A friend once shared with me the following. “I felt unworthy to call myself a Christian. I had made a mental list of all the reasons that I had found myself in during one of the darkest spiritual seasons of my life. I had questioned myself a hundred times as to how I had gotten to such a dry and unrelenting spiritual dark place. As I compared my life to the life of Christ, I continued to come up short. What was happening to me I questioned, what had I done to get to this place.” My friend had served the Lord for years in faithful obedience. Why now was this season of her life causing such spiritual grief that she could not see which way to go.
Like the prophet Elijah, who wanted to die and had even ask God to take his life, because he had come to the conclusion that he was a failure, my friend no longer could see any way out of her situation either, except to die. While she really did not want to die, she could no longer see any road to take that would get her back on the road that served God’s purpose for her life. But what my friend failed to realize was, that she was right where she needed to be. She was in the place of being schooled by the perfect teacher and He knew how to get her out of her dark place, after she had learned what the purpose of her being there would reveal. God never forsakes us friends, but He will allow us to feel the pangs of our situation for a greater “life’s purpose”.
God was working mightily through His servant Elijah. This made him very unpopular with Ahab and Jezebel, the wicked king and queen of Israel in I Kings 19. If you know the story, Jezebel sent a messenger to Elijah, saying that she was going to kill him. When Elijah heard Jezebel’s death threat, he fled for his life. Considering all the powerful works the Lord had performed through Elijah, it is hard to understand why the prophet didn’t stay and face Jezebel, trusting God to protect him.Instead, he fled into the wilderness, found a shade tree and requested to die.
God did not give Elijah what he ask for because God knew that Elijah’s request was motivated by his physical, mental and emotional exhaustion, not by a genuine desire to die. God will always take our human nature, with its problems, into account when considering the requests that we ask of Him. Instead of trusting God to take care of him, Elijah looked at the circumstances which were very dark.
When we are followers of Jesus, darkness should not characterize our lives for very long and when we find the doorway of our hearts being tempted to yield to it, we must choose our response to it by what the Word of God teaches us to do according to James 4:7, “Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.” For this darkness that creeps around our thinking, looking for ways to enter in and set up traps, desires to turn our attention away from all the blessings that we have and focus on what we don’t have. That negative focus will always darkened our minds and cause us to succumbed to wrongful thinking.
Thankfulness is so much more than “having an attitude of gratitude”! It is a protection from darkness. It is a discipline. It’s actually a weapon in our spiritual warfare arsenal. When you sense the shadow of darkness at the door of your thoughts and heart by discouragement or dissatisfaction stop, don’t go there by yourself, but send thanksgiving to open it. Jesus says that when we follow Him we will not walk in darkness. “I am the Light of the world. He who follows me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the Light of life.” John 8:12
Where are the shadows lurking that want to darken the door of your heart and mind and draw you away from the Light sweet friend? Send Jesus to the door and let Him answer it! Rise up with thanksgiving in your heart. It’s a discipline. It’s a sacrifice. It’s a weapon. Those wrong turns are not dead ends, but only longer roads to get you to where you are bound to go. In the story Pilgrim's Progress, a man named Christian was tormented by spiritual anguish. Though burden down with the weight of his sin, questions and wrong roads that he had taken, in the end he made it to the place that his heart was leading him to go. Let go of those things in your past today and keep walking on. Don’t give up in spite of how difficult your road may be, and be thankful for what you have, and not defeated because of what you don’t have!
Hold Fast,
-Bren
