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"Who among you fears the LORD and obeys the voice of his servant? Let him who walks in darkness and has no light trust in the name of the LORD and rely on his God."
- Isaiah 50:10
In the course of your earthly journey as a follower of Jesus, there will be seasons of beautiful growth and progress. You will feel as if things could never get better, and that the wind of the Holy Spirit is filling your sails and pushing you across the seas of life.
In other seasons, you will feel as if God is distant, and that the winds of life are blowing contrary to you, keeping you from making very little progress at all. In biblical terms, these are called periods of darkness. God uses these to grow your faith and trust in him. Let's take a deeper look.
The view from the dark
The verse above, for some, can be frightening. It seems to imply that God can and will thrust you into darkness in order to learn to trust him more.
Here's the kicker: that's exactly what it means.
In God's economy, faith is the currency, and faith tends to wax and wane in times of ease. For God, he would rather have a humble and trusting saint walking in darkness rather than a proud and self-sufficient saint walking in the daylight. This can appear at first glance as capricious and unfair, but in reality, it is one of the greatest graces the Lord can ever give us.
"God has you in this darkness in order to form you into someone who trusts in him more and in yourself and your circumstances less."
What, you might ask, does this God-imposed darkness look like?
It could look like prayers not seeming to be answered.
It could look like doors closing in your face rather than opening for you to walk through.
It could look like sickness and ailments plaguing both yourself and your family.
It could look like increased temptation from sin patterns that you thought had long been dealt with.
It could look like a feeling of distance from God; a cloud that has drifted over his face, blocking his loving gaze.
Whatever particular form this darkness takes in your life, remember this one thing: God has you in this darkness in order to form you into someone who trusts in him more and in yourself and your circumstances less. Your good Father in heaven is not allowing these things to happen for some sort of twisted purpose; he is doing it for the express purpose of growing you in your faith.
It doesn't matter how far into the Christian life you are, you should expect periods of darkness and testing. It is good for you. It is growing you. It is sharpening you. A tree doesn't develop deep roots without the wind blowing against it. So too with your faith as a Christian. There must be seasons of not understanding what is going on around you and not being able to rest on your own ability. If these times didn't come, you would start to think that life was possible to live in your own strength. That is the opposite of what God wants. He wants us to recognize our utter dependance on him in all things.
Life in the dark
In closing, I want to draw out some application for how we can live by faith while walking through the darkness. The verse we began with gives us two major points of focus.
1. Trust in the name of the LORD.
What's in a name? Well for the believer in the God of the bible, everything.
The name translated LORD in our english bibles is derived from the Hebrew name YHWH, or with added letters, Yahweh. This is the personal covenant name the God gave to the nation of Israel to mark them as set apart to the one true and living God. They were not followers of Ra, or Baal, or any other created God, but rather followers of the only God, the Creator and sustainer of all things, Yahweh. It is an intensely personal thing to be on a first name basis with someone, let alone the One who spoke the universe into existence.
This should be a great comfort to us in times of darkness. The one who said "Let there be light" is the same one who has adopted you into his family and has sovereignly chosen to allow you to walk by faith through this time of testing. The One who rules over all is your Father, and he is more than capable of preserving and protecting you through whatever comes your way. If that is the case, how much more will he do this in times of intentional, faith-building moments? Trust in the name of Yahweh.
2. Rely on his God.
In the epistle to the Ephesians, the Apostle Paul, in writing on spiritual warfare, says this to begin that section of Scripture: "Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might" (Ephesians 6:10).
Here we find the other aspect of our faith in times of darkness: we walk in and by the strength of our God, not our own. The whole purpose of the darkness is to show us our utter inability to sustain and defend ourselves. We must live by the power, might, and ability of our God. He wants us to understand this, because there will be times in our lives where we are hopeless and helpless, unable to do anything for anyone, including ourselves. It is in the moments when we must rest wholly and solely upon the ability of our Almighty God, trusting him to fight our battles and win our wars for us.
It is here that the wheat are separated from the chaff. Here is where the true Christian is separated from the fake. The true believer knows that even in times of ease and success, it is still "God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure" (Philippians 2:13). The grounds of your assurance of justification, sanctification, and future glorification must be fully and completely God and him alone. The Holy Spirit applies the finished work of Christ Jesus that the Father decreed in eternity past. It is all a work of the triune God.
When you find yourself in a season of darkness, do not run. Do not seek to manufacture a way out of it. Trust in the name of your heavenly Father and rely upon him and his goodness and strength. That's the whole point of the darkness in the first place, "for we walk by faith, and not by sight" (2 Corinthians 5:7).
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