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Discipline & Darkness
Over the years, I have made it a practice to pray the Psalms of the Day, a practice some of you learned in your D.N.A Groups, as often as I can.
On December 27, 2022, as I was praying through the Psalms, I cried out to the Lord, “How long, oh Lord?” How long will this discipline and darkness last?
How long must the night continue before my joy comes in the the morning?
This is not the first time I’ve prayed like this.
Over the last 7 1/2 years in Litchfield, at least six of those years have been filled with prayers of lament and longing for deliverance and vindication.
Some of you may ask, “Deliverance and vindication from what?”
In my ministry at FBCL, I have learned that lament and longing usually work in tandem with discipline and darkness.
If you read and pray the Psalms on a regular basis, you see both the Lord’s discipline and the darkness connected to lament and longing for deliverance and vindication in the Psalms.
Fro example,
Psalm 39:7–13 (ESV)
“And now, O Lord, for what do I wait?
My hope is in you.
Deliver me from all my transgressions.
Do not make me the scorn of the fool!
I am mute; I do not open my mouth, for it is you who have done it.
Remove your stroke from me; I am spent by the hostility of your hand.
When you discipline a man with rebukes for sin, you consume like a moth what is dear to him; surely all mankind is a mere breath!
Selah
“Hear my prayer, O Lord, and give ear to my cry; hold not your peace at my tears!
For I am a sojourner with you, a guest, like all my fathers.
Look away from me, that I may smile again, before I depart and am no more!”
And,
Psalm 13 (ESV)
To the choirmaster.
A Psalm of David.
How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever?
How long will you hide your face from me?
How long must I take counsel in my soul and have sorrow in my heart all the day?
How long shall my enemy be exalted over me?
Consider and answer me, O Lord my God; light up my eyes, lest I sleep the sleep of death,
lest my enemy say, “I have prevailed over him,” lest my foes rejoice because I am shaken.
But I have trusted in your steadfast love; my heart shall rejoice in your salvation.
I will sing to the Lord, because he has dealt bountifully with me.
The Lord’s Discipline
Our Father, who is in heaven, is a good Father.
He loves his children with an unwavering steadfast love.
When his children walk in foolishness or loose confidence in His gospel power, he expresses his Fatherly love (Hebrews 12:3-11) and commitment to them by through discipline.
Solomon encourages us,
Love is His motivation.
Correction is His goal.
God wants to lovingly correct the way his children walk in this world.
As his children who are being sanctified, we have a tendency to get side track and lost, like sheep.
We also have a rebellious streak in us that pushes back against God’s instruction.
A good loving Father will address both of these issues in his children.
He does it individually (as His child) and corporately (as His church).
Over the last six years, FBCL has experienced the loving discipline of God.
He addressed sin and foolishness in our church.
As a result, He has pruned our numbers, going from 275ish people to about 40 regular attenders on Sunday.
He pruned our resources, from a budget of over $300,000 to a budget of $173,000.
He pruned our ministry outreach.
Without the numbers and resources, we do not have some of the leadership and volunteers to do the work we aspire to do.
This is not to say that God has not provided for us as he disciplines.
By God’s grace, every time we’ve needed leadership, direction, even resources for ministry, God has provided.
If anything, God’s gracious care for us while he prunes is a testimony of His love and commitment to us as His children.
Nevertheless, we have felt both the hand of the Lord and the rod of the Lord.
The Darkness of the Genesis 3
There is another factor to our struggle over the last seven years.
It is the darkness of Genesis three that seems to loom in Litchfield.
On the one hand, Genesis 3 darkness looms everywhere.
The entire world is affected by sin and Satan.
COIVD 19 was a global pandemic.
Every community was impacted but it, and every church has suffered detrimental consequences from it.
Church attendance is down 20%-40% in the American church.
The West as a whole saw the church as irrelevant during the pandemic.
The government had no problem shutting us down.
As I’ve said before, the world did not call on us to pray, but to be silent.
On the other hand, some communities suffer a darker cloud than others; I think Litchfield is one of those communities.
What I mean by that is there is a spiritual oppression here that hurts the community.
Satan has his hooks into people, to blind their eyes and dull their ears from seeing Jesus.
Hearts are hard in our community.
So many have no fear of God, with little fear of death, and no regard for the law.
This works itself out in physical poverty, substance abuse, broken families, poor educational habits, and little to no desire to taste and see the Lord is good.
There is strong apathy for the things of God, and even hostility toward the church.
One of the glaring consequences is an epidemic in our community of young 15-25 year old males who succumb to the Litchfield lurch; feeling too far behind to catch up.
They have little ambition.
No stamina and no foresight for the future.
Thee is no fight to make life better.
Just staggering around intoxicated by drugs, alcohol, and entertainment.
Unfortunately, tis not just the males who are suffering from the Lurch.
So many of our young ladies have no idea what it means to be a woman, made in God’s image.
They create their identity based on the world’s criteria that she must perform better than a man if she is a real woman.
They settle for boys who are no more than eye candy and have no godly character or gumption.
They too stagger around intoxicated by the lusts of the world and the pride of life.
This has made ministry to youth and their families a difficult row to hoe for Sonny and Audra, and every volunteer who works with the youth.
There are very few “church kids” in our youth.
Most of our ministry has been and continues to be to “unchurched children.”
After seven years of ministry under God’s discipline and Litchfield’s darkness, many of you may be crying out to the Lord, “How long oh Lord?” How long Oh lord will your discipline last on us?
How long oh Lord will the darkness prevail?
David was not aloof to the discipline of God and the darkness of the world.
In Psalm 27, David was looking for deliverance and vindication.
Furthermore, it was the darkness that was threatening his joy, his confidence, and his courage; the darkness of being surrounded by enemies and being falsely accused (Psalm 27:12).
Fear was welling up inside him that he would be overcome.
He was fearful of stumbling in the darkness into unrighteousness and He feared being abandon by the people most loyal to him.
He cried out to God to be led out of the darkness, away from despondency, and into the goodness of the Lord.
That is how I feel at times in ministry.
And that is how, at times, it has felt over the last seven years.
The difference for me this December was where God led me to find courage and confidence to keep moving forward.
In his word, he led me to Psalm 27, specifically verse 13-14
There is a wonderful promise in verse 13 that just stuck in my heart, like a nail hammered into a 2x4 board; “surely you will see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living.”
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