Honestly Facing the Dark Night of the Soul

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Well, good morning Lifepoint! It is so good to be back with you today. If we haven’t met yet, my name is Dan and I serve here as the teaching pastor for our Worthington Campus!

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Alright, if you have a bible with you, meet me in the Old Testament...we’ll be in the book of Job. No shame in turning to the table of contents for this one if you need help finding it!

Series Recap

Let me remind you where you how we’re working through the book of Job.

It’s 42 chapters long - and we’re covering it in five weeks. It’s sounds crazy - but I actually think it’s helpful to cover book it like this because it gives us the opportunity to get the full picture of what is, unquestionably, a very challenging book of the bible. We talked much more about this last week if you want some more context.

What we’re focusing on each week is a series of invitations that the book of Job offers to us - invitations to rethink or reimagine some aspect of God or ourselves. So last week, we talked about how the book of Job is an invitation for us to rethink how God operates in the world. Next week, we’ll see Job as an invitation to rethink our need of certainty in suffering...we’ll end in week five seeing it’s an invitation to reimagine God’s end game.

Don’t worry - I promise those will make more sense when we get to them!

Today, week 3, we’ll see Job is an invitation for us to honestly face the “dark night of the soul.”

Introduction

In a devastating instant in September 1991, the lives of Jerry and Lynda Sittser and their family were irrevocably altered by a tragic car accident on a rural highway. The head-on collision, caused by a drunk driver, claimed the lives of three generations of their family: Jerry's wife, Lynda; his mother; and their four-year-old daughter, Diana Jane.

Jerry and his three surviving children were left to navigate a world shattered by immense loss. The immediate aftermath was a scene of chaos and horror, as Jerry witnessed the deaths of his loved ones. In the years that followed, he and his children grappled with the profound grief and the daunting task of rebuilding their lives.

The driver of the other vehicle was intoxicated and his pregnant wife also died in the crash. This added another layer of tragedy to the already heartbreaking event.

Jerry Sittser, a professor of theology, chronicled his journey through this unimaginable loss in his widely influential book, "A Grace Disguised: How the Soul Grows Through Loss." In his writing, Sittser does not offer simple platitudes or easy answers. Instead, he explores the raw and painful realities of grief while also articulating a profound hope in the midst of suffering. He describes the experience as a "darkness" he had to walk into, a catastrophic loss that reshaped his identity and his understanding of faith.

As a result of what he and his family experienced, Jerry would, somehow, come to this conclusion:

"It is therefore not true that we become less through loss—unless we allow the loss to make us less, grinding our soul down until there is nothing left. . . . Loss can also make us more. . . . I did not get over the loss of my loved ones; rather, I absorbed the loss into my life, like soil receives decaying matter, until it became part of who I am. Sorrow took up permanent residence in my soul and enlarged it. . . . The soul is elastic, like a balloon. It can grow larger through suffering.”

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What produces that?

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What has happened in a person that they can look at the most tragic kind of loss imaginable - an experience that, for every understandable reason, should have shaped Him into a profoundly bitter, angry, and resentful person - someone so overcome with grief that he had very little reason to continue on.

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Because the first thing that sticks out to me, is that there’s nothing automatic about a response like that. As moving and beautiful as Sittser's response is, it’s not at all a given that, simply given enough time, any one of us would walk away with that kind of perspective on the things that we’ve experienced in this life - or the things we will experience in this life. No!

So again, my question is: what produces that?

Now, before we jump in today, let me say that I don’t think there’s any easy or quick answer to it. In fact, as best I can tell, of the answers the scriptures seem to give, none are immediately satisfying while you’re going through a dark and painful season.

PAUSE

But I do think that as we turn again to the wisdom of the book of Job, we will find language and a framework of sorts, for entering in the process that forms us into people who respond like Jerry Sittser in the long run. People who are honestly able to face grief, sorrow, and despair - and yet not, in the end be defined or dominated by them.

We find in the book of Job our second invitation - an invitation to honestly face the dark night of the soul.

So if you have bible with you, open with me to Job chapter 13. Job Chapter 13. I’ll read the passage, pray, and then we’ll get started.

Job 13:22–28 ESV

22 Then call, and I will answer; or let me speak, and you reply to me. 23 How many are my iniquities and my sins? Make me know my transgression and my sin. 24 Why do you hide your face and count me as your enemy? 25 Will you frighten a driven leaf and pursue dry chaff? 26 For you write bitter things against me and make me inherit the iniquities of my youth. 27 You put my feet in the stocks and watch all my paths; you set a limit for the soles of my feet. 28 Man wastes away like a rotten thing, like a garment that is moth-eaten.

PRAY

The Way Out is the Way Through...

Alright, let’s get started.

Let me remind you of the story so far.

Job is a good guy who has experienced some pretty horrific events resulting in the loss of just about every good thing in his life.

Last week, we saw the invitation to “Reimagine God’s Economy.”

Ultimately, everyone in the book has a faulty view of how God operates in the world. Job and his friends believe that God, at the very core of who He is, is fair. So when they look at all of what Job’s experienced, because they have such a high view of God’s justice and fairness, the only conclusion they can come to is that Job must have done something wrong. He MUST have angered God somehow, broke the rules, stepped out of line somewhere.

They say it this way:

Job 4:7–8 ESV

7 “Remember: who that was innocent ever perished? Or where were the upright cut off? 8 As I have seen, those who plow iniquity and sow trouble reap the same.

And yet, when God finally speaks to Job at the end of the book, He invites Job (and us) to see that, more than just, more than fair, He is wise. And it is out of His wisdom that is incompressibly larger than ours, that God operates in the world. He knows, sees, and doing things that by virtue of our humanity, we cannot see like him. It was an invitation to us to reimagine God and what He like.

But as we get to chapter 13, today — which is well before God’s response to Job — we find Job still in the place of grief.

And I think when we look at the passage, we see the kind of despair Job is feeling in the moment. Look again at v. 24 and what he says directed towards God.

Job 13:24–26 ESV

24 Why do you hide your face and count me as your enemy? 25 Will you frighten a driven leaf and pursue dry chaff? 26 For you write bitter things against me and make me inherit the iniquities of my youth.

Look at v. 28!

Job 13:28 ESV

28 Man wastes away like a rotten thing, like a garment that is moth-eaten.

The Dark Night

So what’s going on here?

Well, like I said, Job is a very challenging book to understand. And so, there are a lot of different thoughts from godly and wise thinkers who’ve spent years reflecting on this book.

And we can have a much longer discussion about why outside of the message but I am of the opinion that Job is generally quite hopeless.

Now, I’m not saying the book of Job is hopeless...it’s not! But Job the character — as best I can tell — is.

And I think for some of us, this is a bit problematic because, honestly, we don’t want a hopeless Job. We want an enduring Job — a patient, long-suffering Job! And we want that, because we want to be able to move through our own Job-moments like that!

Now, to be clear, I think he eventually becomes the enduring...patient...long-suffering Job. But I don’t think we really consider how he becomes the kind of person who is patient...who is enduring...the kind of person who like the story we started with - is able to look at a life of incredible loss and not completely give up.

But I think his “hopelessness” is actually a good thing for us because...you see...in voicing his own hopelessness, Job invites to voice ours.

Let me explain.

Look again at v. 24.

Job 13:24–28 ESV

24 Why do you hide your face and count me as your enemy? 25 Will you frighten a driven leaf and pursue dry chaff? 26 For you write bitter things against me and make me inherit the iniquities of my youth. 27 You put my feet in the stocks and watch all my paths; you set a limit for the soles of my feet. 28 Man wastes away like a rotten thing, like a garment that is moth-eaten.

He is describing real agony in his life. And, I think I know our community well enough to know that none of us have experienced exactly what Job did...

BUT...

I wonder if the essence of what Job says hits a bit closer to home than might think at first.

He’s saying, “God...if you’re even listening to me...”

It feels like you’re hiding... It feels like you’re against me... I’m bitter. I’m trapped. Like I’m wasting way.

Have you felt that?

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Jump down to chapter 14. Because it’s here that he comes right out and says it:

Job 14:7–13 ESV

7 “For there is hope for a tree, if it be cut down, that it will sprout again, and that its shoots will not cease. 10 But a man dies and is laid low; man breathes his last, and where is he? 11 As waters fail from a lake and a river wastes away and dries up, 12 so a man lies down and rises not again; till the heavens are no more he will not awake or be roused out of his sleep. 13 Oh that you would hide me in Sheol, that you would conceal me until your wrath be past...

He says, at least for a tree, you can cut it down and it can grow back...but no so with a man. Oh how I wish that you would hide me in Sheol...the grave.

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I wonder...have you been there.

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If it feels like I’m belaboring the point here, it’s because I want us see just how shocking Job’s words are.

And they’re shocking, not because they’re over the top...or over irreverent...but because of how honest and vulnerable they are. Job is saying exactly what it sounds like - that compared to what he’s feeling now, death is a compelling alternative. And this isn’t even the only time he says something like this.

There’s no way around this - Job’s words are dark...and I know that makes us feel uncomfortable.

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But friends, I think this is precisely the point of the book. Job bring us to the point where we too can and must name the darkness that we encounter in our own lives.

Like I said, Job voicing his hopelessness invites us to voice our own. In other words, Job invites us to honestly face the dark night of the soul.

Dark Night of the Soul

Now you may be wondering why I keep talking about the “Dark Night of the Soul.”

This is not a phrase you find in the bible...it’s not a super common phrase the modern Christian vernacular.

It’s actually a reference to the writings of two medieval theologians, known to history as, St. John of the Cross and Teresa of Avila.

And even they were drawing on a much older Christian tradition dating back to the 2nd and 3rd Centuries.

And when they used the phrase, “Dark Night of the Soul” it was a broad way of describing exactly what Job is talking about here in chapters 13-14; feeling hopeless — feeling abandoned by God. It was a way of describing that something feels very off and distant in your relationship with Him.

Sometimes we talk about a “Spiritually dry season”...or “season of doubt or questioning”...others even talk about something like a “spiritual depression.” The Dark Night of the Soul is really any season in which you feel like God is quite distant from you.

Which actually sounds a lot like Job’s language back in v. 24...right?

Job 13:24 ESV

24 Why do you hide your face and count me as your enemy?

And, honestly, it’s very disorienting for anyone to be in that place. Because it genuinely feels like something is really “wrong” in your faith. That you are wrong. You feel a lot like Job...and like him, you can’t really put your finger on what’s wrong - other than to say that something’s changed.

Now, there are a lot of different reasons that can bring us into the Dark Night of the Soul. But I think at the broadest level, it’s loss...of almost any kind. The loss of anything meaningful to you.

It could be something as instantaneous and horrific as the story we talked about at the beginning with Sittser’s.

It could be the loss of a close relationship because there’s been some kind of fall out - and so that person or community is no longer there for you in the way they were.

It could be the loss of a dream—because life has not played out the way you thought it would. You’re career has shifted or ended.

The loss of a sense of normalcy - like a move to a new community where you are not known the way you used to be. Having moved here in the last two years, there are whole meaningful parts of our family’s story that just isn’t known here...and it’s not because we’re hiding it - it’s because in moving, we lost the closely knit-community the knew it all.

Whatever it is, loss is incredibly powerful precisely because brings us to a place of questioning. It brings us to the place Jerry Sittser was for years. It brings us to the place Job is for the majority of this book where over and over again, he questions what God is doing - why He’s seemingly turned his back...

It’s in the Dark Night of the Soul, we question why a God who says He loves us would allow us to go through what we’re going through. We question what possible good could come from this.

And it’s in in the Dark Night of the Soul, that it often feels like our questions go unanswered.

Job 30:20 ESV

20 I cry to you for help and you do not answer me; I stand, and you only look at me.

In the Dark Night of the Soul, you will find that some of the most meaningful ways you’ve connected with God in the past now feel empty.

Time in His Word is dry - and you can desperately want to want to be in the scriptures, but at least for now, you just have no desire! Prayer feels like talking to a brick wall. Lifegroup or whatever community is a chore.

Obviously you love the sermons.

But everything else about being here is just like going through the motions, barely here.

And it doesn’t help that most of the advice you will get from other well meaning followers of Jesus tends not to be helpful.

“Have you tried spending time in the Word?” “Have you tried praying this way?” “Maybe you just need to put your head down, push through, and trust God.”

Friends I think if we’re honest, we can join Job in his questions. “Why do you hide your face from me and count me as your enemy?”

So What?

So...what do we do?

Receive the Invitation

Well, if the book of Job is an invitation to honestly face the Dark Night of the Soul, I think what we do is receive that invitation. We receive the invitation to honestly face it...to honestly name it...and more importantly, embrace the mystery of what God is able to do in and through the Dark Night.

And let me be clear, I don’t say that in any way to try and trivialize the real pain, frustration, and honestly agonizing questions we can ask during the Dark Night of the Soul.

In the church today, we do everything in our power to either get out of the Dark Night of the Soul...or prevent ourselves from getting there in the first place. And on one level, that makes sense to me - as a very natural response to it...because who in their right mind wants to stay there?

But as your pastor, let me just say, my concern is not that you will enter the Dark Night, it’s that you will be discipled and formed here in such a way as to fear it. To go through it thinking less of yourself...ashamed...embarrassed...and alone.

And I have been there. I have been in the Dark Night - in fact, looking back I can see that two of the last three years of our time in Chicago - I was in the Dark Night.

I was constantly frustrated. I was spiritually depleted and it felt like my tank was on empty. I even remember trying to bring this up with a few close friends - just to try and name it - and, more often then not, just getting advice...often true advice, but not helpful or comforting advice.

It wasn’t until someone started to introduce me to the writings of much older Christians who, hundreds and hundreds of years before me, had clearly articulated what I was feeling in my own soul - more than any counselor I had met with...more than any sermon I’d listened, or bible study I was apart of.

It was this liberating truth that the Dark Night of the Soul is not uncommon, but a necessary part of our own discipleship and spiritual development. It was this somehow comforting reality that maybe I wasn’t crazy...that I wasn’t alone…that maybe God was at work in and through the suffering in this world in such a way as to miraculously - in spite of the brokenness and sin of this world - miraculously work all things for the good of those who love him.

Friends, Job invites us into the Dark Night. Part of journey - growing in our life with Jesus is receiving that invitation.

I mentioned St. John of the Cross earlier and how he is one of the primary voices articulating the Dark Night of the Soul. He goes on to give this beautiful analogy for it...that I actually think brings far more hope.

He says that it’s the spiritual equivalent of what infants go through when they are being weaned - transitioning from milk to solid food. The thing is, no baby understands what’s going on.

Every time my own kids have been weaned, they are distraught! To them, it feels like they are being neglected...or abandoned....it feels like they’ve lost the connection they once had to their provider.

And yet, they need it. It would not be good for any person to stay on milk for their lives - as they grow the transition is healthy, necessary, and good! It’s for their flourishing and growth. Friends the same is true for us, spiritually.

The Dark Night is the process through which God is weaning us. And when you think about it that way, you see, it means we don’t have to stay in a place of despair. Even if we can’t make sense of all of what’s going on...why it’s going on...in the Dark Night, we can be assured that transformation is going on. We are, as uncomfortable and painful as it might be, being changed and transformed for the other side.

While should come as no surprise. After all, is this not what we find in the very story at the center of our faith?

In the Christian story is that - we are not, in the end alone in feeling abandoned. This, after all is exactly what Jesus himself expresses on the cross - as He, the true and better Job - fully righteous, perfectly obedient to all of what God commanded of us - lovingly and willing goes to His death on our behalf. It’s on the cross that he cries out in His own dark night of the soul:

Mark 15:34 ESV

34 And at the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, “Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?” which means, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

Now, the beauty of the Christian story is that Jesus life did not ultimately end with his death...His death ends in life. It is His resurrection that makes way for our own - that for all those who trust in Jesus, we find that in and through our suffering, our lives do not have to end in death - but our death ends in new and everlasting life!

Conclusion

To those of you who are there, lean in. Name it. You have the freedom to do exactly what Job does in this book.

To those of you not there. It is very likely that you will be there.