Wednesday, February 5, 2020

2-5-2020 Still, Deep Within


Still, Deep Within

In peace I will both lie down and sleep; for You alone, O LORD, make me dwell in safety. Psa_4:8

Before I reveal my thoughts, I ask for Your covering and counsel, Holy Spirit, Your forgiving grace, Lord Jesus and Your completing Love, Father God―not only for me, but for anyone who reads the following words. It is not because of the language that I proceed in sober prayer and caution, but because You have shared two things with me this night that I am afraid may resonate too deeply with my family, friends and community: One lesson is of terrible emptiness that strips me naked before You. The other is one that has filled me with brilliant hopeful light. I pray for all of humankind; that we each in our own hearts and minds discover by the darkness revealed herein, the embrace of Your illuminated presence:

Lord, I have awoken from a most sinister of dreams. In it I found pleasure in an act of selfishness that meant nothing to anyone, but me. In it, my needs alone were satisfied. There is no purpose in playing out the details―No harm came from the cinema. Because my imagination was the only participant, no others were affected, it was a dream. It could hardly be helped…except―

Afterward, You spoke to me in the night. I know it was You because it was so clear…purifying in its searing revelation. I immediately recognized with palatable fear; I had been able in the privacy of my innermost thoughts to self-justify my needs without consulting You.

Now in my epiphany, I realize that David and Paul were most certainly right. “Not one is righteous, no not one”, certainly not me. Paul took it a step further in Romans 7 when he confessed…bared his wounded soul, 

“So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand…
Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?”

Hard words: My self-called “innocent dreams” may actually be the truest things that convict me. I pray that my fellow men and women don’t have such inner struggles…but I have my suspicions that I
 am not alone in this battle.


I have discovered that I might blame a being named Satan for tormenting me. I might pontificate about demons and unholy spirits who taunt me into willful acts against my Creator. But there is a more malevolent culprit at play. I need look no further than to my closest associate whom I have known both as my good friend and most vile enemy―it is me, myself and I who imagines, and in my fantasies may create seemingly harmless thoughts that can lead eventually to detestable actions…

―The darkest sin is that which pleases only me, but means something only to You, my Lord.

Surely I might say the night is dark and overwhelms me, but Psalm 139 instructs me that, “to You the dark is light, the night is as day to You”. And there You are: Waiting. I am in the shadows, but I can sense Your teaching, even in the murkiest realms. You remind me of another Psalm, number 4 where I read that I should lay down in peace to rest and sleep, for You alone Lord, make me to dwell in safety…safety from the comic powers in this present darkness, from the spiritual forces in the heavenly places from my enemies―especially from he who can choose to be my good friend or my greatest enemy. Is it me? Is that most of all whom you protect me from, make me safe against?  

In the darkness, how am I to know? Not all my dreams are such. Many are great and creatively borne from the fearfully and wonderfully made being You fashioned me to be. This particular twilight invention is one of few that has fire-alarmed me from slumber. The fault is not of the dreams per se or the gift of imagination which You have generously and beautifully provided within me. What provoked my jolt to reality was the revealing of this particular evening’s content. This specific awareness I am convinced, was infilled from a greater Spirit; one that persistently and constantly counsels with concern for my well-being―if only I will be alert to it. I tremble only because of the experience of my past, of my not acknowledging that Powerful Correcting Presence…You; I am reminded of it because of the Word I have ingested; I sense it because of our current fellowship. And You help me to remember…

―It is not always the song that wakes, but often the cry.

In the darkness that is light to You, I can somehow see Your arms outstretched, wanting only my confession which I now give. I am so sorry my Lord; for still after all our time together, even my simplest thoughts can work to separate us!

You desire only my repentance so that we can continue our walk together through life. In the moment of my complete brokenness―my admittance that I need You as my God above all other gods, pleasures, and self-desires―You forgive and incredibly teach me.


And so I turn once again toward You. I praise You for the incredible ability by Your sacrifice―having destroyed my sin―to dwell safely with You. By the discovery of my temped self revealed by the Spirit of  my loving Father, confessed as honestly as I am able, repented of in hope that never again I will have to consider my actions to be against Your will; I am now free to become more like you than I was before, Lord Jesus.

Search me, O God, and know my heart! Try me and know my thoughts!
And see if there be any grievous way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting!
                                                                                                                ―Psalm 139:23-24

My darkness is made light by You. My night is as day.

Mark C.

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