Day 5 The Dark Night of the Soul

This is day five of my 40 day journey with God through LENT. This is a long one but has so much to ponder, enjoy.

DAY 5 Psalms 5, 35, 65, 95, 125 Proverbs 5 – John of the Cross, Excerpts from “The Dark Night of the Soul”

Good morning Lord, thank you for waking me up again. I rise with the realization that I am thoroughly blessed, you are such a gracious God. Psalm 5 “In the morning O Lord, you hear my voice; in the morning I lay my requests before you and wait in expectation”. It was the habit of Jesus to get up before dawn and pray, may this habit be a reality in my life for my life depends on it.

Psalm 35:10 “You rescue the poor from those too strong for them, the poor and needy from those who rob them”. I am constantly amazed at how many references there are about the poor in the Scriptures. . . it seems like for the last 20 years, I never saw them, never preached about them, never cared. Every time you read scripture, look at notice how many times the “poor” are mentioned. Even King David, the one ruling the country, the government cared deeply for the poor . . . but we say, “its not the governments job to care for the poor”. I am no liberal but doesn’t our conservative view here go against Scripture? I guess the rich will always ignore the poor but not King David, he was the richest man in Israel and the one who made the laws, his concern for justice for the poor was much higher and deeper than our church leaders today. It seems like our pastors (me included) have ignored it as it is not a popular topic, our suburban members refuse to listen to this. Maybe we pastors have become like the Pharisees that ignored and scoffed at the words of Jesus about the poor. Oh brothers, lets repent and turn our churches back to caring and seeking justice for the poor, orphans and widows (true religion according to James).

Psalm 65 “When we were overwhelmed by sins, you forgave our transgressions.” Wow, that really is amazing, David felt like we do. If we do careful inventory of our days, we fill them with sins. . . most of the time sins of thought but usually of action too. Lord, I so bless you for forgiving me more sins that I could ever imagine.

Psalm 95 – “Come, let us sing for joy to the Lord; let us shout aloud to the Rock of our salvation. Let us come before Him with thanksgiving and extol him with music and song.” The whole psalm is amazing, you have to read it, all about worship . . .it makes me soooo excited to go to church this morning and sing out to Him my praises, “for You are a great God.”

Proverbs 5 is an old favorite of mine. . . its about two main topics, watch your lips and speak only what is wise and two stay away from the adulteress. It’s a very detailed instructions to his sons on how and why to stay away from the “wayward” women. 1. “Her feet go down to death and her steps lead straight to the grave” 2. “Stay away lest you give your best strength to others and they feast on your wealth” 3. At the end of your life will have bitter regret because of the ruin she has brought you.

Therefore, “drink from your own cistern” . . . go to your own wife for your needs and not other women. . . “never share your well” with others. Rejoice in the wife of your youth. Oh Lord, I thank you for saving me from this, I thank you for the wife of my youth that is oh more amazing today than ever. I can’t imagine life without her, keep my feet in my own home, keep my mind in my own family and keep my heart faithful to my family and to you. “For a man’s ways are in full view of the Lord”

“The Dark Night of the Soul” is one of my favorites works of our church fathers, John of the Cross has so much insight on the depths of spirituality, by the way, he was Spanish, probably hung out in the town of Benavides. He was arrested for seeking reform of the church. It was in prison that he wrote this devotional.

When God draws us from the beginning stage to a more advanced spiritual stage we will grow deeper in our spiritual life. It is in the deeper stage that we experience, “the dark night of the soul” (referred to as DNS from now on). It is here that God wants to purify us and move us to greater heights. In the beginning stage God nurtured us and gently moved us along as a new born babe with spiritual milk. It reminds me of my first year as a Christian, everything in the bible was exciting, prayer was so meaningful and I loved serving, I was fifteen at the time. But then God starts removing some of the “previous consolation” to move us to go deeper, to reveal our impurities. It’s the seven capital sins that are being cleansed from our devotion.

1. Secret Pride – as we grow in our faith pride quickly fills us, we become “too spiritual”, we prefer to teach than to be taught, we become like Pharisees. . . . we soften our sins when we try to be honest so as to appear less imperfect. We pray for God to take away our imperfections for peace sake, not necessarily to be right with God. But God doesn’t take the imperfections lest we become more prideful. The answer to this is humility. Dang it, he got me so much on this one. May I be humble enough to learn what I think I already know.

2. Spiritual Greed – our hearts get attached to the feelings we get then we are in a constant journey to get the feeling not to get to God. “I got nothing out of church today”. . .is a common phrase.

3. Spiritual Luxury – during prayer or spiritual exercises we get tempted with lust or other impure thoughts. This happens as the spiritual is taking over the reign of the flesh, the flesh reacts and fights against you. In the DNS it begins to subside.

4. Spiritual Wrath – we get bitter when God takes away the consolation. You hear people saying, “I got nothing out of the bible. . .or our of church”, and you feel their anger. We will try really hard to get the feelings back so we will be “SAINTS IN A DAY” and make all kinds of resolutions to change. The answer is patience and not demanding from God.

5. Spiritual Gluttony – some love the spiritual sweetness of devotion so much that they go overboard and almost kill themselves to get more of it. Again, this is not for God but for themselves.

6. Spiritual Envy and 7. Sloth – when we hate the attention others get from their spirituality and sloth is when we become weary of devotion and we abandon it.

The Dark Night is a tool of God to humble us and to seek Him for Him only, not for the feelings we get. If you are in a dark night right now, He has not abandoned you but loves you so much that He wants to be closer based on true relationship, He doesn’t want us to use him anymore. Thank God for John of the Cross.

I have much more to say but this has been long and I got to get ready for church. May your day be filled with His glory. May you seek Him and find Him in your time of need. Can’t wait for Day 6 and a devotional from Bernard of Clairvaux.