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.

God wants to teach His children how to know Him apart from feelings. He wants to deepen your walk with Him and show you how to rely on Him through faith so you can experience true rest in your relationship with Him. As we go through the darkness we must remember that it is simply a pathway to greater spiritual maturity, God is still with you and His purpose is both redemptive and constructive.

•             What is revealed in the light is often developed in the dark

When do we seem to grow the most spiritually, during the sunlight or the darkness? When the difficulty of darkness comes knocking at the door of our heart we may moan but we also seem to mature more than at other times in our life. When I was in college I developed all the film for the newspaper and yearbook and so I spent many hours in a darkroom. To develop film you need darkness so you don’t expose it to light and ruin it.  Sometimes faith is like film, it is better developed in the darkness. As Christians we talk a lot about light, as we should, but there are some benefits to God directed darkness. So how does God develop our faith in the darkness? It is really a two-step process.

First, we are to look to the Lord as Isaiah 50:10  says “trust in the Lord” Warren Wiersbe said, “We live by promises, not by explanations.” We need to remember that just because it does not make sense to us, does not mean that it does not make sense to God. Also, just because it does not make sense now, does not mean that it will not make sense later. Trusting allows us to continue to stand on God’s Word regardless of what is going on in life. God’s Word never changes; it is one of the few things that remain constant through all of the seasons of our life. It has been said that where reason cannot wade, faith must swim. We must continue to live according to God’s Word even though tough times come our way. Will we continue to give our tithes and offerings even though there may have been a financial crisis? Will we continue to trust in the Lord even though we may not understand Him? Will we continue to attend and worship in God’s house even though through the pain? Will we continue to quietly meet with God even though our dry darkness? When we commit to trusting we continue to stand on God’s Word because His promises remain the same whether there is light or darkness.

The second step is that in the darkness when we cannot see we need to lean upon the Lord. Our human nature wants to lean upon answers but when you are in the dark, you need God more than you need an explanation. Answers are nice but they don’t always prop us up! The truth is that there are some things that I want that I don’t need and some things I need that I don’t want. Only God can truly discern between what is bad and good and what is good and best for us. Sometimes, God removes all the answers in order to give us Himself and a relationship is more important than a reason. Rely on another means shifting the weight and resting on them. As we rest on our relationship with Him we find that God desires to use us even in the midst of darkness. John Milton, in the darkness of his blindness, wrote Paradise Lost, John Bunyan wrote Pilgrims Progress while in prison for preaching. During John’s exile on the Island of Patmos he wrote the Book of Revelation. God wants to develop our faith and we should never doubt in the dark what God revealed in the light. The test of our character is not what we do in the light but what we do in the dark. It is more important to be with God in the valley of darkness than to be on sunlight peaks without Him.

•             Darkness can reveal what cannot be seen in the light

Isaiah 50: 3-4 says “I dress the skies in darkness, covering them with clothes of mourning.” The Sovereign Lord has given me his words of wisdom, so that I know how to comfort the weary. Morning by morning he wakens me and opens my understanding to his will.”

As we look back we realize that in the darkness we have learned some great truths, these are what I call the treasures of darkness. Have you ever heard someone say, “The stars are out tonight.” The truth is that the stars are out in the daytime, but they are obscured by the light. There are some treasures of darkness that are only revealed in the dark. The stars are there to praise the Lord (Ps. 146:3) and they do it in the darkness. Do you have a star in your darkness with which to praise the Lord? I have discovered several treasures of darkness. In the light we see things that are near, but the darkness lets us see further. We may think our brightest thoughts in the day, but we will think our deepest thoughts during the night. We may learn more about others during the day, but we will learn more about ourselves during the dark.

•             God’s darkness is better than man’s light

Isaiah 50:11 says “But watch out, you who live in your own light and warm yourselves by your own fires. This is the reward you will receive from me: You will soon fall down in great torment.”

One of the most dangerous temptations in the dark is to light our own fire in an attempt to produce our own light. If God has ordained the darkness, then we must wait on God. We can wait with Him in the darkness because darkness can never overcome His light. Darkness cannot withstand God’s light, it runs from His light. If you do not believe this is true, then turn on the light in a darkened room and open the closet. You will find that the darkness is hiding inside the closet! If you are in a lighted room, darkness cannot overcome the light. Darkness can never chase away light. You cannot open the front door of your home and let in the dark. The only way that darkness can enter is that the light be removed. So, if the light has been removed from the rooms of your life, then God in his wisdom has allowed you to be in the darkness. If God is the One who has allowed darkness to come your way, then do not be foolish and try to light your own fire. Do not be deceived into trying to undo with a man-made fire what God is doing. Often the endurance of darkness is preparation for great light, it is better to serve God in the darkness than to be standing alone in our own light. Will you trust and lean on God in your darkness?

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.