Surviving and Growing in the Dessert
Notes
Transcript
Introduction:
It was 2007. I had worked for a church for ten years as their youth minister. When I began ten years before I promised the teens I would not leave unless the church decided it was time for me to leave. I was committed to the church, to the teens, and to helping them connect to God. Out of nowhere, the church administrator came in to ask me how we wanted to handle my severance.
It was like a bomb dropped. I could not believe it and neither could he. The elders were supposed to tell me the night before that they wanted to move in a different direction. They had not. I went home and cried. I was unsure of what was next. I did not know where we would go from there. We had just bought a house around the corner from the church and had been remodeling. Devin was just about five years old. Bryce was three. My life was turned upside down.
Needless to say, they were not ready to move in another direction and were quite glad for a while to allow me to continue to do the same job until the Elder who forced the rest to fire me pushed me out.
When I finally was pushed out completely, going to church became a chore. I had lost my purpose, was unsure of my future, and did not know whether we should stay, or go and most Sundays we had to force ourselves to get up to go. I began suffering from depression, doubting who I was, unsure of what I had done to make God angry and it wasn’t until years later that I discovered that I was having what is known as The Dark Night of the Soul.
The term was coined by a 16th century Catholic Mystic, St. John of the Cross in an 8-stanza poem, that frankly is some of the most difficult language I have ever read, but what it is could be defined as,
The term “spiritual dryness” is the absence of experiencing the presence of God, but also can be used more generally "to describe an extremely difficult and painful period in one's life that affects their spiritual life.
That is a good definition. It is a period of spiritual dryness. It is the feeling that God is absent. We can feel it at the loss of a job, the death of a spouse or family member, or after a divorce. Most of us will have at least one dark night in our lifetime.
Let me be clear depression can be a part of the dark night, but the dark night is not depression. Although The Dark Night of the Soul and depression share many of the same characteristics, depression can often be treated and sometimes cured with medications, cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT), mindfulness practices, lifestyle changes, and so forth. Depression finds its roots in biological chemical imbalances and/or unhealthy thought patterns, and often comes as a result of personal loss, mental illness, physical illness, abuse, genetics, and so on.
The Dark Night of the Soul is different in the sense that it has its roots in spiritual and existential crises. it wrestles with questions like: What is my purpose? Is God really real? Why is God not working in my life? What did I do wrong?
So, I prefer this definition...
The Dark Night of the Soul is a period of utter spiritual desolation, disconnection, and emptiness in which one feels totally separated from the Divine. Those who experience the Dark Night feel completely lost, hopeless, and consumed with melancholy. The Dark Night of the Soul can be likened to severe spiritual depression.
Now you may have never gotten to this point. I would pray you don’t, but if you have you understand where I have been. I never felt like God was not real, but I questioned so much about what I did to deserve the loss of His presence.
Now understand that I am presenting two extremes. There is The Dark Night of the Soul and there is spiritual dryness. So, whether or not you are having a Dark Night or a time of Spiritual Dryness, I believe the solution to thriving through these times is the same. We are going to look at entering the desert as a period of growth or death. We can choose to grow through the experience or we can choose to die, spiritually wandering. It is our choice to make.
So, Let's switch gears for a moment and define what spiritual dryness looks like..
What SPIRITUAL DRYNESS LOOKS LIKE IN OUR LIVES
Going into spiritual environments and "getting nothing out of it"
Losing your 1st love
Joy-less service
Everything else in life is pretty perfect, but you've lost touch with your need for God
Stuck in habitual sin
Your focus has shifted from relationship to legalism
Tragedy/adversity or chronic illness/mental health struggles have worn down your hope
Complaining
Unlike the Dark Night, Spiritual dryness can come out of busyness, a sense of vanity, going through the motions, or prioritizing other things before your relationship with God. It comes out of a series of choices that take us from trusting in the Father to trusting in ourselves.
Most of us know that Jesus wandered for forty days in the desert. A time where He leaned not upon himself, but trusting in God, leaned on Him. So, let’s begin by entering the desert with Jesus in Matthew 4:1...
Text:
Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil.
Our context, if written in a fantasy story today would be the anointing of the would-be king. Jesus has just been baptized. God opens the heavens and sends his Spirit down to anoint and come upon Jesus. As this is happening a voice speaks from that brilliant light and proclaims Jesus as the rightful king and that His father loves Him.
Then almost instantly we see Jesus being led by the Spirit into the wilderness, the desert, to be tempted by the devil. Now, when we look at this verse, in the context of the whole narrative, we understand that God was not doing this so Jesus would fail. God was doing this to prepare Jesus for what was to come in order for Him to fulfill His purpose on earth.
God does not send us into the desert to fail, but to grow. Yet, scripture is littered with situations where God’s people enter the desert and some use it as an opportunity to move forward and grow through it, while others are too afraid to leave and find themselves wandering and spiritually dying, some even physically dying.
Let’s take a look at how God used the desert in the history of His people.
Different situations prompt the move into the wilderness
Hagar- Other people's sin- Desert is the place where she met God, Saw God, and Heard God
Moses- His own sin Desert- prepares him to lead God's people
Israelites- God's avenue of rescue- In the desert, the Israelites failed to trust God and allowed fear to lead them to wander and complain.
Elijah- Fear/depression/ Suicidal thoughts- Desert becomes a place of Presence, restoration, and the launch of his mentoring ministry
Jesus- Preparation for ministry- Desert is a place of tempting/testing, preparing Jesus to be our Savior
See, in Hagar’s case she did not choose this destiny. It was a choice made for her by Sarah and Abraham. She and Ishmael almost died in the desert, but God rescued her and promised to make Ishmael a great nation. All she needed to do was take the boy by the hand and walk toward God’s rescue.
Moses ran to the desert because of his sin. He murdered an Egyptian and out of fear ran to the desert. He became a shepherd, took a wife, and started a family. He has become content in the desert. But God had other plans and eventually, reluctantly, Moses moved forward choosing to take the future God desired for him.
The Israelites were in crisis. They had been beaten, abused, and almost lost all hope when God rescued them from the hands of Pharoah and led them into the desert to prepare them for their future in the promised land, but they let fear stop them. They failed to see God’s promise and instead of moving forward, they set to wandering and complaining. By the way, many who get stuck in the desert will end up wandering and complaining.
Elijah, do you remember him? The guy who all alone stood up to the prophets of Baal. Just a short time later...
Jesus did not question His going into the desert. He did not argue that He did not need this, but He went. He went without food. According to Mark was surrounded by wild animals. Has more than one encounter with Satan, but He used this time to prepare for what was coming.
If we embrace our time in the desert of life, there are some things we can expect.
In the desert, we can expect
To be tested
To prepare for service
To learn trust/obedience.
To encounter the tempted AND God.
These are all things that we can encounter if we keep the right perspective, we can grow and come out the other side of the desert better, stronger, more filled with The Spirit, and trusting even deeper in God.
But, there is also another way that one can choose to look at the desert, a perspective that leads us not towards God but causes us to withdraw and wander.
The Wrong Perspective, the wrong choices can lead to:
Fear
Doubt
A loss of faith
A turn inward
A life of wandering.
What do I want you to know?
So, how do we make a choice to push through the desert, to get to the other side, better, healthier, and experiencing spiritual growth? In ACT therapy, a helpful way of talking about this for my mental and spiritual health is called Choice Points. Russ Harris talks about choice points in his book The Happiness Trap.
Choice points have a spiritual application. Each of us comes to different points throughout our day that Russ would call choice points. These are moments where we can move toward what matters in our lives. To live into our values. To live into our life with God or we can choose to draw away, making choices that move us away from the life we should be living. Life is given to you by God.
When we make choices to live in to the things that move us close to God and what He wants us to be, we move closer to finding our purpose…finding our meaning.
But, we can also at that choice point make a decision to move away from God and the life He is trying to give us.
Moving away from the dry places begins by making choice points that move us closer to God.
So, let me give you an example. Let’s say I heard that, let’s call her Lucinda, is talking bad about me. She is gossiping up a storm. I am angry about this, but how do I handle it? Do I start gossiping about her? Sharing her dirty secrets. Do I act vengefully and look for things to get her fired? Or do I go to her in a respectful manner and tell her what she is doing is wrong, giving her a chance to make things right? To make the right choice.
We are at a choice point. My actions, my choice to act based on my thoughts and feelings about Lucinda will either move me closer to God and the man He wants me to be or it will move me away because I choose to act in a way that is not loving, not in line with the character that God wants in me.
This is simple for me. It is logical and for my brain, especially when I am depressed or feeling dry, this simple tool allows me to evaluate my situation and hopefully, most of the time, make a choice that moves me toward who I want to be, the person God created me to be.
What do I want you to do?
The message to all of us today is to make choice points that move us closer to the life God has prepared for us. To move us towards a life lived with Him.
Making choice points works for us all. Whether you are struggling with a sin, feeling pressure to be someone you are not, being depressed, or dealing with the loss of a loved one.
Can there be things that are beyond your control? Yes, sometimes things are done to us. Sometimes physical and emotional limitations will hinder our progress forward, but we can move forward and that is the key.
As long as we are moving forward, like Jesus and all others who have gone into the desert before us, we will eventually make it out. We will grow spiritually. We will learn something new about ourselves. A way to cope with whatever brought us into the desert and we will thrive again.
I hope this weekend you will begin to make choice points that move you toward God, towards thriving, toward purpose.