“We walk by faith, not by sight” (2 Cor. 5:7, ESV). This means we must be willing to accept some blindness. We cannot insist on being able to have spiritual sight about everything. For most of us God has already proven himself in various ways. We do not need to wait for something more to learn to walk in dark faith. We can’t keep going back to convince ourselves of God’s truths.
There is a point at which we just start walking into the darkness of faith without any other support. This experience usually keeps cycling on and off throughout our Christian life. We step out in the darkness and eventually the light dawns and we reach a plateau. Later, we walk into another patch of darkness. Gradually, God trains us to connect with him on a different and deeper Spiritual channel.
Times of dryness and darkness are our best opportunities for learning deep faith. When we are feeling God’s presence and tasting his sweetness it isn’t too hard to remain in faith. In order to purge the unbelief out of us God withholds his extra grace so we have to actually surrender ourselves to his Christformation. When this happens we walk in the Spirit and exercise our weak childlike muscles so we can “become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ” (Eph. 4:13, NIV). Instead of internally fighting these times we need to take advantage of these opportunities. Don’t waste them because you may have to keep repeating the dark times, or worse, you may not get another chance.
“Instead of internally fighting these times we need to take advantage of these opportunities.”
What does it feel like to learn dark faith? It is disorienting and disturbs all our faculties. God seems to us:
- Unseen
- Unfelt
- Unknown
- Unheard
- Unavailable
We feel:
- Uncertain
- Unstable
- Unsure
- Unsafe
- Unsupported
- Unsecured
- Unresolved
As we trust him while feeling all this discomfort we will develop deep faith.
Peter referred to this process in 1 Peter 1:6-7: “you have to endure many trials for a little while. These trials will show that your faith is genuine. It is being tested as fire tests and purifies gold—though your faith is far more precious than mere gold” (NLT). Faith in God is more valuable than every occupation or success or divine blessing we hope for on this earth so it is worth the effort to rise to every challenge. John of the Cross (b. 1542 – d. 1591) thinks of us as a log in the fire. As the fire burns the log hisses and turns black but after awhile the fire burns away all the resistance so that the fire glows through the log. The log still exists but since it is pure it is now united with the fire. This is what God is doing in us and it is what he has done with so many of the great Christians who wrote about the Spiritual life.
I used to think that I could learn deep faith best by experience the sweetness of God’s love. God had a different idea and after much pain I realize that I could only learn deep faith in the midst of suffering. As Peter implies, nothing else forces us to change like suffering.
