For almost seven years now, I’ve been experiencing what most would call the “dark night” or the “desert”. It’s a season of your spiritual walk where God strips you down of everything that you hold on to tighter than to Him. You don’t experience just a rough situation, you experience death to self.
“Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.” Matthew 39:10
Over the next few posts, I’d like to talk a bit about the dark night seasons. I have this feeling that there are a lot of Christ-followers out there in the desert right now – searching and seeking for meaning to the suffering.
First of all, let me paint a picture to contrast the desert against a life crisis…
LIFE CRISIS
A crisis may last for a short period of time; days or months. Typically, it will only affect a specific part of your life. For example, you lose your job, but your health, marriage, family, and friends stay strong and supportive.
Most of the time in a life’s crisis, you experience God in very active ways. It’s like He’s there holding your hand and helping you through. You can look back very easily and see the one set of footprints in the sand as God carries you through the fire. During a life crisis, God almost always shows up with a miracle or a major blessing that cannot be mistaken as His direct intervention.
DESERT
The desert typically it lasts much longer, possibly for years, and it will affect just about every area of your life. You may lose your job and months and months go by with nothing happening no matter how hard you pray or try. Then you or someone in your family may experience a health crisis at the same time. Possibly your marriage then gets shaky and you become alienated from your friends or family. It would seem like your whole life falls apart.
When you are in the desert, it doesn’t matter what you do, you can’t fix or control your situation. It becomes something that you cannot make better no matter how much you beg, plead, or petition God. In the widest part of the desert, it will even feel like God has stepped back from you. You don’t experience His presence in the ways you used to enjoy. He doesn’t seem to answer you when you call.
You may literally feel like God has abandoned you when you are in the desert and it may last a long time. You may feel as though God isn’t being fair. In what I call, “the widest part of the desert”, you feel like you are being punished for something you didn’t really do. Most of the terrible circumstances you experience don’t result from your poor choices, instead, most of the dire situation you find yourself in is usually simply out of the blue.
“…My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Matthew 27:46
In the next post, we’ll explore more about what the desert looks like…