Episode #165 of the Christ is All podcast just dropped and it can be streamed below.
It’s a message called “He Takes Away to Establish.”
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The message is part of a series of talks in a Master Class called Atomic Freefall: Becoming Strong in the Broken Places, which is on The Deeper Christian Life Network.
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From the shadows of darkness, I thank you. I needed to hear these things again, to remember that there will be a time when God will say, let there be light.
Thank you , Frank. this will minister to so many hearts.
For Gwin,
As Frank has demonstrated, all who seek a deeper relationship with our Savior go through this “dark night of the soul”. it’s easy for those of us who have experienced this to speak about it afterwards. Thank you for your courage to speak of it while in the midst of it. I think that perhaps this is supposed to be a secret journey…just Him and you for a season. Others who have not been on this journey will not understand. My prayers are with you.
Twelve years ago I went through a very dark night indeed. But just as that night was beginning I heard a sermon on Psalm 23. God’s voice to me came through verse 4:
“Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for You are with me.”
The pastor said the reason death had a shadow was because of the light of the Lord’s brilliant glory shining behind it. Death may feel like it is hovering over me, and is all around me. I am in its valley. But God is with me, and I can see Him in the shadow, because it is cast by the Lord’s light.
That one sermon spoke to me again and again as I went through the long night ahead of me.
Thank you for this blog, it’s a keeper.
And GOD said, “Let There Be Light, and there was Light”…….
Now most certainly that was not natural light, the sun, moon and stars,
for they were created the “Third Day”.
“The Light” of the First Day, what was that “Light”?
Most certainly such “Light” was “The Beginning of The Creation of GOD”.
“Comment by Gwin Joyner…..”
Very touching your comment sister. It reminds me the years when I left the “church” for the Body. Sister, you are not alone in this spiritual journey. May be times will come when you feel completely forsaken, but He will show you how beautiful He is. You have a heart for Him.
Thank you so much for such a timely word in my life. God has asked me in the past year what would I give up to follow Him, to know Him more, and to know Truth. He has been teaching me over the past several years that I must let go of the good to receive the better! So far I have given up leading worship, women’s ministry, and all kinds of smaller “church work” to have Him. He directed me to talk to my pastor last week, to tell him about the journey God has led me in, and to give him a word from the Lord, so I did, and have received constant backlash ever since, using every tactic he has in his arsenal, including warning me of “listening to voices that might not be God” and being in rebellion. I thin it’s sad. I love my church, sick though it is sometimes, and I know God has such love and plans for the church and the pastor, if they would just release people to freedom to seek the Lord, and not man. So I think that in the next little while, I will be letting go of the “church” to embrace the Body. I am in a night now, but I know that He is with me, and is leading me out into wide and pleasant spaces…
Frank,
I printed the message and read it. I liked it! It’s a nice thread going through history and showing God’s work. I would like to add 3 things, if I may, which I hope to enrich the message. (I’ll try to be as short as possible.)
One is that any darkness we have gone through was not dark to our God. David said once: “If I say, ‘Surely the darkness will overwhelm me, and the light around me will be night.’, even the darkness is not dark to Thee, and the night is as bright as the day. Darkness and light are alike to Thee.”
The second thought is that night is a resting time. We may feel that night is the time for murders and killing to happen, and we may be afraid of it, but actually night was designed as a resting time. And so it is in the eyes of our God.
The third thought regards the greatest night of them all, that you have mentioned, but I will try to give it another perspective. It is Jesus’ night. He’s got the longest night. It stretches over the universe and over all time. His night started before creation, and will end when this creation will be fold up and finished. One may say, “Jesus Christ is not sleeping! He is awake and working”. Well, watch out when all is over, and see a (new) Lord in a completely new creation, and all this that we live now we’ll look like a long sleep. While sleeping, His side was opened for Life to be taken out of Him and formed into a new Being. And we are exactly in the middle of it. When all that will be over, when the new Being will be formed by His Father’s hands, the night will turn towards the Day, a new Day, when we all, in the New Jerusalem, will live forever with Christ, and there will be no more night and no more darkness. “And there shall no longer be any night; and they shall not have need of the light of a lamp nor the light of the sun, because the Lord God shall illumine them.” (Rev. 22:5) The night, His night, our night, will be over.
Have you wondered about our Lord’s words: “But of that day and hour [when the heavens will pass away] no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father alone.” (Mt. 24:36). I think the answer lies in the previous paragraph, hidden between the lines.
Hi, Frank. I thoroughly enjoyed reading this. I especially connected with the part about God’s beginnings taking place in the darkness, that the Lord’s beginnings are our night. It’s good to be reminded that our dark times are when the Lord is beginning a new work. Thanks for sharing! : )
Thank you so much, Frank. I have taught this understanding in similar variations over the years, but as I read your piece, tears just flowed down my cheeks. In the Spirit, i can see a new day breaking!
Bless You,
M.C. Ingram
Its like the seasons. If harvest is the culmination of the cycle, then dark of winter is its birth.
Its interesting in the parable of the wineskins that Jesus is interested in preserving both the wine and the wineskin, but the focus is on the young wine being transformed into a mature vintage. Maybe it speaks more of the transitory relationship between *wine* and *skin.*
Once the wine is mature, there is no damage in whatever container you put it in.
The new man is no longer *sin* conscious, but Christ conscious.
Excellent thoughts, Pat. Thank you for sharing them.
Thank you brother! Praise the Lord that He has accepted us in the spiritual reality. Praise the Lord that He doesn’t see us in the flesh, since He has taken away our flesh in the cross, so that He may establish……Christ in us.
Love,
Konti