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Author
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Topic: When The Heart Waits
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BORN AGAIN
unregistered
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posted
Matthew 6:34
Take therefore no thought for tomorrow: for tomorrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.
When I try to make the whole day into a good day, I will be disappointed because Jesus declared that every day would have some evil in it.
Plus, I think that Jesus tests our faith, not to show Him what our faith is like, but so that we ourselves can see what our faith is like:
James 1
2 My brethren, count it all joy when ye fall into divers temptations;
3 Knowing this, that the trying of your faith works patience.
4 And let patience have her perfect work, that ye may be perfect and entire, lacking nothing.
No sooner had the LORD promised Abram and Sarai that the LORD would give this land of Canaan to Abram and to his seed, there was a great famine in the land of Canaan and Abram and Sarai went down into Egypt, eventhough they could have stayed in the land of Canaan because the LORD had promised the land of Canaan to Abram's seed.
Since Abram and Sarai had no seed, they should have had faith in the promise of the LORD, that they would have to live in order to have seed. Instead Abram lied to the Egyptians and Sarai was taken into the harem of Pharaoh.
Abram and Sarai both failed this test of faith, but there would be other tests to try him and them again.
As with Sarai laughing in the tent when the 3 angels came to the tent by Mamre and one angel said to Abram, your wife Sarai shall have a son, and Sarai laughed in unbelief, even lied that she had not laughed.
But Abraham did not fail the important Isaac test of faith, nor did Abram and Sarai fail the Haran test where they were asked to "go to a land that I will show you" without knowing yet where they would be going.
In summary, our faith is tested and those times may seem like periods of darkness to the believer, saying, "come on, God, where are You!, but I would prefer to see them as periods when our faith is tested than describing them as "periods of darkness".
BORN AGAIN ![[thumbsup2]](graemlins/thumbsup2.gif)
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Carmela
Advanced Member
Member # 4817
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posted
I'm reading a book called "When the Heart Waits" by Sue Mond Kidd. It's really good. She is talking about midlife crises and growth through it. I wanted to share something with you from it. She is talking about how darkness is a time God uses for growth. I have experienced times like this which is why it stood out to me today.
Quote:
We don't hear much about the "dark night" anymore. The one and only sermon I ever heard preached on darkness was riveting, however. The minister pointed out that the most significant events in Jesus' life took place in darkness; his birth, his arrest, his death, his resurrection. His point was that although darkness in spiritual life has gotten a lot of bad press, it sometimes yields extraordinary events.
What extraordinary event is taking place in the dark night of the soul? We're receiving a loving call from God to move into a wider and deeper dimension of spiritual life. We're being emptied of the old. It becomes darkened to us. As John of the Cross wrote, the purpose of the dark night is to purge us.
Previous ways of thinking about relating to God no longer suffice. Old religious acts no longer bring the consolation they once did. Former patterns and selves feel like outgrown sweaters.
Merton tells us that the darkness comes when we allow God to strip away the false selves and make us into the person we're meant to be. Transformation depends on this stripping away (or undoing ego patterns, recasting the old story we created for ourselves to live in, and unraveling illusions not only about ourselves but about God.
This stripping away both demands and created a temporary darkness. It's almost as if the burning up of old patterns and the accompanying illumination that comes from the discovering the True Self create a light so bright that it blinds us for a while.
In the ensuing darkness God often seems absent. We begin to encounter Deus absconditis--the sense that God is playing hide and seek. I believe that what we're experiencing, however, is the hiding of an old way of knowing and experiencing God, the crumbling of our "creation" of who God is and the divine system that our egos have invested in.
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Posts: 646 | From: Central New York | Registered: Jun 2005
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