You may have heard of the expression, “The Dark Night of the Soul.” It sounds scary. But what does it mean?
The Dark Night is basically a withdrawal of some of God’s blessings so that we will cling to him more. It is painful to let go of good things so that we will depend on something better.
Let me explain by giving you an example from my life. To some extent, much of the last three years have been a Dark Night experience for me. In that time, I lost my church family of 31 years where I was loved and respected, I lost my health for over a year in recovering from major heart surgery, and I lost having positions of leadership.
God had used this loving community, leadership positions, and good health to help me realize that he loved me, I was important to him, and that I was secure. Now, he wanted me to believe these things were true without the props.
But in the short run, my soul went through a Dark Night. In that time, I grew stronger in relying on who I was to God, and not so much on what other people and things told me.
What It Is
One of the key things God does in bringing us to maturity is to remove the idols from our heart. Idols are anything we depend on other than God to meet our needs. For some of us, it’s food instead of God’s comfort. For others, it’s power instead of the worth that comes from being God’s precious child. And for others, it’s pleasing people instead of pleasing God. You name it and someone has probably made it an idol.
We will tend to tenaciously cling to food, power, and pleasing people at all cost, until God pries them from our clutching fingers through Dark Nights. It’s then that our hurting soul discovers that even though we don’t have these things anymore, we still have God and his better ways to meet those needs.
Why God Allows Them
Most of us want this Christian life to be comfortable. There are often a lot of benefits in following God, such as improved marriages, better health and some of the nicest people on the planet to be with. But God wants us to grow up. He wants us to love him for himself, and not just for his benefits.
In the Dark Night, we lose many of the idols that keep us from relying on him. We realize that all our efforts at earning praise, being liked, and being comfortable don’t work well enough. We are learning to “cease striving and know that I am God” (Psalm 46:10). And that is enough to satisfy us.
In the Dark Night, we are being disciplined (trained) by God to find our needs for love, power, and purpose met in a more intimate love relationship with him. We realize that “no discipline is enjoyable while it is happening–it’s painful! But afterward there will be a peaceful harvest of right living for those who are trained in this way” (Hebrews 12:11, NLT).
Journey into Lightl 