the Dark Night of the Soul

The Dark Night of The Soul (Ps 42)

Pastor Tom Mitchell

Dark Night of the Soul is the title of a poem written by 16th Cent. Roman Catholic, St. John of the Cross. The main idea of the poem is the painful experience that people endure as they seek to grow in spiritual journey with God.The expression has since become a metaphor used to describe a time in a person's spiritual life, marked by a sense of loneliness and desolation.

If you are a Christian, you will experience at some point in your life, what the writer of Psalm 42 had experienced, The Dark Night of The Soul. If you don’t know how to deal with this experience it can be disturbing and even disastrous.

What is the experience? The Psalmist has lost the relational experience of God’s presence. Thoughts about God that used to strengthen him – don’t anymore. He is experiencing spiritual dryness, drought, darkness, deadness. And, hear this: he has done nothing wrong.

This is important because Americans think that if something is wrong, then I must not be doing something right. There must be something on my Christian to do list that I am missing. This is why, as Christians, when they experience spiritual dryness, deadness or drought we think – I’m sure there is something on my spiritual to do list that I haven’t done. Others say, well, have you prayed in faith, have you confessed all known sin, have you plead the blood, have you rebuked the devil, have you claimed the promises, have you thanked God for all your blessings? Surely there would be nothing wrong if you were doing your entire Christian to do list. Obviously you’re doing something wrong. But this guy, in Ps 42, is not doing anything wrong and he is still experiencing dryness or deadness.

This condition can come upon you if you have done something wrong, but it can happen without that and it can happen to you even if you are faithfully doing your Christian to do list!

This information is especially important for new Christians, because you will think this “Dark Night of the Soul” is happening because you are doing something wrong.

We all need to be aware of this because if you don’t deal with it you can begin to doubt the whole Christian experience.

Contributing Factors to The Dark Night:

1 – Disruption of unity. v4 “These things I remember as I pour out my soul:

how I used to go with the multitude, leading the procession to the house of God,”

We don’t know why this happened but he is away from his worshiping community. He is missing the corporate worship.

Americans underestimate the need and value of corporate gatherings. 80 – 90% of Americans think they can be spiritual beings without the group. We tend to underestimate the importance of the group. You can fall into spiritual dryness because you aren’t in community.

2 - Disillusionment of the events of life. v3“My tears have been my food day and night, while men say to me all day long, “Where is your God?” When you are experiencing difficult events, disappointing events, the question comes, where is God? v9 “ I say to God my Rock, “Why have you forgotten me?” What does that question mean? Disappointing events are happening. Events that don’t mesh with your belief that God is a loving, good, powerful and a just God. If God is good then why is this happening? Things go wrong; things happen that we can’t explain. But imagine what you would do if things were falling apart and you didn’t know God!

3 – Deprivation – physically: v3 “My tears have been my food” = I’m not eating, no appetite; “My tears have been my foodday and night” = not sleeping, no sleep. You are not going to deal with this condition unless you realize there is a physical aspect to it. The physical aggravates the condition.

Lloyd Jones – who was a Dr. before he became a preacher, says this about v3: “Does anyone hold to the view that as long as you are a Christian it doesn’t matter what the condition of your body is?” You’ll soon be disillusioned if you believe that…People who are physically weak are more prone to attacks of depression, but if you recognize that the physical condition affects the spiritual and make allowances, you’ll be better able to deal with the condition.” Don’t ignore the physical.

Some say depression is all physical, take medicine, others say it’s all moral, buck up and pull yourself together and others reduce everything to psychological and emotional – we are going to listen to you and support you. Here’s the balanced truth: We are emotional so we need friends. We are physical so we need rest, food and medicine. We are spiritual so we need truth.

Correcting Measures for The Dark Night:

1. He asks God Why? v9: “I say to God, my rock: ‘Why have you forgotten me? Why do I go mourning because of the oppression of the enemy?” What he means is that, it looks like God has forgotten him. It feels as if God has forgotten him. If God hasn’t forgotten him, why aren’t these enemies driven back and consumed?

So the psalmist asks Why? It’s a legitimate question.

2. He affirms God’s love. In the midst of his discouragement he affirms God’s love for him. v8: “By day the Lord directs his love, at night his song is with me— a prayer to the God of my life.” By day and night he experienced the evidences of God’s care, protection, and blessing.

He never loses this grip on the God’s love for him in and through all the troubles.

3. He sings! He sings to the Lord at night, pleading for his life. v8: “By day the LORD commands his steadfast love, and at night his song is with me, a prayer to the God of my life.” This is not a song of joyful hope. He doesn’t feel joyful hope. He is seeking joyful hope. This is a prayer song and pleading song—a song “to the God of my life.” He sang and those songs sustained him.

4 – He Preaches to his own heart. v5: “Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you in turmoil within me? Hope in God; for I shall again praise him, my salvation and my God.” O how crucial this is in the “Dark night of the Soul”. We must learn to preach the truth to ourselves. Listen to Lloyd-Jones take on this verse: Have you realized that much of your unhappiness in life is due to the fact that you are listening to yourself instead of talking to yourself? Take those thoughts that come to you the moment you wake up in the morning. You have not originated them but they are talking to you, they bring back the problems of yesterday, etc. Somebody is talking. Who is talking to you? Your self is talking to you. In Psalm 42 instead of listening to himself, he starts talking to himself. v5“Why are you downcast, O my soul?” he asks. His soul had been depressing him, crushing him. So he stands up and says,: “Self, listen for moment, I will speak to you.”

Dr. Paul Tripp says: No one talks to you more than you do. You are in an unending conversation with yourself. This conversation never ceases. It began when you awakened this morning and it will continue until you fall asleep this evening. It is actually taking place within you right now, even as I speak. This internal conversation has the most influence on your soul each and every day. You are more influenced by this internal conversation than you are by your parents, your pastors, your friends, your teachers, circumstances, and at times even more than God and his Word. Apart from God's activity in our lives each day, this conversation, and the content of this conversation, is the difference-maker in your soul each and every day. And there is a direct relationship between the content of this unending internal conversation and the state of your soul each and every day.

On this side of the cross, we know the foundation of our hope is Jesus Christ crucified for our sins and triumphant over death. So we must learn to preach the truth to ourselves: Listen, self:“ If God is for me, who can ever be against me? Since God did not spare even his own Son but gave him up for me, won’t he also give me everything else? Who dares accuse me…. God himself has given me right standing with himself. Who then will condemn me? No one—for Christ Jesus died for me … Can anything ever separate me from Christ’s love? Does it mean he no longer loves me if I have trouble or calamity, or am persecuted, or hungry, or destitute, or in danger, or threatened with death?…..No, despite all these things, overwhelming victory is mine through Christ, who loves me. And I am convinced that nothing can ever separate me from God’s love. Neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither my fears for today nor my worries about tomorrow—not even the powers of hell can separate me from God’s love. No power in the sky above or in the earth below—indeed, nothing in all creation will ever be able to separate me from the love of God that is revealed in Christ Jesus my Lord.(toms paraphrase Rom 8:31-35) Learn to preach truth to yourself.

5. He remembers past worship experiences. He calls past experiences to mind. He remembers past corporate worship experiences. v4:“These things I remember as I pour out my soul: how I used to go with the multitude, leading the procession to the house of God, with shouts of joy and thanksgiving among the festive throng.”

A lot could be said about the importance of corporate worship in our lives. Don’t take these times together lightly. What we do here can be a real encounter with the living God. God means for these encounters with him in corporate worship to preserve your faith now and in the way you remember them later.

Dr. Tim Keller says: If corporate worship were not a real supernatural work of God, it would be pure sentimentalism. The psalmist in remembering his experiences are not engaging in nostalgia. He is confirming his faith in the midst of turmoil and discouragement by remembering how real God was in corporate worship. O how much more serious we should be about corporate worship.

6. He thirsts for God. vs 1-2: “As the deer pants for streams of water,

so my soul pants for you, O God. ²My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When can I go and meet with God?” Just as a deer looks until it finds water, the writer intensely longs for fellowship with God and will not be content until he reconnects with God.

When we see the face of Jesus, we see the face of God. May your hunger and thirst to see the face of God in Jesus increase more and more through this year. And even now Jesus is seated at the right hand of God making intercession for each of us in all our different experiences – especially in the experience of the Dark Night of The Soul.