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
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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