Another post from the series on the dark nights. Read the previous post here.
The Dark Night of the Spirit follows the Dark Night of the Soul. Sometimes they come in rapid succession, sometimes there are years between them. For me, they followed each other with only two months between.
In the Dark Night of the Soul, God uses our life circumstances to reveal the outward behaviors that get in our way to experiencing a deeper relationship with Him. In essence, God is asking us to surrender all of the sinful behaviors that keep us from Him. In the Dark Night of the Spirit God focuses on the inward man; our hearts. He wants to reveal the lies which are at the core of our outward behaviors. It is in this season when God asks us to surrender all of ourselves.
During the Dark Night of the Soul, God causes or allows loss in the external situations of our lives. In the Dark Night of the Spirit, we experience loss in the deepest parts of our soul. God asks us to surrender everything that is not of Him; everything we hold dear in our hearts. Often times, God has already placed a dream or a purpose on our hearts, some kind of ministry that we know in the deepest part of our souls is ours, specifically designed by God for us to uniquely live out. In the Dark Night of the Spirit, God will call on us to lay that dream at His feet, even surrendering our life purpose to Him.
The goal of the Dark Night of the Spirit is that we can say, with all sincerity to the very core of our being, “Lord, You are more important than anything here on earth. I don’t care what happens or doesn’t happen, You are the Lord of my life. I surrender it all to You. I trust You with everything. Have Your Will at any cost in my life.”
I’m assuming that most people wouldn’t go that far in their love and trust of Jesus. But somehow, as you progress through this second dark night season, God reveals Himself so profoundly, you cannot help but be compelled closer and closer to Him. Even when God is silent, you sense His presence in such intimate ways, you are changed.
Read Lamentations 3 to see the perfect image of the Dark Night of the Spirit. Jeremiah, “The Weeping Prophet”, writes of the dark nights. Here is only an excerpt:
“He (God) has driven me away and made me walk
in darkness rather than light;
indeed, he has turned his hand against me
again and again, all day long.
He has made my skin and my flesh grow old
and has broken my bones.
He has besieged me and surrounded me
with bitterness and hardship.
He has made me dwell in darkness
like those long dead.” vs 2-6
Yet, in all of this, Jeremiah sees God:
“Yet this I call to mind
and therefore I have hope:
Because of the LORD’s great love we are not consumed,
for his compassions never fail.
They are new every morning;
great is your faithfulness.
I say to myself, “The LORD is my portion;
therefore I will wait for him.”
The LORD is good to those whose hope is in him,
to the one who seeks him;
it is good to wait quietly
for the salvation of the LORD.” vs. 21-26
In the next post, I will list more scriptures which talk of the dark night seasons. Understanding the dark nights helps us go through them with more grace and patience.