The Darkness that brings true Light
"...when Jesus had received the sour wine, He said, 'It is finished!' And bowing His head, He gave up His spirit.... Then the soldiers came and broke the legs of the first and of the other who was crucified with Him. But when they came to Jesus and saw that He was already dead, they did not break His legs. ... For these things were done that the Scripture should be fulfilled, 'Not one of His bones shall be broken. And again another Scripture says, 'They shall look on Him whom they pierced." John 19:28-37
See The Cross
"Behold, the hour cometh, . . . that ye shall be scattered." John 16:32
"'...and shall leave Me alone.' Have we left Jesus alone by the scattering of His providence? Because we do not see God in our circumstances? Darkness comes by the sovereignty of God. Are we prepared to let God do as He likes with us—prepared to be separated from conscious blessings? Until Jesus Christ is Lord, we all have ends of our own to serve; our faith is real, but it is not permanent yet. God is never in a hurry; if we wait, we shall see that God is pointing out that we have not been interested in Himself, but only in His blessings..."
My Utmost for His Highest, April 4
"Now it happened, on a certain day, that He got into a boat with His disciples. And He said to them, 'Let us cross over to the other side of the lake.' And they launched out. But as they sailed He fell asleep. And a windstorm came..." Luke 8:22-23
"'If you obey Jesus you will have a life of joy and delight.' Well, it is not true. Jesus said to the disciples—'Let us cross over to the other of the lake,' and they were plunged into the biggest storm they had ever known.
"You say, 'If I had not obeyed Jesus I should not have got into this complication.' Exactly. The problems in our walk with God are to be accounted along this line, and the temptation is to say, 'God could never have told to go there, if He had done so this would not have happened.' We discover whether we are going to trust God’s integrity or listen to our own expressed skepticism.
"Darkness is not synonymous with sin; if there is darkness spiritually it is much more likely to be the shade of God’s hand than darkness on account of sin. It may be the threshold of a new revelation coming through a big break in personal experience. Before the dawn there is desolation; but wait, the dawn will merge into glorious day—'...the light of dawn, that shineth more and more unto the perfect day.”
"If you are experiencing the darkness of desolation on individual lines, go through with it, and you will find yourself face to face with Jesus Christ as never before. 'I have come that they may have life'—life in which there is no death—'and that they may have it more abundantly.'"
Oswald Chambers Daily Devotional Bible, p. 317
"Clouds and darkness are round about Him." Psalm 97:2
"A man who has not been born of the Spirit of God will tell you that the teachings of Jesus are simple. But when you are baptized with the Holy Ghost, you find 'clouds and darkness are round about Him.' When we come into close contact with the teachings of Jesus Christ we have our first insight into this aspect of things. The only possibility of understanding the teaching of Jesus is by the light of the Spirit of God on the inside.
"If we have never had the experience of taking our commonplace religious shoes off our common-place religious feet, and getting rid of all the undue familiarity with which we approach God, it is questionable whether we have ever stood in His presence. The people who are flippant and familiar are those who have never yet been introduced to Jesus Christ. After the amazing delight and liberty of realizing what Jesus Christ does, comes the impenetrable darkness of realizing Who He is....
"The Bible has been so many words to us -- clouds and darkness, then all of a sudden the words become spirit and life because Jesus re-speaks them to us in a particular condition. That is the way God speaks to us, not by visions and dreams, but by words."
My Utmost for His Highest, January 3
"And as they followed, they were afraid." Mark 10:32.
"At the beginning we were sure we knew all about Jesus Christ, it was a delight to sell all and to fling ourselves out in a hardihood of love; but now we are not quite so sure. Jesus is on in front and He looks strange. 'Jesus went before them: and they were amazed.'
"There is an aspect of Jesus that chills the heart of a disciple to the core and makes the whole spiritual life gasp for breath. This strange Being with His face set like a flint and His striding determination strikes terror into me. He is no longer Counsellor and Comrade, He is taken up with a point of view I know nothing about, and I am amazed at Him. At first I was confident that I understood Him, but now I am not so sure. I begin to realize there is a distance between Jesus Christ and me; I can no longer be familiar with Him. He is ahead of me and He never turns round; I have no idea where He is going, and the goal has become strangely far off.
"Jesus Christ had to fathom every sin and every sorrow man could experience, and that is what makes Him seem strange. When we see Him in this aspect we do not know Him, we do not recognize one feature of his life, and we do not know how to begin to follow Him. He is in front, a Leader Who is very strange, and we have no comradeship with Him.
"The discipline of dismay is an essential necessity in the life of discipleship. The danger is to get back to a little fire of our own and kindle enthusiasm at it (cf. Isaiah 50:10-11). When the darkness of dismay comes, endure until it is over, because out of it will come that following of Jesus which is an unspeakable joy."
My Utmost for His Highest, March 15
"What I tell you in darkness, that speak ye in light; and what ye hear in the ear, that preach ye upon the housetops." Matthew 10:27.
"At times God puts us through the discipline of darkness to teach us to heed Him. 'What I tell you in darkness...' Are you in the dark just now in your circumstances, or in your life with God? ... When you are in the dark, listen, and God will give you a very precious message for someone else when you get into the light."
My Utmost for His Highest, February 14
Note: The Darkness that is part of God's way is totally different from the darkness that brings death:
"Wherefore as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned." Romans 5:12.
"The Bible does not say that God punished the human race for one man’s sin; but that the disposition of sin, viz., my claim to my right to myself, entered into the human race by one man, and that another Man took on Him the sin of the human race and put it away (Heb. 9:26)—an infinitely profounder revelation. The disposition of sin is not immorality and wrong-doing, but the disposition of self-realization—I am my own god. This disposition may work out in decorous morality or in indecorous immorality, but it has the one basis, my claim to my right to myself. When Our Lord faced men with all the forces of evil in them, and men who were clean living and moral and upright, He did not pay any attention to the moral degradation of the one or to the moral attainment of the other; He looked at something we do not see, viz., the disposition....
"The condemnation is not that I am born with a heredity of sin, but if when I realize Jesus Christ came to deliver me from it, I refuse to let Him do so, from that moment I begin to get the seal of damnation. 'And this is the judgment, that the light is come into the world, and men loved the darkness rather than the light.” (John 3:19)My Utmost for His Highest, October 5