DIVINE DARKNESS

 

What must you do when darkness comes into your life? Keep walking! Don’t stop! Haul yourself up and do your duty to keep going in the same direction you were going when the darkness came. What did God say to you before you went into the darkness? What was your call when the voice of God was clear? Then do it still. Keep on walking. Nothing has changed on the path except your perception of it. Do your duty nevertheless, and keep walking even when the lights go out. Your darkness may very well be a divine darkness that stops you in your tack with no warning, nor any word from God concerning it. You are not the first one to walk in divine darkness nor will you be the last. Isa. 50:10 says this, “Who among you fears the Lord and obeys the word of His Servant? Let him who walks in the darkness who has no light trust in the name of the Lord and rely upon his God. There is divine darkness that comes to those who walk with God and for some, it can nearly wipe them out. If you are experiencing this kind of darkness you will search your heart and find nothing, you rebuke the devil, you ask for prayers, you listen to great preaching, you consume the Word of God, yet still nothing, no answers from God; just darkness. Tozer called it, “the ministry of the night” while Spurgeon preached about “the child of light walking in darkness.” The experience is common among God’s children. It is not the kind of darkness of wrong or guilt or demonic oppression. Nor is it sin. It is instead, an inexplicable sense of loss and uncertainty. It is above all, a withdrawn sense of the presence of God. Notice I said, withdrawn sense, underscoring the word “sense”, of God’s presence. While He has not nor, will He ever leave you because of the divine darkness that you are sensing, it will appear to you that He has. What you are going through is not new. It came to every man and woman of God in Scripture that ever sought to live in obedience to God.  It came to Abraham as he stood waiting for God to accept his sacrifice. Moses experienced it on the mountain as he waited to receive the word of God for His people in the thick darkness the scripture says, where God was. Job felt the divine darkness as he looked for good and yet evil came upon him. David experienced bouts of divine darkness as he tried to serve God. The prophets of God wept as they walked through their own divine darkness. It came to the godly kings and they humbled themselves and were broken even greater than before. It even came to the Son of God Himself as He hang on the cross. So be assured that if you set your heart to seek God, this darkness will also come to you. You will not escape it nor be exempt . It is an essential factor if you are to walk and have a deeper relationship to God. It will only come through the divine darkness of Christian experience. May I encouraging you today sweet friend to simply hold on, and be not dismayed, for there is nothing new under the sun! You are not alone in what you are going through. Though you may feel as though God is sleighing you for a time, keep serving Him! Don’t you dare give up. God will release in you the light and answers that you are looking for, when the time of your darkness is to pass!

Loving on you today,

Bren

LEADERS

It has not always been the will of God for men to lead men. His initial plan was that He alone would lead His creation. However, as sin entered the world  and men became lovers of themselves and chose to worship His creation instead of the creator, war and unhappiness was the result and it seemed inevitable that God would have to raise up godly men to lead His people .

Upon the death of Moses, God worked through and used another faithful leader Joshua.  He used Joshua to lead Israel to victories as they battled and journeyed their way to the Promised Land. After Joshua died, God’s people again lost their zeal for Him. The Israelites grew weary of their constant need of driving out the Canaanites. They became tired of besieging city after city in order to conquer their enemies and stay on top of their game. They decided to slow down, lay back and not work quite so hard at driving away the pagan influences that was corrupting them and bringing new thought and religions into their lives and their homes. As they became more tolerant of those changes, they began to change their behaviors and beliefs about God and in doing so they brought judgment to the household of God which was His people. More and more as the people of Israel tolerated their idol-worshipping neighbors, they grew accustomed to their ungodly beliefs.

As time passed, a new generation of Israelites came into adulthood, one that was easily enticed by the sexually loose and morally corrupt ways of the Canaanites. God’s plan was that Israel become a shining example of His Ways. His laws were to be their wisdom, leading the Israelites to be a blessed people for their obedience to Him. The nations surrounding them were to take note and thus yearn to know about God’s laws because of the role model and influence that His children were being. Instead, the Israelites entered a cycle of rejecting God in favor of idols and in doing so they suffered the military conquests of neighboring enemy nations. As those times happened, they would always turn back and cry out to God for deliverance. God would always respond to His people by sending a deliverer to deliver them from their trials and bondage time and time again. That repetitive cycle is recorded in the book of Judges, and refers to a time when “every man did that which was right in his own eyes” Judges 21:25. Like the Israelites did time and time again we too live in a day when men and women do that which is right in their own eyes and like them we too are paying the great cost! God has provided us someone today that can lead us out of our transgressions and into a life of abundance.

Unlike those that believe in the name it claim it religion, God’s abundance does not promise money, power, nor any fleshly thing. But His promises are eternal. They are not carnal that man can tarnish them or take them away. His abundances are greater than anything the eye can see. They are peace, faithfulness, happiness, joy, contentment and so much more. He who loves us, calls us into all truth. However, if we are unwilling to follow His leadership we will not enjoy the blessings of His rewards. Let it be Lord to our credit, that we hear the truth and follow it.    

During the period of the judges in the Bible, God used them to deliver His people from affliction. Sometimes judges led armies, as Gideon did against the Midianites. Other times, judges worked alone as did Samson. The servants that God used to judge His people were men, except for one woman. Her name was Deborah. The story of Deborah a prophetess or judge of Israel occurred around or about 1125BC. In those days a judge in Israel was more of a tribal leader unlike the judges of our day. God used them to lead and guide His people during the days before Israel had Kings. God used them to deliver His messages to His people as well as using them as advisors in times of peace. They were given God’s authority to settle disputes and solve problems among the Jews. They also acted as councilors in war times and were used as rallying points to gather the tribes and organize their resistance.

While Deborah did not have the characteristic of masculinity, nor any great power given to her by the people, she did have authority from God to judge and facilitate the people of God during her time. Deborah is the only woman judge mentioned in the Book of Judges. The people of her time had no difficulty in accepting her as a judge which suggests that judges were seen simply as God’s people, and their gender was unimportant. She had authority rather than power, and people respected her for the qualities she had, rather than for her military might or physical strength. You see the judges of Israel did not impose their authority on the Israelite people they did not have to. They were simply representatives of God, transmitting direct messages from God. Most often the message was about staying apart from the surrounding cultures and maintaining their unique identity and beliefs from what they had been taught about God. Deborah was inspired to speak out about the deteriorating state of the country around Ephraim.

Law and order had broken down, and it was no longer safe for society. It has to be said that the Israelites that settled in the hill country of Canaan, were largely to blame for these problems. For they continually raided the Canaanite farms and villages on the prosperous plains below their hill settlements, and of course the powerful long arm of their enemy retaliated and oppressed the Israelites. God used Deborah’s obedience to what He said and how He was going to bring relief to a worn out nation who was testing God’s patience once again. How is God using your life today? If you are a child of God, you are merely His representative to others. It is only His light that you should be reflecting. Are you leading others to a better understanding of God by your own witness and lifestyle? Or, are you hiding it under bushels of trails and burdens, so that others cannot see the light from the smoke?  Our society needs good leaders that will stand up and represent the truth by their lifestyles; not merely what they say. We need great leaders in every aspect of our society. But let’s make sure that the light that they are carrying is the light of truth.

Loving on you today,

Bren

A FATHER'S LOVE FOR HIS FAMILY

I read the other day that almost 30 million children in America grow up without a father. Eighty five percent or more of them live in poverty in this great country. Oh it gets worse! Those children are 20 times more likely to attempt suicide, fifty times more likely to take drugs and 40 times more likely to go to prison. However, what is really alarming about those statistics is that, they are old. I heard a statement once that, if we paid as much attention to our plants as we do our children, we’d be living in a jungle of weeds. Is that not heartbreaking to you? Yesterday on the radio I heard a song and one of the verses was, “I wish that I would do what I didn’t do in the past”. How true are those words to us all; because we all have regrets. However, each new day allows us a new opportunity to recapture what time and wrong choices have reeked on our lives and our families.

There is no doubt that there is a huge gap in the family when the father is either absent or he is not providing for his family with the proper emotional and spiritual training that his children need. I believe that most folks would agree not to condemn, but to challenge fathers to question their time and where they are spending it, or if it is simply neglect. There is no doubt that many men work hard to care for the physical needs for their family. Yet, even within that group of men, many of those fathers neglect other areas that need the attention that only a father can provide. Some men believe that as long as they put food on the table, they are doing their jobs as a provider. While that may sound manly, it is simply not acceptable. Nor, is it the healthy way that God meant for a man to be as a father and leader in his home. Thank God for mothers who do stand in the gap, but the Bible says that God will ultimately hold the man responsible for the spiritual training and emotional well-being of his children. By the time a child is 12 years old research shows that they have learned 75 per cent of all that they will ever know. The challenge is, “what teachers will they have learned it from”? Will it be from television, the words and lyrics of songs that they had no business listing to, but was allowed, because it was easier to ignore than to discipline? Maybe, because the parents themselves listen to it and see nothing wrong with it. Will they have chosen to learn wrong things from their peers, because of the double standards within their own home; do as I say and not as I do? Did they learn what they know from a friend’s parents, who’s teaching was unacceptable? As the twig is bent, so grows the tree.

Who is bending your children? If you are investing all of your energy into a job or a hobby and leave none for your family, you will pay the high price. While you get only one chance at raising your children, you can stop at any time from making the wrong choices; and get on the right track. Your children will either grow up to resent you, repeat your mistakes, or rejoice in the memory where a home was filled with love and was spelled TIME. If having grown up in a home where the father spent the time needed and provided the loving nurture and discipline to his children, he will have taught them that no matter what wrong choices they make in life, they will know how to turn them around to their advantage, to be productive and happy; because they will have learned it from home. In the book of Malachi we are reminded to remember the law of God for ourselves and how important they are to teach our children. It gives warning to remember our past mistakes and realize that we are in a war. A spiritual war that is constantly tugging at our children’s heart to come, to take part, to indulge in lifestyles that seem to offer them temporary satisfaction but in the end bondage in some form or another.

As parents we must fight for them, fight with them, not against them. By that I mean to make every effort possible to reach them and not give up! If our love is the kind of love that they need, we will have succeeded in helping them to reach their potential. Malachi 4:6 says that :”He will restore the hearts of the fathers to their children and the children to the father”, God is able, are you willing? Would you begin today, to pray this prayer for yourself or someone you know that may need some extra help in this area. There is nothing that can take the place of a father’s love for and in his family.

Loving on you today,

Bren