Maybe You Have to Know the Darkness Before You Can Appreciate the Light – Madeline L’Engle

He leads me …

We all enjoy life when things are going well, when our health is good, the bills are paid and our future looks secure. But how long can we stay in this place before we take it for granted and the Kiwi attitude of ‘she’ll be right’ becomes part of our way of life, and we feel self-sufficient?

We know that for us to do well in life, it will not just happen when we are cruising along. We need challenges. It might be sport or our job, where in order to succeed, we have push ourselves to achieve our goals.

But the real test comes when we face adversity - serious illness, a collapsed business or the loss of a loved one. These are examples of events that can cause our lives to fall apart. We find ourselves in a dark place where we feel there is little or no hope. What do we do? Do we give up, or do we try and do something about it?

With little or no hope we feel emotions like sadness, emptiness, loss, depression, despair, shame, and fear. These emotions can be painful and challenging to experience, but are they bad? No, not really.

Feelings are not good or bad. They simply are. They result from what we are seeing, hearing, touching, tasting, and smelling at any point in time. They also come from our thoughts. Feelings are our response to the experience of living and being.

Some emotions force us to slow down. We do not find pleasure in the things that we used to enjoy, and we just do not want to do anything. We feel tired and sluggish. We are weary emotionally and physically. This is called ‘the lethargy of grief.’

But this slow down allows us to move from ‘soul work’ to ‘spirit work.’[1]

The soul is made up of the will (Job 7:15), the mind (Lam. 3:20, RSV), and the emotion (2 Sam. 5:8; Deut. 6:5). With the will we make decisions and choices. With the mind, the thinking part, we reason and have knowledge (Prov. 2:10). And with the emotion, the part with our likes and dislikes, we are able to express things like love, hatred, joyfulness, anger, sadness, or happiness.

The human spirit has three main functions that occur in born again Christians and when the Lord is calling someone to become a believer. These functions are conscience (Rom.9:1; 8:16), intuition (Mark 2:8), and communion (John 4:24). The conscience distinguishes right from wrong in a sudden clear conviction, and has nothing to do with a person’s existing knowledge. The intuition is the ‘knowing’ part of the spirit (when we know in our ‘knower’). Put another way, the revelations of God and the movements of the Holy Spirit are known to the believer through their intuition.

These two aspects of a believers spiritual life are foundational to their relationship with God –

·      the speaking of their conscience and

·      the teaching of their intuition.

The third role of the spirit is communion, which concerns our relationship with God. In terms of this we become adjusted in a spiritual and heavenly way instead of soulish and earthly. The result is a life of faith instead of a life according to our human understanding.[2]

We as human beings are forever changed by negative events in out lives. The impact of these events will cause us to react initially in our souls with our emotions and our mind, and will be followed by our will as we make decisions and choices based on how we process what has happened.

We can choose to stay with the emotions, sadness, emptiness, loss, depression, despair, shame, fear and the resulting decisions that go with this if we feel that there is no hope, or we can choose to something about it.

If we feel that the events are not unbeatable, we will look at ways to learn from what happened and try to move on in a positive way. We can do this by receiving counselling, or follow a programme that will help us overcome what has happened, and to develop better coping strategies.

For Christians, the Lord may lead us to join a support group, receive counselling or work through a restoration programme, where He will personalise it and highlight the areas that are important. When we submit to Him we can be confident that the final result will be the right one.

These options can help us to develop new attitudes. We may find that we become more patient or more sensitive to the feelings and circumstances of others. We may have new insights that guide us in how we live. We may have developed new skills. Whatever has happened, we are now different, and we can say that we have grown.[3]

As believers, we need to know that when we look to the Lord to be with us through these changes, He will actually be there.

But how do we know that He will respond? Because He says so in His Word. We read comments like, ‘You light a lamp for me. The LORD, my God, lights up my darkness’ (Psalm 18:28 NLT). And ‘Because of God’s tender mercy, the morning light from heaven is about to break upon us, to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, and to guide us to the path of peace’ (Matthew 4:16; Isaiah 9:2 NLT).

As the Lord works in us, the thoughts and feelings that we want to experience grow. We find that emotions like hope, gratitude, happiness, joy, love and peace develop in our lives, and we find that the more that we have lived with the darkness, the more we have capacity and appreciation for the positive thoughts and feelings that progressively take over.

[1] The attributes of the soul and the spirit are taken from Man A Trinity (Spirit, Soul, Body) Lehman Strauss - https://bible.org/seriespage/2-man-trinity-spirit-soul-body

Lehman Strauss taught Old Testament history for eight years at Philadelphia Bible Institute, and served as pastor of the Calvary Baptist Church, Bristol, Pennsylvania, from 1939 to 1957. He was pastor of Highland Park Baptist Church (Highland Park, Michigan) until the end of 1963 when he resigned to devote full time to an itinerant Bible conference and evangelistic ministry both in the States and abroad.

[2] Taken from What Is the Difference Between a Soul and a Spirit? Glory Dy Christianity.com Contributing Writer, https://www.christianity.com/wiki/salvation/difference-between-a-soul-and-a-spirit.html; Are Soul and Spirit the Same? Walter Martin Contending for the Faith, https://contendingforthefaith.org/en/are-soul-and-spirit-the-same/ Soul vs. spirit: What is the difference? Sigurd Bratlie activechristianity.org, https://activechristianity.org/soul-vs-spirit-what-is-the-difference

[3] Dr. Alan D. Wolfelt is a noted author, educator and practicing grief counselor. He serves as Director of the Center for Loss and Life Transition in Fort Collins, Colorado and presents dozens of grief-related workshops each year across North America. Among his books are Healing Your Grieving Heart: 100 Practical Ideas and The Healing Your Grieving Heart Journal for Teens. For more information, write or call The Center for Loss and Life Transition, 3735 Broken Bow Road, Fort Collins, Colorado 80526, (970) 226-6050 or visit their website, www.centerforloss.com.