My thoughts combined with and inspired by the thoughts of John Coe in his lecture/chapel “The Dark Night of the Soul” which I have just listened to.
I know this is a long post, but beside communicating to others about my spiritual life, I want to share what I have heard and have been thinking about hoping that your reading it will result in similar contemplation regarding the state and stage of your soul.
I now understand consciously what has been happening in my soul of late.
1 John 2:12-14
“I write to you, little children, because your sins are forgiven for His name’s sake.
I write to you, fathers, because you have known Him who is from the beginning.
I write to you, young men, because you have overcome the wicked one.
I write to you, little children, because you have known the Father.
I have written to you, fathers, because you have known Him who is from the beginning.
I have written to you, young men, because you are strong,
I now understand consciously what has been happening in my soul of late.
1 John 2:12-14
“I write to you, little children, because your sins are forgiven for His name’s sake.
I write to you, fathers, because you have known Him who is from the beginning.
I write to you, young men, because you have overcome the wicked one.
I write to you, little children, because you have known the Father.
I have written to you, fathers, because you have known Him who is from the beginning.
I have written to you, young men, because you are strong,
and the word of God abides in you, and you have overcome the wicked one.”
There is a spiritual process - from childhood to adolescence to adulthood.
In the soul’s childhood, his sins are forgiven, enabling him to know the Father who forgives. It is a beginning.
The adulthood of the soul is when the soul is peaceful, knowing God deeply, though he has known Him since he was the child just beginning to know God. This is the end of a process, but the beginning of an eternity of deepening this knowledge.
In between these stages is the adolescence of the soul - struggle. The process of overcoming the wicked one and of the Word of God taking its place and abiding there in the soul, according the the Apostle John.
This is the transition from loving God for pleasures sake, to loving God for God’s sake.
When our souls are children, God comes to that level. What draws us into relationship with Him at this point is pleasure in the spiritual disciplines, which causes excitement, enthusiasm, and joy. It affects us emotionally and causes us to seek spiritual disciplines so that we may enjoy these exuberant experience again. Thus God draws us to Him by feeding us the kind of emotional pleasures that we’re accustomed to in other areas of life, now experienced when we read His Word, seek Him in prayer, go to church or lectures or classes in order to understand and know Him better. He is bottle feeding us, and we enthusiastically suck out all we can because it’s good and it pleases us.
However, there is a point at which He determines that we are ready to be weaned, in order to love Him and know Him for His sake, solely. So He starts taking away the bottle.
This is what begins the soul’s adolescence and struggle. We begin to realize that we are not as excited about seeking God. Our time reading His Word grows shorter and less frequent and becomes less satisfying… our worship is half-hearted and we feel disconnected from God…. we stop to speak with God les and less….. We ask ourselves, “What is wrong with me? Am I doing something wrong?” and we ask God, “Where are You? Why can I not feel You? Why do You not speak to me?”.
BUT it’s not that we’ve digressed spiritually or that God is interacting any less in our lives, but rather, He has taken away the bottle so that He can draw us into a deeper spiritual love and knowledge of Him. One that is for His sake.
This is the place that I have been in for the past couple of years (tho, I’m pretty sure God has offered me the bottle a few times to keep me nurished when I haven't recognized the solid food He's offering). I keep looking back to the childhood of my soul and wondering where my passion for God went and why I feel less pleasure in reading the Scriptures, and especially wondering why my heart seems unable to open up and worship God. And it is because He has been calling me into something better, and all I’m doing is looking back to what I think is better.
It has only been within the last couple of months that I’ve begun to realize that I’m guilty of still seeking God for pleasure’s sake and have begun to understand what it is to seek Him for His sake that I may know and love Him more truly and deeply.
He is in the process of, with loving hands, purging my soul of its desire for pleasure over Him, just as He purged Abraham by asking Him to sacrifice his only son, his pride and pleasure, and be willing do give that up for His relationship with God. And Job also had every pleasure taken from him so that he could know God. God purged His own Son so that He could join the Father. We are purged that we might join in union with God.
I am now content in knowing that I’m in a process and that God is in charge of it, and am looking forward, in hope, to the continuance of the deepening of my relationship with my Creator, Savior, and Lord.
Through the dark night of the soul is found the way into the eternal abyss of God’s love.
May I dive in and never cease to fall deeper into communion with Him.
Amen…
There is a spiritual process - from childhood to adolescence to adulthood.
In the soul’s childhood, his sins are forgiven, enabling him to know the Father who forgives. It is a beginning.
The adulthood of the soul is when the soul is peaceful, knowing God deeply, though he has known Him since he was the child just beginning to know God. This is the end of a process, but the beginning of an eternity of deepening this knowledge.
In between these stages is the adolescence of the soul - struggle. The process of overcoming the wicked one and of the Word of God taking its place and abiding there in the soul, according the the Apostle John.
This is the transition from loving God for pleasures sake, to loving God for God’s sake.
When our souls are children, God comes to that level. What draws us into relationship with Him at this point is pleasure in the spiritual disciplines, which causes excitement, enthusiasm, and joy. It affects us emotionally and causes us to seek spiritual disciplines so that we may enjoy these exuberant experience again. Thus God draws us to Him by feeding us the kind of emotional pleasures that we’re accustomed to in other areas of life, now experienced when we read His Word, seek Him in prayer, go to church or lectures or classes in order to understand and know Him better. He is bottle feeding us, and we enthusiastically suck out all we can because it’s good and it pleases us.
However, there is a point at which He determines that we are ready to be weaned, in order to love Him and know Him for His sake, solely. So He starts taking away the bottle.
This is what begins the soul’s adolescence and struggle. We begin to realize that we are not as excited about seeking God. Our time reading His Word grows shorter and less frequent and becomes less satisfying… our worship is half-hearted and we feel disconnected from God…. we stop to speak with God les and less….. We ask ourselves, “What is wrong with me? Am I doing something wrong?” and we ask God, “Where are You? Why can I not feel You? Why do You not speak to me?”.
BUT it’s not that we’ve digressed spiritually or that God is interacting any less in our lives, but rather, He has taken away the bottle so that He can draw us into a deeper spiritual love and knowledge of Him. One that is for His sake.
This is the place that I have been in for the past couple of years (tho, I’m pretty sure God has offered me the bottle a few times to keep me nurished when I haven't recognized the solid food He's offering). I keep looking back to the childhood of my soul and wondering where my passion for God went and why I feel less pleasure in reading the Scriptures, and especially wondering why my heart seems unable to open up and worship God. And it is because He has been calling me into something better, and all I’m doing is looking back to what I think is better.
It has only been within the last couple of months that I’ve begun to realize that I’m guilty of still seeking God for pleasure’s sake and have begun to understand what it is to seek Him for His sake that I may know and love Him more truly and deeply.
He is in the process of, with loving hands, purging my soul of its desire for pleasure over Him, just as He purged Abraham by asking Him to sacrifice his only son, his pride and pleasure, and be willing do give that up for His relationship with God. And Job also had every pleasure taken from him so that he could know God. God purged His own Son so that He could join the Father. We are purged that we might join in union with God.
I am now content in knowing that I’m in a process and that God is in charge of it, and am looking forward, in hope, to the continuance of the deepening of my relationship with my Creator, Savior, and Lord.
Through the dark night of the soul is found the way into the eternal abyss of God’s love.
May I dive in and never cease to fall deeper into communion with Him.
Amen…
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