’t make sense.

There is a temptation when we are in the dark. We are tempted to create our own light. Instead of waiting on God, we begin to manufacture light. In Isaiah 50:11, the scripture says, “But watch out, you who live in your own light and warm yourselves by your own fires.” Instead of trusting God, we use all our resources to come up with our own solution. There is a purpose for the darkness. We would never see the stars if not for the darkness. We have to learn to wait on God, He will speak when He is ready. He will reveal the truth we are seeking when He is ready. Speaking of “lighting our our fires,” I am very afraid that is what worship has come to. The LORD may be weary of my asking, but I pray every week for the same thing, “Let the holy fire fall from heaven, the fire that consumes sin.” It happened in Elijah’s day and it happened again at Pentecost. An older preacher asked me yesterday, “What happened to the days of REVIVAL with altars were filled with repenting sinners?” I told him I had no answer but that I too long for those days of Elijah.

I am afraid there will not be a lot of extra until I get my home computer working. I am doing everything from the headquarters of the EASTERN GATE MINISTRIES and once I got to the house; I’m not coming back. I usually work of extra’s late night but I have picked up another job and I’m doing good to get a blog posted. I put this one together too fast without a lot of proofing. I sure you found several mistakes.