Isaiah 50:10

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 reminds us that there will be times in our lives, as God’s people, that we have to serve God in the darkness. In our comfort based Christianity we don’t like this idea very much and what makes it especially difficult to accept is that it is not talking about someone who has wandered away from God. This is about the person who fears and loves the Lord not the one who has sinned and fallen away. To “fear the Lord” means to love Him on our knees, this is the person who is obeying the voice of God yet surrounded by darkness. In these trying times when we find it difficult to see very far ahead our trust is tested as we question whether God knows what is best for us. The problem is that our ideal of Christianity has created a distorted idea that if a person becomes a Christian, it will be all honey and no bees; all sunlight and roses and no rain and weeds. Christians today desire to be “overcomers” but we do not want much to overcome, we desire to go to heaven but would rather not die in order to get there! In its very essence life is both terrific and tragic, filled with melody and misery, high times and hard times and in the darkness it is hard to stand when we do not understand!

Are you experiencing a dark time in your life? The destruction of a relationship; a broken heart; being taken advantage of; the devastation of a wayward child; financial collapse, marital catastrophe; failing health? The list could go on and on but the bottom line is we are left unable to make any sense of what is happening in our life. As Christians we love to studied our lessons, learn our formulas, memorized the promises in God’s Word, and think we have it all figured out. But what do we do when we are suddenly plunged into deep, deep darkness? In those seasons when we fail to mentally grasp what is transpiring in our lives we question God and we ask why. I think the question that Christians ask more than any other is “Why?” Why the darkness, why did my child have to die? Why could we not carry this child full term? Why did my spouse have to break my heart? Why did my business have to go bankrupt? Why did God allow sickness to come to me and those I love? Why did God heal that person and not heal me? Why? Why? Why? When we were in school we did the lessons first and the tests came later but in life we take the tests first and learn the lessons later. So the question greater than Why is What, What will I do and what will I learn when the lights go out and the darkness comes into my life?

There are many lessons that God wants us to learn along the path of life and several lessons we need to learn when we are walking in darkness, without a ray of light, are:

• Devotion doesn’t determine darkness

There are thousands of Christians across the world that fear and love the Lord and yet they are experiencing terrible darkness. It is estimated that more than 100,000 Christians are martyred each year throughout the world. Job said, “God has plunged my path into darkness” (Job 19:8). Habakkuk exclaimed, “How long shall I cry and you not hear” (Hab. 1:2). When John the Baptist was in prison he sent messengers to asked Jesus, “Are you really the Messiah or should we look for someone else?” (Luke 7:20) Each of these great men of God came to a time in their life that they did not understand or comprehend why and what was fully happening. When you read the stories of great saints in history, there is hardly one of them who did not experience the dark night of the soul. Being in darkness does not necessarily mean that you are out of the will of God or that you have sinned. We tend to believe that if we are devoted we will be free from trouble but we need to remember that our devotion does not determine our darkness. In the mist of the darkness our devotion can turn to feelings of being downtrodden and discouraged but we must remember that for the Christian pain is never permanent.

Psalms 143:8-10

8 Let the morning bring me word of your unfailing love, for I have put my trust in you. Show me the way I should go, for I give myself to you 9 Rescue me from my enemies, O Lord, I run to you to hide me 10 Teach me to do your will, for you are my God; May your gracious Spirit lead me forward on a firm footing.

Many of us hold back from trusting God because of our current view of Him which is often based on our past and our parents. So in order to trust we have to break from our past and for that we need a fresh view. Today I would ask that you would pray for a fresh start, that you would be willing to throw off everything that has hindered your view of God in the past. Psalm 143:8-10 is a great way to get a fresh view of who God is and what His desire is for you. My prayer for you today is that you see God for who He is, not only powerful and awesome, but the God who desires to love you and protect you.

The first truth we see about God is His unfailing love for us. Unfailing means inexhaustible and endless which is hard for us to grasp when most of us are used to performance based, conditional love. In order for us to accept and respond to His love we need to trust Him. Some of you, like me, have blamed God for bad things that have happened in your life. The last thing we want to do is get hurt again so we stop trusting the promises of God saying “God I trusted you before and look at where it got me”. When we believe that someone has treated us badly it is tough to get the trust back. Our love for God is conditional so we believe His will be as well but God has an inexhaustible and endless love for us. Sometimes because of His love He allows things to happen so that our faith will increase and often we don’t process this as love.

Unconditional, inexhaustible and endless love is what we say we want and what many of us have been searching for only to experience broken relationships. Yet unconditional love is available to us through a relationship with God, but relationships require trust and each morning when we wake we are invited to step into His endless love. David had an intimate relationship with God where he prayed and opened himself up to God because of his trust in Him. Most of the time our prayer life revolves around what we want because we don’t really trust God enough to ask for what He wants. David’s trust in God allowed him to wake up each day and pray three things: Show Me, Rescue Me, and Teach Me. Do we trust in His perfect plan enough to give our life over to Him in our prayer life? Do we trust enough to say show me? Do we trust enough to really let Him rescue us? Do we trust enough to submit to His teaching?   What if our prayer started out each morning Show Me, Rescue Me, and Teach Me?  What if we started each day experiencing His unfailing love and opening our hearts to His leading, what if we followed our open hearts with open eyes going through the day expecting to see His leading, rescuing and teaching? Yet because of our trust issues our prayer life often starts with our minds already made up and our hearts closed to what God wants to say to us. The problem is that we don’t trust Him enough to let prayer change our opinion or our circumstances.

David’s prayer life consisted of crying out to God and asking God to show him the way he should go because David trusted in God enough to give himself over to Him. Do you want to know the way you should go or do you just want God to approve of the way you want to go? Have you given yourself to God or are you holding something back? Why would David ask God which way to go, shouldn’t he by now, as a man after God’s own heart, already know? But isn’t that how we approach life with God, walking with Him only long enough to get the instructions and then parting ways so we can go implement His plan alone. David understood that God’s way is doing life together, the goal isn’t instructions, its interaction. David acknowledges that it is God’s Spirit that leads us forward onto a firm footing. A firm footing or a solid foundation is built on trust and only when we have that can we really move forward.

David talks about running to God with his problems because he trusted God to hid and heal him. When I was a little kid and I was hurt I always ran to my mom because I trusted and believed that she would comfort me. Who you trust is where you will go with your problems and your pain. The reality is that all of us are hiding, either from God or in God. Is it time for you to trust? Today as you start your day will you pray:

“Lord, sometimes it seems that everything I touch I fail at so Lord today help me to feel your love for me. Show me the way I should go so that I don’t get lost and rescue me from ____________ as I am tired of fighting. Jesus come into my life and not only help me to feel your presence and your love but rescue me from the darkness that I am feeling right now. Lord please teach me your ways as I have failed at mine. Please put my feet on a firm footing as I feel lost and burdened. I do feel like I am tossed back and forth by the waves of life. I want to be secure in your presence. Lord forgive me for my sins and help me to forget my sin. I pray that the evil one would stop bringing up my past failures as you have already forgiven me. Jesus help me also to love others as you love me. Amen