The Dark Night of the Soul: God’s Commitment to Us
God is more committed to me than I am to Him.
I had to keep telling myself that. I had to remind myself that even though I could not feel His presence, that He was there because of His faithfulness.
“I know you are here because it is Your nature to be faithful even when I am unfaithful, and you have proven Yourself to me for too long for me to doubt You. I know you are here despite what I feel. I will not be deceived by my emotions and physical senses. You are here…”
I sat for days in my chair, repeating this, stopping only to care for my family and read from the Bible.
Although I said nothing at the time, I recently came through a season of what believers have for centuries referred to as the “dark night of the soul.” Contrary to the beliefs of some, it is a normal and cyclical aspect of the life of a maturing believer (even more so for the mature) and not a sign of damnation. There are times of great heaviness that come on us, suffocating even. I liken it to the darkness in the land of Egypt that could be felt as though it were a physical entity. Times when we cannot feel the presence of God, when we are overcome with the sadness of seeming abandonment and our faith comes under testing. It can be accompanied or precipitated by a terrible tragedy, illness, betrayal, or nothing terrible at all save the horrifying accompanying depression – and we feel terribly alone and abandoned by God as the Psalmist speaks in Psalm 22:“My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?”
Simply put, the dark night of the soul is to be endured until it is over. It is a time when we learn the meaning of “the sacrifice of praise” because we feel as though we are praising someone who is not listening and it becomes very difficult to even think words of worship. He seems to be gone. But it isn’t true. He listens, I believe, more during those times than during the times when we can feel Him.
You see, He has to give us endurance, and some need it more than others. Perhaps it is their calling that requires it, or perhaps what they will go through in the future. God knows how to build our faith, and one of the best ways is to give us the appearance of abandonment – how will we respond?
Will we respond as though He owes us His presence? As though it is a drug?
Will we grow resentful when the bad things happen to us that we watch happen to others without much of a backward glance in their direction? Why on earth shouldn’t we experience the evils of this world? We are to overcome them, not escape them. Escaping difficulty breeds spiritual wimps, not warriors.
Through the dark night of the soul, God teaches us the compassion that can only come from the absolute loneliness that comes from a withdrawal of the feeling of His nearness. It is an illusion, of course, because only a sensation is being removed. It is easy to worship that sensation, to use it as a crutch, to pursue that feeling instead of pursuing an actual relationship.
We must learn to cling to the one true God who is beyond our understanding, beyond our emotional grasp, beyond mere experiences. We must come to know, in the very depths of our being, that He is absolutely trustworthy, faithful, and constant. We must acknowledge that He is more committed to us than we are to Him.
And most importantly, we shouldn’t hide the fact that this happens. The silence of those who desire to appear super spiritual, or who are ashamed to admit that this is normal – well, it is deadly to those who are being tested and who are left to presume that God truly has abandoned them. This is a cyclical part of the normal Christian life – and always has been.