The Dark Night of the Soul | Spiritual Growth Series

The deep work that God wants to do, I simultaneously want. Yes. I want to be a person of love and joy and hope, and I simultaneously oppose. The very work that God wants to do in me to rewire my programs for happiness at the deepest level, I'm both on board with, Yay Jesus! And sabotage at every turn. And this is where the dark night comes in because it's through the very obscurity. Me not knowing what God is doing that God is able to do the work that I cannot undermine. Because I have no idea what's happening. [00:46:27] (56 seconds)  #SabotagingGrace

There are good times, there are bad times, there are hard times, there are easy times, there are times that are just brutally devastating, and then there are highs that feel like the greatest day ever. That is human life in a broken world. We cannot avoid that. And there will be times on the ups and on the downs when you will want God to be close. You will want to experience his presence, and it will feel like he has left the building. And in these moments, I would invite you, and I know it's gonna be really, really hard, to trust that God is actually doing deep deep work in your heart and in your mind and in your being even if you cannot see it. One of the things that God does during these seasons is transform our imagination and understanding of how growth and transformation works from a self oriented picture to a God dependent one. [01:00:49] (79 seconds)  #TrustTheHiddenWork

Right? There's this conviction in the bible, whether it's metaphors of wilderness or darkness or pruning or god hiding. This conviction that there are seasons where there can be sort of this deep and profound purpose in our life with god that we do not understand or like. And ultimately, I think, right, God loves us. He wants our good. And through these seasons, he brings about transformation in us. And this is ultimately what the dark night is about. But the problem is is it gets at our vision of transformation. In my experience, particularly in the Western American church, we often adopt a posture towards transformation that is like hinges on our effort and ability to do stuff. Right? Like, if you wanna grow, this is what you need to do. Right? You need to read the bible, check every day, like at least thirty minutes. [00:33:21] (61 seconds)  #GraceOverPerformance

The question in these seasons is never it's rarely a why. Why questions are always dangerous. The best questions are always how questions at this moment. Jesus, how do I cling to you and trust in you No matter what my eyes see, my heart feels, and the world whispers. The third one is just the import of community. One of the things you will do or be tempted to do in this season is isolate. You will feel probably a level of loneliness. You probably will feel like, man, no one gets it. You ever felt that? Particularly when you're in pain, no one gets it. And you might be right. It's possible that no one here gets exactly what's going on in your life. [01:07:56] (57 seconds)  #AskHowNotWhy

Right? God, in some seasons, prunes things out of our lives so that we can bear fruit. Who here has, like, pruned a rose rose bush before? Right? You gotta be, like, on the verge of killing that bad boy in order to do it right. Right? If you haven't actually pruned a rose bush, like, ask someone to help you, like you're tentatively just gonna be like, oh, snip here, snip here, and like you cut off like an inch. Like the expert comes in, they bring that thing like an inch to the ground. You're like, that is dead. But it's actually how the rose bush will grow the most fruit, have the most flowers, sort of and so it's this interesting thing, right, of pruning in these seasons where God seems to be taking things away. We don't like it, and yet the metaphor suggests, right, like, if God doesn't prune, there is no growth. [00:32:20] (61 seconds)  #DivinePruning

Because in one season, you might be awesome, in the next, you're not, and what happens is you're like this in your spiritual life. Sometimes you're proud. Sometimes you're ashamed. Sometimes you feel like a success. Sometimes you feel like a failure. You're riding this roller coaster of your ability to perform at the spiritual life. Has anyone felt that? Right? I think, alternatively, what we want, and I think what the scriptures talk about is that when we sort of trust in Jesus, we are welcomed by a gracious father. We're welcomed by him. And it's actually from his welcome of us that our identity emerges as a beloved child of the father before we do anything. We're welcomed. Like the prodigal coming home, not because the prodigal rocked it, but because the father loves us. Right? And this is the the bedrock of our identity. [00:36:05] (73 seconds)  #BelovedNotPerformance

Sometimes in the dark, we feel forsaken by God. God, what are you what are you up to? I wanna know what the path is. And what the prophet is saying is, God will not forsake us, but he will lead us into the darkness where we cannot see. Now one of the ways that people talk about the dark night is sort of as this seasonal experience. Right? God leads us into this season often where we don't understand what's happening. Often, don't like it. We wish it was different. Right? And God's doing this to shift our emotional programs of happiness, identify the idols, the attachments, the things that we want to lean on for our security rather than God, and he's trying to, like, do this deep work in us. Right? Often contrary to our assumptions, neurological wiring, the things we inherited from our cultural moment, our family, all that. [00:48:16] (63 seconds)  #DarkNightReorients

One of the things that John of the Cross and Teresa of Avila will emphasize more than anything, they will keep this contrast between the active life. That's all the things you and I do. Right? And the passive work of God that we have no hand in. And they're like, yeah, yeah, do the things. Great. Like, love it. You know, read your bible. Attend church. Love all that. You should. But let's be honest folks, like, it's actually the work of God, not our little sort of like, I don't know, half hearted general attempts at like doing the thing that really pay the dividends in the spiritual life. And I think as Americans in particular, we need to constantly be recentering in this message. We are beloved by the father because he welcomes us. He then gives us his presence. We live out of union with the holy spirit whether we're aware of it or not, and God is going to transform us from the inside out. [00:55:10] (56 seconds)  #GraceNotHustle