WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:06.700 There was a young girl named Agnes, and after she became a follower of Jesus, Agnes was 00:00:06.700 --> 00:00:14.800 absolutely full of faith. We might say that she was on fire for Jesus, and she wrote in her journal 00:00:14.800 --> 00:00:21.800 extensively about the deep union that she felt with God. She would write that she felt a continual 00:00:21.800 --> 00:00:27.440 sense of God's presence in her life. You know, I read that and I think, man, I would love to feel 00:00:27.440 --> 00:00:34.420 that. She wanted to devote her entire life to loving Jesus, so she eventually left home and she 00:00:34.420 --> 00:00:43.280 became a missionary among the poorest of the poor. But the story doesn't end there. After a while, 00:00:43.280 --> 00:00:49.600 her journal entries began to change. She wrote things like, where is my faith? 00:00:51.780 --> 00:00:55.079 Deep down, there's nothing but emptiness and darkness. 00:00:57.439 --> 00:01:02.920 In one place, she wrote, my God, how painful is this unknown pain? 00:01:04.359 --> 00:01:08.500 And then much more directly, I have no faith. 00:01:10.219 --> 00:01:17.420 Now, of course, I'm talking about Mother Teresa, and these writings were intended only for her 00:01:17.420 --> 00:01:22.920 spiritual directors. Nevertheless, some people decided to publish them and make them widely 00:01:22.920 --> 00:01:28.780 available. And so, a lot of atheists and secular people came out and said, well, here you go. 00:01:29.040 --> 00:01:37.519 Mother Teresa lost her faith. But more mature, seasoned believers recognized this for what it 00:01:37.519 --> 00:01:47.340 actually was, what we might call the wall, or what St. John of the Cross called the dark night of the soul. 00:01:47.340 --> 00:01:56.900 Every genuine believer is going to face the wall at some point in your journey. Every follower of Jesus, 00:01:57.219 --> 00:02:02.760 sooner or later, is going to go through a dark night of the soul. Some of you have been there, and I know 00:02:02.760 --> 00:02:09.480 you've been there because I know you, and you've been through it. Others of you, I think, are probably there 00:02:09.479 --> 00:02:15.359 right now. I think this last year has probably caused many people to go into a kind of dark night 00:02:15.359 --> 00:02:21.159 of the soul for one reason or another. Just pick your reason. There's plenty out there. All of us are 00:02:21.159 --> 00:02:28.879 going to face this at some point in our journey. I've gone through the wall at least three times 00:02:28.879 --> 00:02:35.159 since I came to faith a little over 20 years ago. And so, it's going to happen. 00:02:35.159 --> 00:02:43.419 And knowing what the wall is, and knowing how to get through the wall, is essential for anyone desiring 00:02:43.419 --> 00:02:49.859 to grow in your faith. Because at a certain point, going through the wall becomes necessary in order to 00:02:49.859 --> 00:02:55.780 progress. People who have never gone through this are sort of stagnant. Their growth stops. 00:02:57.079 --> 00:03:02.759 So, what we're going to do is we're going to look at Psalm 13, which was written by David, I think, as a young 00:03:02.759 --> 00:03:08.639 adult when he was going through the wall. And we're going to learn three things from this passage. 00:03:08.780 --> 00:03:14.319 We're going to learn first, what is the wall? And then number two, why does it matter so much? Why is 00:03:14.319 --> 00:03:18.759 it so important? And then finally, of course, a very important question, how do we get through it? 00:03:19.239 --> 00:03:25.819 So, what is it? Why does it matter? How to get through it? Let's pray. Lord, we thank you for your 00:03:25.819 --> 00:03:32.340 word. And as we say every week, it doesn't always say what we want it to say. Sometimes it says things 00:03:32.340 --> 00:03:37.099 that align with what we want to be true. Other times it says things that are baffling, confusing, 00:03:37.800 --> 00:03:46.039 offensive. But Lord, perhaps that's what we need. Perhaps what we need is to be disturbed, 00:03:46.960 --> 00:03:53.240 to be upset, maybe even to be offended. Because sometimes there are things that are true that we 00:03:53.240 --> 00:03:58.840 don't want to face, that we don't want to admit. And Lord, sometimes those are the things that we most 00:03:58.840 --> 00:04:03.420 need to hear. And so, I pray that you, in your wisdom, which is far greater than ours, 00:04:03.479 --> 00:04:08.099 would tell us what we need to hear this morning in the power of your Holy Spirit. We ask this in 00:04:08.099 --> 00:04:16.540 the name of your Son, Jesus. Amen. So, first of all, what is the wall? So, I want to clarify that 00:04:16.540 --> 00:04:22.819 first by saying a couple of things that the wall is not. Number one, the wall is not necessarily the 00:04:22.819 --> 00:04:30.480 same thing as a bout of depression. All right, I've experienced depression. I've taken antidepressants 00:04:30.480 --> 00:04:35.180 at a point in my life. I've also been through the wall, and I can tell you they're not the same thing. 00:04:36.060 --> 00:04:41.159 There are times when you can be severely depressed, but you're not necessarily at the wall. 00:04:41.959 --> 00:04:47.480 Likewise, you can hit the wall in your faith, but that doesn't necessarily mean that you feel 00:04:47.480 --> 00:04:55.020 depressed. They can coexist, but they can also be separate experiences. Another way of disambiguating 00:04:55.020 --> 00:05:00.780 this is to make it clear that the wall is not synonymous with facing a life crisis. 00:05:02.500 --> 00:05:08.740 Right? Life is full of trials and crises. And there are many times, and I have experiences in my own life, 00:05:08.980 --> 00:05:14.939 when a crisis actually brings you closer to God, where it deepens your prayer life, it strengthens your 00:05:14.939 --> 00:05:20.480 faith. It can be really good for us, and God's Word actually says that trials are one of God's ways 00:05:20.480 --> 00:05:27.060 of refining us, a kind of purifying fire. So it's not the same thing as a life crisis. The thing that 00:05:27.060 --> 00:05:39.000 makes a wall different is that in such cases, God is the crisis. God is the crisis. So usually it starts 00:05:39.000 --> 00:05:50.199 with a trial or a crisis of some kind, a miscarriage, inability to get pregnant, prolonged unwanted 00:05:50.199 --> 00:06:00.439 singleness, unemployment, a divorce, a cancer diagnosis, the death of someone that you love, 00:06:00.439 --> 00:06:10.939 a church splitting, a church splitting, the moral failure of a church leader, ongoing unresolvable chronic 00:06:10.939 --> 00:06:18.199 pain, right? We face something like this, but instead of leading us into a deeper faith, your faith starts 00:06:18.199 --> 00:06:26.319 to crumble. It starts to dry up. Your faith starts to come apart at the seams. If you consider the example 00:06:26.319 --> 00:06:32.199 of David, I think it's pretty clear that there are very few people who have enjoyed a closer relationship 00:06:32.199 --> 00:06:40.800 with God than David in the Old Testament. 1 Samuel 13 verse 14 calls him a man after God's own heart. 00:06:42.240 --> 00:06:49.759 But then God calls David to go to work for a certain boss, a man named Saul. We looked at Saul a few weeks 00:06:49.759 --> 00:06:56.219 ago in our Emotionally Healthy Spirituality Series. We realized that Saul looked very impressive on the 00:06:56.219 --> 00:07:04.219 outside. He was an impressive sort of career Christian, to use our modern concepts, and yet 00:07:04.219 --> 00:07:10.860 underneath he was an abusive manipulator. And Saul was so threatened by David, he was so jealous of David, 00:07:11.019 --> 00:07:18.259 that he actually tried to kill him. And so David had to leave his family and he had to live on the run 00:07:18.259 --> 00:07:28.500 as a fugitive hiding in caves for something like 13 years. And during this time, David's faith starts to come 00:07:28.500 --> 00:07:36.420 apart. It starts to come apart at the seams. He writes in verse 13, how long, O Lord? I mean, you can imagine 00:07:36.420 --> 00:07:43.099 maybe even sitting in a cave. How long is it going to be like this? In the first stanza, he asks how long four 00:07:43.100 --> 00:07:50.080 times in a row. How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? 00:07:50.200 --> 00:07:55.960 How long am I going to pray? And I'm praying to the back of your head. He feels abandoned by God. 00:07:57.300 --> 00:08:02.860 And then he says, how long must I take counsel in my soul? You know what anxiety does to you when you 00:08:02.860 --> 00:08:08.300 just ruminate on things? You just ruminate and think and think and think and think and think, 00:08:08.300 --> 00:08:13.379 and think yourself in circles. That's what he's talking about here. How long will I have sorrow 00:08:13.379 --> 00:08:19.120 in my heart? All the day. From the moment I am conscious in the morning to the moment I am 00:08:19.120 --> 00:08:23.740 unconscious when I finally fall asleep. In the late hours of the night, I feel nothing but sorrow. 00:08:24.780 --> 00:08:30.280 That's depression. How long shall my enemy be exalted over me? He feels powerless. 00:08:30.279 --> 00:08:39.319 When your faith crumbles, problems that used to seem like they were surmountable get bigger. 00:08:40.139 --> 00:08:44.939 And the enemies that you face, the things that keep you up at night, get bigger and bigger and 00:08:44.939 --> 00:08:49.639 bigger. And all of a sudden, it feels like you're powerless against the obstacles and the problems 00:08:49.639 --> 00:08:55.279 that you face because your faith is coming apart. You feel all alone. You feel abandoned. 00:08:55.279 --> 00:09:03.559 We might reword this first stanza this way. God, if you are all powerful and you are good and you 00:09:03.559 --> 00:09:11.240 love me, how could you let this happen to me? That's really what he's saying. So hitting the wall 00:09:11.240 --> 00:09:16.759 means everything in your faith starts to come apart. It means your faith no longer works. You know, 00:09:16.799 --> 00:09:22.319 up to this point, I believed and I had faith and I got strength from my faith, but now I'm facing this 00:09:22.320 --> 00:09:31.840 situation and my faith isn't working. I just can't make sense of this, right? And we lose all sense of 00:09:31.840 --> 00:09:35.040 God's presence in our lives. You sit there and you pray and you're like, I just feel like I'm speaking 00:09:35.040 --> 00:09:39.780 words in an empty room. I feel like my words are just bumping into the ceiling, but nobody's listening. 00:09:41.220 --> 00:09:48.780 So you go through a time like this, you may feel burned out, anxious, empty, angry, hopeless, 00:09:48.779 --> 00:09:54.720 or listen, you may feel nothing. Because sometimes the wall turns your heart into Teflon 00:09:54.720 --> 00:09:56.819 and you just go numb. 00:09:59.839 --> 00:10:05.720 I was in my 20s. I was living in Boston. I was finishing up seminary. At the time, for a lot of 00:10:05.720 --> 00:10:10.000 reasons, I was overloading credit hours. So I was taking something like 20 credit hours per semester. 00:10:10.759 --> 00:10:17.659 I was also working at a residential treatment facility for kids who were either custody of 00:10:17.659 --> 00:10:22.039 the Department of Social Services or the Department of Mental Health. So these kids had been through a 00:10:22.039 --> 00:10:28.600 whole lot of suffering. And at the same time, I was doing a separate internship for my counseling degree. 00:10:29.299 --> 00:10:35.339 And so I'm doing all of this and I'm working all the time. So I'm doing overnight shifts at the 00:10:35.339 --> 00:10:40.639 residential treatment facility and I'm writing my papers for school. Probably shouldn't tell you this, 00:10:40.639 --> 00:10:45.000 but I'm writing my seminary papers, doing overnights during my residential shifts. 00:10:45.779 --> 00:10:54.279 And all through my job, I was being confronted all the time with enormous amounts of suffering. 00:10:55.439 --> 00:10:59.120 Right? I was getting to know these kids. I was learning about things that had been done to these kids. 00:10:59.360 --> 00:11:02.299 It was a level of suffering that I just couldn't process. 00:11:02.299 --> 00:11:11.120 And so all this is happening. And then I realized one day, I can't remember the last time I felt any 00:11:11.120 --> 00:11:21.959 sense of God's presence. But more to the point, I didn't care. I didn't care. 00:11:21.960 --> 00:11:29.540 My faith, I realized, had become this kind of joyless slog. And I remember just thinking, 00:11:29.700 --> 00:11:38.080 why am I even doing this? Why am I doing any of it? You know, that's the wall. And it can last for 00:11:38.080 --> 00:11:44.820 weeks. It can last for months. I think probably most often it can last for years. I mean, for me, 00:11:44.860 --> 00:11:51.900 it was at least a couple of years of feeling that. And who knows how long I've been feeling 00:11:51.899 --> 00:11:58.039 it before I recognized that I had been feeling it? Right? So that's the wall. Now, why does the 00:11:58.039 --> 00:12:03.919 wall matter? Why is it important? Why is it actually, as I said earlier, crucial to go through 00:12:03.919 --> 00:12:10.539 something like that? You say, man, I don't want to go there. Why does it matter? Well, I think our 00:12:10.539 --> 00:12:17.000 therapeutic culture tends to assume that our goal should be to feel happy all the time. 00:12:17.000 --> 00:12:27.240 We treat negative emotions as pathology. We treat negative emotions as problems to be solved as 00:12:27.240 --> 00:12:34.039 quickly as possible. So, you know, our tendency is if I feel negative emotions for any amount of time, 00:12:34.059 --> 00:12:40.039 and they don't immediately go away, our knee-jerk reaction is to seek out counseling or medication. 00:12:40.039 --> 00:12:46.879 And that's kind of our go-to is, man, I'm feeling sad. Maybe I need a pill. I'm feeling kind of 00:12:46.879 --> 00:12:51.500 anxious. It's keeping me up at night. Maybe I need to go talk to a therapist. And I want to make it 00:12:51.500 --> 00:12:55.980 clear that I think in some cases, this is absolutely necessary. Clinical depression is a real thing, 00:12:56.059 --> 00:13:03.019 and that needs to be treated. But I think it's safe to say that we have in our society an over-reliance 00:13:03.019 --> 00:13:09.419 on these things, because we don't want to feel negative feelings. And unfortunately, I think a 00:13:09.419 --> 00:13:13.819 lot of Christians buy into this way of thinking. I think there are a lot of Christians out there who 00:13:13.819 --> 00:13:18.159 are faithful Christians, but they think that being a faithful Christian means that you should always 00:13:18.159 --> 00:13:23.360 feel peaceful and happy. And that if you don't feel peaceful and happy, that it somehow means that 00:13:23.360 --> 00:13:27.059 there's something wrong with you or something wrong with your faith. You're not a good Christian. 00:13:27.059 --> 00:13:32.539 And I think a lot of churches buy into this by assuming that every single gathering, 00:13:33.500 --> 00:13:38.199 that the one goal of getting together is to create an emotional mountaintop experience. And so they 00:13:38.199 --> 00:13:43.719 pour enormous amounts of resources into making sure the production value is as high as it can be, 00:13:43.839 --> 00:13:49.579 so that there can be this emotional experience that is created for people. And all of that is 00:13:49.579 --> 00:13:53.979 buying into this idea that being a Christian is about being happy, being peaceful, celebrating, 00:13:53.980 --> 00:14:00.639 living on the mountaintop. But we need to understand that the ancients, our predecessors 00:14:00.639 --> 00:14:07.820 in the faith, people like St. John of the Cross, knew better than us. Allowing people to experience 00:14:07.820 --> 00:14:15.539 negative emotions is absolutely crucial for spiritual growth. And St. John wrote that the only way to 00:14:15.539 --> 00:14:21.060 progress in our journey through the dark night of the soul is to be willing to receive it as a gift. 00:14:21.059 --> 00:14:26.199 You say, well, go through this horrible experience and you're telling me that I need to see that as 00:14:26.199 --> 00:14:31.579 a gift from the Lord. And that's exactly what St. John of the Cross says. He says, you hit the wall. 00:14:32.419 --> 00:14:39.099 That is not a pathology that needs to be treated. That's a gift that needs to be embraced. 00:14:41.399 --> 00:14:47.679 And he goes on to say this. He says, God uses these times to purge our souls. 00:14:47.679 --> 00:14:56.219 One of the most common forms of idolatry is the tendency to worship our feelings about God rather 00:14:56.219 --> 00:15:03.099 than God himself. One of the most common forms of idolatry is to worship our feelings about God 00:15:03.099 --> 00:15:10.439 rather than God himself. And so John says that God uses the dark night to strip away 00:15:10.440 --> 00:15:16.080 that idolatry. You know, a couple of weeks ago, we talked about the importance 00:15:16.080 --> 00:15:23.660 as Christians of listening to our emotions. We said it's very important to listen to our emotions, 00:15:23.660 --> 00:15:30.720 to be aware of them, to allow ourselves to feel them. The dark night is the other side of the coin. 00:15:30.840 --> 00:15:36.660 The dark night is what keeps us from enthroning those feelings and making them ultimate. 00:15:36.659 --> 00:15:44.679 And the truth, as I said, is that hitting the wall is a crucial step in the road to spiritual maturity. 00:15:45.980 --> 00:15:51.279 Because coming through the wall, you know, life on the other side of an experience like this, 00:15:51.439 --> 00:15:58.579 it will profoundly change you as a person. I would put it this way, even from my own experience, 00:15:58.580 --> 00:16:08.379 the wall blesses us by breaking us. It blesses us by breaking us. And being broken, if you're a 00:16:08.379 --> 00:16:14.160 Christian, is a good thing. Jesus actually says at the beginning of the Sermon on the Mount, 00:16:14.320 --> 00:16:19.340 blessed are the poor in spirit. He's talking about people who've been broken. If you have been broken, 00:16:19.340 --> 00:16:26.820 broken, you're blessed. And it changes you in some amazing ways. You know, you find that you actually 00:16:26.820 --> 00:16:34.220 become much slower to take offense. It's much harder to offend somebody who's been broken. 00:16:35.580 --> 00:16:41.960 Because people who have never been broken, you know, they're kind of puffed up with pride. And when 00:16:41.960 --> 00:16:48.540 you're puffed up like that, you're prickly. You know, that puffed up, stretched, bloated sense of 00:16:48.540 --> 00:16:57.560 self is really super sensitive to any perceived slight is going to irritate you. But if you've 00:16:57.560 --> 00:17:02.620 been broken over your own sin, and somebody comes along and they just straight up criticize you to 00:17:02.620 --> 00:17:08.880 your face, your response isn't to blow up and get offended and get righteous indignation and all of 00:17:08.880 --> 00:17:14.640 that, your response is to just kind of laugh and say, you've got no idea. You think that's my biggest 00:17:14.640 --> 00:17:22.040 problem? You have no idea. I'm so much worse than you think. But you don't say that out of any sense 00:17:22.040 --> 00:17:28.620 of self-loathing. You've become secure enough in God's love, because that's what got you through the 00:17:28.620 --> 00:17:36.640 wall, that you can just say what's true. Right? You think that's my biggest problem? I wish that was my 00:17:36.640 --> 00:17:42.180 biggest concern. Right? It changes you in the sense that you, I think, become much more compassionate 00:17:42.180 --> 00:17:48.600 toward other people who are struggling in their faith. You know, there are some Christian cultures 00:17:48.600 --> 00:17:53.800 where if you express any doubt or ask questions, you're sort of outed as a not a true believer. And 00:17:53.800 --> 00:17:57.259 you go through an experience like the wall, and you're like, oh, of course you have questions. 00:17:57.600 --> 00:18:06.100 This faith is unbelievably hard at times. And there are questions I will never know the answer to 00:18:06.099 --> 00:18:11.319 until I meet God face to face. You become, I think, much more charitable toward people 00:18:11.319 --> 00:18:16.459 with whom you disagree. You know, people have never been broken. Their theology is like very 00:18:16.459 --> 00:18:20.639 black and white. It's very watertight. Everything is crystal clear. It's this way. It's all mapped 00:18:20.639 --> 00:18:24.799 out. You know, it all fits into a spreadsheet and in a textbook. You go through the wall, and 00:18:24.799 --> 00:18:32.519 you're like, yeah, I can understand how we would disagree on that. You develop a much greater 00:18:32.519 --> 00:18:38.879 capacity for mystery and for paradox. You realize that you can have an orthodox faith, but within 00:18:38.879 --> 00:18:47.019 orthodoxy, there's mystery. There's some truths within orthodoxy that seem incompatible. How can 00:18:47.019 --> 00:18:56.180 God be both three and one? How can we be both sinners but also saints? You know, how can salvation 00:18:56.180 --> 00:19:02.279 being enacted right now be both already here and yet not fully here? You know, and you realize, wow, 00:19:02.340 --> 00:19:09.500 these are paradoxes. These don't seem to make sense. You become much more willing to admit when 00:19:09.500 --> 00:19:13.759 there are questions that you simply don't know the answer to. You know, you're a small group leader, 00:19:13.940 --> 00:19:17.920 you're a pastor, and somebody asks you a question, and instead of kind of faking your way through it, 00:19:17.940 --> 00:19:23.180 or, you know, you say, man, I don't know. That's a great question. So hitting the wall profoundly 00:19:23.180 --> 00:19:29.220 changes you. It breaks you. So this is what the wall is. This is why it matters so much. This is 00:19:29.220 --> 00:19:38.160 how it grows us by breaking us. Now I want to talk about how to get through it, right? That's a pretty 00:19:38.160 --> 00:19:45.820 pressing question. There is no surefire way to get through it. There's no surefire way to get through 00:19:45.820 --> 00:19:49.080 the wall. There's no way to guarantee that you're going to get through it in any amount of time. 00:19:49.079 --> 00:19:53.019 Like I said, it could be weeks, could be months, probably going to be years. 00:19:54.980 --> 00:20:02.279 There's no surefire step-by-step process. But what I can do is to tell you three things that I think 00:20:02.279 --> 00:20:09.139 will significantly help you in the journey if and when you find yourself in the wall. 00:20:09.140 --> 00:20:17.380 The first thing that is going to really help you is to simply recognize the wall for what it is. 00:20:19.100 --> 00:20:23.759 Extremely important. A lot of people fail to recognize that they're at the wall. 00:20:26.700 --> 00:20:32.360 They realize that their faith is stagnating. They realize kind of like I did, wow, I haven't felt a 00:20:32.360 --> 00:20:37.020 sense of God's presence in a long time. I haven't felt any connection to God in a long time. And so the 00:20:37.019 --> 00:20:41.400 first thing that most people do is to make some sort of external change. They start looking for 00:20:41.400 --> 00:20:47.639 new books to read. They look for retreats that they might attend. A lot of people, if they're 00:20:47.639 --> 00:20:52.639 going to church, think that it means they need to go to a different church. Well, I've gotten as 00:20:52.639 --> 00:21:00.440 much juice out of this orange as I can. Now I've got to find another setting where I can continue to 00:21:00.440 --> 00:21:07.660 grow. And so they move churches. And sometimes there's good reasons to leave churches. But what's 00:21:07.660 --> 00:21:12.500 funny is in a place like D.C., if you're a Christian in a place like D.C., it's kind of like a small town 00:21:12.500 --> 00:21:18.279 and a lot of the pastors know each other. And so the pastors are many times aware when people are 00:21:18.279 --> 00:21:22.360 going from their church to somebody else's church or coming from somebody else's church to our church. 00:21:22.779 --> 00:21:26.480 And we say, well, why'd they leave? Oh, they left over these concerns. And then you say, well, 00:21:26.480 --> 00:21:32.480 we have the same concerns in our church. Same problems. Same issues. Right? We have people 00:21:32.480 --> 00:21:36.819 leaving our church for the same reasons. And so what you see over time, and I've been up at a pastor 00:21:36.819 --> 00:21:41.599 something like 14 years here, you see people just moving around to churches. Right? And again, 00:21:41.700 --> 00:21:47.599 sometimes there's good reasons for that. But many times it's an external solution to an internal 00:21:47.599 --> 00:21:51.660 problem. And it's not going to work. Because the thing about the wall is you take it with you wherever 00:21:51.660 --> 00:21:58.220 you go. You can't run away from it. There's only one way to deal with the wall. And it's either to sit 00:21:58.220 --> 00:22:04.279 there in front of it and pretend like it's not there or to push through it. Right? But making an 00:22:04.279 --> 00:22:08.779 external change is not going to solve an internal problem. So the first thing to do is just to 00:22:08.779 --> 00:22:13.800 recognize that you've hit the wall. Other people say, you know, well, I feel like I've just, I lost my 00:22:13.800 --> 00:22:20.200 faith. I don't think faith is something that you can just misplace like your car keys. I think that, 00:22:20.200 --> 00:22:24.120 I think that you hit the wall and sometimes it can be years before you feel a sense of God's 00:22:24.120 --> 00:22:29.039 presence again. It doesn't necessarily mean you lost your faith. It might mean that God is doing 00:22:29.039 --> 00:22:33.740 something really deep and really painful in you. That you're on the surgery table and you've been 00:22:33.740 --> 00:22:39.920 spiritually anesthetized because God is doing something in you. Right? So the first thing is 00:22:39.920 --> 00:22:45.360 just to recognize the wall for what it is. Number two comes right along behind that. Accept it as a gift 00:22:45.359 --> 00:22:54.240 from God. Not because you're a masochist. Not because God is a sadist. Accept it as a gift from 00:22:54.240 --> 00:23:02.479 God because you recognize that God is doing work in you that's going to change you. So what does 00:23:02.479 --> 00:23:08.779 accepting it mean? Well, it means don't hide behind spiritual platitudes. Well, I'm sure God is working 00:23:08.779 --> 00:23:13.159 all this out for my own good. You know, don't hide behind that. If you're angry at God, if you're 00:23:13.160 --> 00:23:20.240 frustrated at God, you can say that. God knows it. So don't hide behind spiritual platitudes. Don't hide 00:23:20.240 --> 00:23:29.580 behind spiritual superficiality. Don't try to escape the wall by numbing or self-medicating or distracting 00:23:29.580 --> 00:23:35.860 yourself. Here's a challenging concept, but I hope it's clear what I'm saying. We need to be willing to 00:23:35.860 --> 00:23:41.660 inhabit our feelings. Here's the weird thing about feelings. The only way to deal with your feelings is 00:23:41.660 --> 00:23:49.700 to feel them. Right? You have to feel it. You have to be willing to inhabit it. If you're angry, 00:23:49.920 --> 00:23:55.860 inhabit the anger. If you're sad, inhabit the sadness. And what will happen is it'll pass. 00:23:57.360 --> 00:24:04.620 The feeling will pass eventually. So be willing to inhabit your feelings. Know they're going to pass 00:24:04.619 --> 00:24:11.019 eventually. And then along with this, let go of your need for control. A lot of getting through the 00:24:11.019 --> 00:24:18.399 wall is just realizing there is a God and I'm not Him. And God is going to have to do this in me. I can't 00:24:18.399 --> 00:24:26.379 do it on my own. And we let go of our need for control. So number one, recognize it. Number two, accept it. 00:24:26.380 --> 00:24:38.000 Number three, learn to fly by the instruments. Learn to fly by the instruments. Pilots not only learn how 00:24:38.000 --> 00:24:44.720 to fly using their eyes. You know, if you're learning to fly a plane or a helicopter, first you learn how 00:24:44.720 --> 00:24:51.060 to fly based on what you can see. And so pilots learn how to fly using their eyes, but they also have to 00:24:51.059 --> 00:24:57.720 learn and be licensed in flying by the instruments. Right? So in clouds or heavy fog, when you have 00:24:57.720 --> 00:25:03.720 zero visibility, you have to know how to fly the plane trusting solely on the instrument panel. So 00:25:03.720 --> 00:25:07.960 you're not looking out the windshield, you're looking down at the dials. And you have to fly the plane by 00:25:07.960 --> 00:25:14.259 those alone. And it's the exact same thing for followers of Jesus. Right? There are times when you 00:25:14.259 --> 00:25:20.980 can clearly see God at work. It is 100% clear visibility. You can see for 00:25:20.980 --> 00:25:25.920 miles. You can see God doing all kinds of things. Prayers are getting answered. You're inspired when 00:25:25.920 --> 00:25:31.299 you're worshiping with people. You feel God's spirit and generosity moving you. You feel close 00:25:31.299 --> 00:25:37.360 to the people around you. You know, it's 100% visibility in your life. But there are other times 00:25:37.360 --> 00:25:46.720 when you hit the wall and you're in the storm and you're at 0% visibility. You look out the cockpit 00:25:46.720 --> 00:25:52.519 and all you can see. It's pitch black, thick fog, driving rain. You can't see anything. 00:25:53.720 --> 00:25:57.079 And that's the point when you've hit the ball where you have to decide, 00:25:57.319 --> 00:26:02.180 am I going to continue to look out the window here and to try to see something? 00:26:03.360 --> 00:26:08.539 Or am I going to make a shift? And am I going to start flying by the instruments of my faith? 00:26:08.539 --> 00:26:16.619 What do I mean by the instruments of my faith? The things that remind us what is true, even if 00:26:16.619 --> 00:26:25.519 they don't feel true, even if we can't see them. Right? So number one, God's word. Am I going to look 00:26:25.519 --> 00:26:28.859 away from what I'm looking in front of me and I'm going to look at this and I'm going to say, 00:26:29.180 --> 00:26:33.420 I know I can't see it here, but I'm going to look here and I'm going to trust that this is going to 00:26:33.420 --> 00:26:38.539 guide me in the right direction and I'm not going to crash into a mountain. And I'm going to trust 00:26:38.539 --> 00:26:46.539 this. I'm going to fly by this instrument of my faith. Prayer. The faith of the communion of saints. 00:26:46.779 --> 00:26:51.900 I'm not feeling this, but the person on my left and the person on my right, they believe it and 00:26:51.900 --> 00:26:57.720 they see it and I'm going to trust them. I'm going to trust the communion of saints to have faith when I 00:26:57.720 --> 00:27:06.000 can't have faith. These are the instruments of faith. And this is exactly what David does, by the 00:27:06.000 --> 00:27:11.000 way. Even though David doesn't feel like it, even though David believes that God has abandoned him, 00:27:11.500 --> 00:27:16.100 he continues to pray. You see that in verses three and four. David continues to pray. He doesn't give 00:27:16.100 --> 00:27:21.279 up. And you say, well, why does he do that? How does he have the confidence to do that? Well, verse five, 00:27:21.279 --> 00:27:29.920 I've trusted in your steadfast love. I've trusted in your steadfast love. This phrase, steadfast love, 00:27:30.160 --> 00:27:35.500 chesed, is one of the most important words in all of scripture, especially if you're going through the 00:27:35.500 --> 00:27:40.700 wall. It might be the most important word if you're going through the wall. And here's why. This is not 00:27:40.700 --> 00:27:46.420 just sentimentality. This is not just saying, steadfast love, you know, God just, you know, he gets the good 00:27:46.420 --> 00:27:54.620 feelings when he thinks about you. This means enduring allegiance, right? It's a covenant word. 00:27:55.519 --> 00:28:04.360 It's God's enduring allegiance to you. It means God is for you every minute of every day. It means that 00:28:04.360 --> 00:28:10.380 God never turns his back on his people. So God's steadfast love, here's why it matters for people 00:28:10.380 --> 00:28:16.900 who are at the wall. God's steadfast love means your relationship with God doesn't ultimately hinge 00:28:16.900 --> 00:28:22.720 on your commitment to him, but rather on his commitment to you. And that's a huge difference 00:28:22.720 --> 00:28:29.100 from other religions. It means that even when you hit the wall, even when your commitment to God 00:28:29.100 --> 00:28:36.960 evaporates, God remains committed to you. Now, some of us might ask, well, how can I know 00:28:36.960 --> 00:28:42.100 that God is committed to loving me? I don't feel it. I don't see it. I look out the cockpit, 00:28:42.319 --> 00:28:52.380 and it's pitch black outside. I can't see anything. Here's how we know. Nearly every major figure in 00:28:52.380 --> 00:28:59.079 scripture had to go through the wall, right? Abraham and Sarah. Do you know how long, you know, 00:28:59.140 --> 00:29:06.500 God, they wait 75. It's Abraham 75. God finally comes and says, all the infertility is over. I'm going to 00:29:06.500 --> 00:29:12.259 give you a son. Do you know how long they have to wait after God makes that promise? You know, 00:29:12.299 --> 00:29:19.279 you read it and you think, what, a year? No, at least nine months. Maybe two years, you know. 25 years. 00:29:20.140 --> 00:29:24.220 All right, God makes a promise, I'm going to give you a child. 25 more years. Abraham was 100 00:29:24.220 --> 00:29:31.779 before that promise. Talk about hitting the wall. God, is this a horrible joke? You know, 00:29:31.779 --> 00:29:36.700 you get our hopes up and then just smash us into the ground? Abraham hit the wall. Sarah hit the wall. 00:29:38.059 --> 00:29:45.779 You know, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, Naomi. Naomi says, I've lost everything. You know, I lost my husband. I 00:29:45.779 --> 00:29:50.720 lost my two sons. I'm stuck with these Moabite daughters-in-law that I don't even want to be 00:29:50.720 --> 00:29:56.720 around. Don't even call me Naomi anymore. Call me bitter. That's all I feel right now. 00:29:56.720 --> 00:30:05.579 I'm bitter. She hit the wall. Jonah, Elijah. Jonah wanted to die. Elijah wanted to die. Jeremiah 00:30:05.579 --> 00:30:13.380 wanted to die. Nehemiah, Peter, Paul, everybody hit the wall. But no one more than Jesus. 00:30:13.380 --> 00:30:21.640 Jesus. No one more than Jesus. You say, well, why did Jesus hit the wall? He was God's son. He was 00:30:21.640 --> 00:30:29.040 perfect. His faith was perfect, right? He never doubted God. What do you think? Because human 00:30:29.040 --> 00:30:36.200 beings turned our backs on God, right, a long time ago. That's what the word sin means. Sin 00:30:36.200 --> 00:30:41.160 doesn't just mean you broke the rules. Sin means you turned your back on God. It means 00:30:41.160 --> 00:30:46.180 we rejected God. It means that we live in the world that God made as though he doesn't 00:30:46.180 --> 00:30:53.880 exist. That's what sin means. But God's steadfast love means he'll never turn his back on us. 00:30:55.120 --> 00:31:01.640 So if you're God, how do you deal with people who have turned their backs on you? And you can't 00:31:01.640 --> 00:31:08.060 turn your back on them. You won't because of your steadfast love for them. Jesus took our place. 00:31:09.540 --> 00:31:14.700 On the cross, Jesus faced the ultimate dark night of the soul. You know, when we go through an 00:31:14.700 --> 00:31:20.120 experience like this, we feel like God has abandoned us. But on the cross, God actually 00:31:20.120 --> 00:31:26.360 abandoned Jesus. That's why he cries out in the words of Psalm 22, my God, my God, why have you 00:31:26.359 --> 00:31:35.219 forsaken me? But the reason that Jesus was willing to endure that dark night was not only his commitment 00:31:35.219 --> 00:31:41.359 to his Father. You see, it was his commitment to his people. It was his commitment to us because of 00:31:41.359 --> 00:31:46.519 his steadfast love. And this is the hope of the gospel for anyone who's in the wall. 00:31:48.099 --> 00:31:52.659 The hope of the gospel is this. Because of what Jesus did, because of the dark night of the soul that 00:31:52.660 --> 00:31:59.940 Jesus endured, because God turned his back on him, he will never have to turn his back on us. 00:32:01.000 --> 00:32:04.220 And it doesn't matter if your faith and your commitment to God evaporate. 00:32:05.840 --> 00:32:13.000 So even when our commitment to God falters, his commitment to us remains firm. And because of that, 00:32:13.100 --> 00:32:17.560 you can know that no matter how bad, even if it's been years and you've been in the wall, 00:32:17.559 --> 00:32:28.240 it will pass. The dark night will end. The sun will rise. The fog will clear. You will look up from 00:32:28.240 --> 00:32:37.200 the instruments and you'll be able to see again. And then we will say in the words of David, 00:32:37.559 --> 00:32:43.639 my heart shall rejoice in your salvation. I will sing to the Lord because he has dealt 00:32:43.640 --> 00:32:54.640 bountifully with me. Let's pray. Lord, again, mere words apart from your spirit. 00:32:58.640 --> 00:33:05.080 Lord, we know that we are treading on the edges. We are sticking our toes in the shallows 00:33:05.079 --> 00:33:11.199 of something that is deep and profound and terrifying. And Lord, 00:33:13.720 --> 00:33:22.379 far be it from us to make light of such a thing. I ask instead that your Holy Spirit would make true 00:33:22.379 --> 00:33:31.599 the truth of these words, even as you made flesh out of your eternal word. I pray that you would 00:33:31.599 --> 00:33:37.759 minister to those of us who need it right now, those of us who will need it, those who aren't here, 00:33:38.579 --> 00:33:43.959 anyone who is in the midst of this dark night. I pray that the hope of the gospel would shine like 00:33:43.959 --> 00:33:51.119 a beam of sunlight into a darkened forest and remind us that you're there and remind us of the hope that 00:33:51.119 --> 00:33:54.699 we have in your son, Jesus. And it's in his name that we pray. Amen.