Now, the big question, "What are we
to do during the night of the spirit? " The essential answer
is always, "trust in the Name of the Lord."As
Isaiah 50:10 says, "...[he] that walketh in darkness, and hath no light.
Let him trust in the name of the Lord, and stay upon his God."
In other words, we are to be still, know that He is God and commit
ourselves to Him.
As we said many times before, we are to be content to
stay in and endure the darkness. We are to cease our own understanding
and our own striving, lie still and let God accomplish in us the
purification of our spirits that He desires. Our response should always
be, "let it come." Because if we can face it, accept it and rejoice
in it, then we will eventually make it through to experiential
oneness with God. It’s only by living through this dark time and
discovering what magnificent things this night can do in our walk with
the Lord that we can truly understand why God allows it.
Even though our feelings are raging, our will must
remain submissive to God. We must learn to trust in His plan for our
lives and remember that there is no other remedy for this season,
except complete faith in Him. Now it takes incredible effort on our part
to be able to remain faithful and to remain abandoned to Him in faith
and Love when the only responses we get seem to be chastisement and
rejection. Staying abandoned to His will, however, is the key to
getting through this night season faster and the key to our victory.
What are some other things we can do to help this
process along? Here are a few thoughts:
1. See the necessity of letting God divide our soul
and spirit and consent to His work being done.
2. Entrust ourselves to the Lord. Let Him use the
sword of His Word to do the necessary work.
3. Surrender our whole man as a "living" burnt
offering on the Brazen Altar.
4. Reckon ourselves dead to sin and self, and don’t
let them reign in our bodies.
5. Take up our cross daily in all the circumstances
of our life.
6. Seek to walk only after the Spirit by discerning
the good and refusing the evil.
7. Be in constant prayer and the reading of God’s
Word.
8. Carry out in practice what God shows us. Refuse
the soulish things and open ourselves up to the things of His Spirit.
In addition, we can:
1. Refuse all things that draw our spirit out of
fellowship with God.
2. Choose instead, to keep a renewed, steadfast and
upright spirit.
3. Reject any form of sadness, disappointment,
expectation, presumption, comparing, touchiness, grumbling,
fault-finding, loneliness, etc., knowing that these are the things
that quench God’s Spirit and that the enemy uses to distract our soul.
4. Should these things occur, immediately confess
them and give them over to God.
5. Recognize that the enemy can only harass our
soul; he cannot get to our spirit.
6. Finally, reject anything that would hinder our
complete union with God’s Spirit.
First Chronicles 28:20 encourages us to always "Be
strong and of good courage… fear not nor be dismayed:
for the Lord God, even [thy] God, will be with thee; He
will not fail thee, nor forsake thee…."
