Elijah House
The Power of the Cross
Through the Spirit and the Word
Working to Heal and Restore Families
www.elijahhouse.org
The Dark Night Of The Spirit Part 2
Printed in Healing Hearts, Changing Lives Vol. 00 Issue 3
by John Sandford
In the dark night of the soul, our Lord compassionately, yet ruthlessly, breaks every capacity in our soul. That means that our mentality, our emotions, our behavior, our characteristics, practices in our old nature-all that our soul is-He crushes. He has to divest us of all that our self cherishes and has confidence in.But through the years He was taking me through that, I could still rest in the sense that in my spirit I would still love Him and seek Him. I knew I still wanted to pray, even if I couldn't. I yearned still to try to hear Him and obey, though all was in darkness. My spirit still wanted to know Him and do what was right. That remained a confidence in something in myself rather than in Him. That had eventually to be brought to death. When He knows we have been readied by His Spirit, He takes away even all that willingness in our spirit to love and serve Him!
In the dark night of the spirit, our hunger for the things of God dies! In our inmost man (as St. Paul speaks of our spirit in Romans 7:22), we no longer want to pray or worship or go out to do good works. But we keep on keeping on because, before He could safely plunge us into that depth, He made sure to build into us duty and determination to continue on by His grace.
Strangely (to me), people kept telling us the anointing on us was greater than ever before! But the key word has to do with motivation: I no longer wanted to do what we were doing. The heart of holy desire had gone out of me. Mighty prophecies of great works had been said over us, but my heart didn't leap up in joy at the prospect. I felt like a Jonah, stuck in the darkness of the belly of the whale.
How painful that is! During the dark night of the spirit, you can't pump up your feelings. You can't make yourself feel right again. You long for what you once had-that hunger for God, that sense of delight in loving and serving Him-but you can't make it happen. You can even find yourself wrestling with envy of others whose spirits seem to leap so willingly and joyously into anything of the Lordintercession, worship, prayer, reading the Bible, whatever it may be.
The blessed times in worship and wonderful experiences of serving will still occasionally happen, but you can't say you'd sought them; it's as if you're being dragged backwards, unwillingly, into the Kingdom. You procrastinate about devotional times, whereas you used to leap joyfully into them.
Right after wondrous, high times in the Spirit, I would flee into sports on TV, or yard and garden work, or reading unspiritual novels-anything that would take my mind out of track, numbing and silencing the questions burgeoning up: "What's wrong with me? Why don't I want what I should?" You exasperate those who look to you to take the lead. They alternately scold and plead, "What's the matter with you?" And you can't answer, because you don't know. It's a mystery. "Why has my heart deserted the God I love with all my being?or do I really love Him?
Why does he do that to us, or allow it? It's exactly the same as in the dark night of the soul. Previously, He had to break every confidence in our soul; now He must smash every confidence we've held in our spirit. Until He does this, we're unaware of how proud we are of our feelings for Him-and laterally, how judgmental we are about those who don't seem to experience what we do, how much we have elevated ourselves above them. We have forgotten, or actually never knew in the depths of our spirit, what our mind may have been preaching all along: "there, but for the grace of God, go I." It's one thing to know biblically that there is no good capacity in us (Romans 7:19), but entirely another to have that reality written by daily experience into the very marrow of our bones.
The dark night of the spirit is not actually something new happening to us; the sickness in our spirit has been there all along. God is just removing enough of His empowering grace to cause us to realize it. The dark night of the spirit is thus another more fundamental dying of ourselves, done to us by the Lord Who loves us. "Not by might nor by power but by My Spirit" now takes on a far more profound depth.
Coming out of it, I find words somehow inadequate for communicating what blessings and comfort result. Here are a few hints: there is a quiet restfulness and assurance, a new depth of security. Human zeal wanes, replaced by a deposit of faith that simply and easily knows He will accomplish what He wills and will Himself move you to it.
You don't become passive, or inactive. At times you may work and serve with more energy than before, but something of that self-centered need to make it happen has gone out of you.
You find arising an unforced compassion for others. That is, you don't have to remind yourself, or make yourself think kindly and non-judgmentally of others. You just feel at one with all, knowing you're every bit as sinful and corrupt as they, yet resting in the knowledge that God will move upon them and you in His own time and way.
1 Peter 5:10 comes home to roost in your heart as reality, "And after you have suffered a little while, the God of all grace, who called you to His eternal glory in Christ, will Himself perfect, confirm, strengthen and establish you."
You're not perfect. You're still a mess but you know you're a glory-filled mess! And you have come into what I can only describe as spiritual contentedness. Philippians 4:12 comes alive in your heart, "I know how to get along with humble means, and I also know how to live in prosperity; in any and all circumstance I have learned the secret of being filled and going hungry, both of abundance and suffering need."
Some of you may understand what I'm saying here because you're going through it. To you I say, "Take heart; there's an end to it, and there's comfort in understanding perhaps, comprehending this, you may not blame yourself so severely."
For those living with loved ones who are not acting like they used to because the dark night of the spirit is on them, "Take heart, wait patiently, they'll return after awhile." It was such a relief to Paula when she understood what was behind the seemingly bad changes in me.
It's a different day now. It will also be, both for those who suffer through it and for those who suffer them while they do. How good and wonderful God is. There's just no way to express it. Besides, Jesus has already expressed it-in all He said and did and does.
For more information about Elijah House...
Phone: (208) 773-1645; Fax: (208) 773-1647
9:00 AM to 5:00 PM pacific standard time, Mon-Fri.
General Email: ehinfo@elijahhouse.org
Elijah House
17397 W Laura Ln
Post Falls, ID, USA 83854
208-773-1645
fax 208-773-1647
http://www.elijahhouse.org
