LEARNING TO EMBRACE THE DARKNESS IN ORDER TO SEE THE LIGHT

This weeks blog is a personal testimony that I hope encourages you. Please read it in its entirety so that it has its full affect. I have been a Christian for 38 yeares and a pastor for over 35 years. I am in the process of planting another church in San Clemente.I hope that my honesty and vulnerability encourages all Christians, leaders, and pastors that Christians are sinners saved by grace, sustained by grace, and preserved by grace. Christianity is not about men and women, it is all about jesus Christ. I know for a fact that many Christians and pastors have real battles but few are honest enough to speak of it. It is not religiously correct in the church culture.

My calling is 1 Timothy 1:15-16, "The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the foremost. But I received mercy for this reason, that in me, as the foremost, Jesus Christ might display his perfect patience as an example to those who were to believe in him for eternal life" I am but a clay pot, a messenger, a humble servant of the Lord. I make no boasts or claims for myself except to say from 1 Timothy 1:17, "To the King of the ages, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory forever and ever. Amen". I am utterly blessed, priviledged and honored to serve Jesus and His precious flock.

Two and a half years ago darkness descended into my life. Since then I have never known such anguish and emptiness in my life. For much of this time I have been like a man trying run and catch the sunset, but no matter how fast I ran towards it, I lost the race. The sun had set on that part of my life. If I looked ahead or to the east, all I saw was foreboding darkness closing in on me from the east. It terrified me. So many times these past years I have futility tried to keep running after the sun, even though deep inside I knew it was futile and always outran me. So, I stayed stuck in many ways, trying to run from the coming darkness and frantically running towards the fading sun of my past. There had been my life, my identity, my center, my security, my safe place, my happiness, and all I saw was I can't lose that because if I do, all there is is darkness.

So, many days these past two and a half years, I have collapsed and fallen into despair. I have thought that I would live in darkness the rest of my life and have often felt abject terror in my soul. It has been a real struggle to find peace, hope, joy, and meaning to my life. But I have come to see that though the sun sets in the west, it rises in the east. The best way to find the sun again is to head straight into the darkness until eventually one sees the sunrise.

I have discovered that I have the power to choose which direction I am heading in my life. I could keep running towards the sunset (which is another way of saying that I held onto my past) or I could face the darkness and stop trying to outrun it, to let God in my darkness take me on a journey wherever it may lead and allow God to transform me in my suffering and pain rather than fighting and running to avoid it.

So I have had to face the pain. Many times I used to talk about it but found that people got tired of hearing about it, or glibly just told me to get over it, some accused me of self pity, others just distanced themselves from me and in some ways I could hardly blame them. Who wants to be around a hurting, sad, despondent person?. But most people have been very kind and that my own pain has invited them to face, feel, and express their own inner pain from their own losses.

Solitude has been a cherished place in my life because it has invited me to be with the one who stores my tears in a bottle as I have written previously about. In that place of solitude I have cried many tears to God in the anguish of my soul.

Many times these past few years I have wanted to pray but have been clueless as if struck dumb and mute by my own pain. I have learned to cherish the language of groans because at times it has been my only utterance to God. I truly believe it is an utterance our compassionate God has both graced us with and though at times it has been the only language that i use, it has become a language my merciful loving father understands. According to Romans 8:26, "Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words."  My groanings became an invitation for God to draw near and to intercede for me with groans that my words cannot express.

These groaning moments have given me moments to express my grief to God and to intensely reflect as well.  They have radically empowered me to be able to go on and live my life shepherding a little flock, being in a relationship, counseling others who hurt, and performing God glorifying, life and love affirming weddings to help pay my bills.

Entering into darkness has been a major step of growth in my life. It has had its negative and positive aspects. Negatively, I have battled deep depression, regret, deep doubts and feelings of utter disappointment, confusion, fear, anxiety, stress, unbelief, despair, purposelessness, lostness, and levels of inner agony I never knew could be.

But that is only half my story. The positive is that by running to face the pain, I have come to see that my losses are not the defining moment of my life, how I respond to them is the defining moment of my life. It is not what has happened to us rather because of life, others, or our own choices, it is what happens in us that really matters. I can either be a victim and build a monument to my loss or I can become a victor and allow it to transform me into a deeper, more godly, better man than I was before the darkness entered in. Darkness has invaded my soul these past few years, but so has the light! both darkness and light have changed me and are presently transforming me.

Jesus says that. "unless a seed falls into the ground and dies, it abides alone. But if it dies, it bears much fruit"(John 12:32).  I get it. I have had to die in order to live. I am seeing that I can have not light after the darkness, but in the darkness. I have allowed pain and darkness take a place in my life that have absorbed into me and become a part of who I am. Sorrow is a part of my life and is enlarging it. As a result, in my brokenness I am entering into a new and deeper and different life.

Every day I am having to choose: run back to the fading sunset or go east into the darkness pursuing through and in the darkness, the coming sunrise. "Weeping may last for the night, but joy comes in the morning." (Psalm 30:5). I can indulge in self pity or turn my pain into compassion, empathy, and mercy to others as I embrace their pain as my own. I can run from my sorrow and try to escape it through the fleeting pleasures of sin or I can learn to live with sorrow holding on to the promise of future joy.  I can be a bitter victim or I can be a grateful, joyful, better man through it all.

Loss and pain can make us more not less; unless we allow our pains, griefs, and losses to grind our souls down until there is nothing left but a person controlled and dominated by external circumstances, environments, and relationships. I will say it again dear reader, loss can make us more! In darkness we can see light. In losses we can also experience great gain. In death we can experience life. In losing we can become winners. In sorrow we can find joy.

I have truly learned what Paul said in 2 Corinthians 6:10, "...as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing". I have learned to live and mourn simultaneously. Our souls can grow to die and live again, to suffer loss and find great gain, to suffer abandonment and find God, to face the night and venture towards sunrise.

The sorrow that I have known these past two and a half years is still deeply in me BUT, it has has become a part of who I am. It is like a barren part of a yard that is always there but I have decided to plant flowers all around it so that the landscape of my loss is not as ugly to me as it once was but now is part of something much more beautiful.

Now I have chosen to die and live again. To suffer the loss of all things in order to gain the one thing. To chose to face the night so that I may walk towards the lovely sunrise. Its gonna be a good adventure for sure.

"He is no fool to give up what he cannot keep, in order to gain what he cannot lose." Jim Elliot

I said to my soul, be still, and let the dark come upon you which shall be the darkness of God...
I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope
For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love,
For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith
But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting.

T.S. Elliot

Living in light and darkness, Pastor Bill