Showing results for "Dark Night" in Ministry & Evangelism

With His gentle hand He wounded my neck And caused all my senses to be suspended. Part poetic masterpiece, part mystic treatise, The Dark Night of the Soul by 16th century Carmelite monk, St. John of the Cross, addresses the feeling of being forgotten by the Presence of the Almighty that every Christian desirous of walking more closely with God must pass through in order to learn to walk by faith and not by sight.

At the center of The Dark Night of the Soul (La noche oscura del alma) is a poem written by the 16th century Spanish poet and mystic St John of the Cross. Consisting of eight stanzas, each of five lines, the poem outlines the journey in pursuit of divine union, within which the only source of light comes from the soul. This recording in English includes the poem itself and St John's two accompanying treatises (1584-1585), essentially commentaries, which offer line-by-line explanations of the poem. Many modern listeners have found guidance and consolation in this work.

How do you know God is real? In the emotionally charged, fire-filled faith in which Addie Zierman grew up, the answer to this question was simple: because you've felt him. Now, at age 30, she feels nothing. Just the darkness pressing in. Just the winter cold. Just a buzzing silence where God's voice used to be. So she loads her two small children into the minivan one February afternoon and heads south in a last-ditch effort to find the light.

It's unnerving, isn't it? When our faith feels ungrounded, untethered . . . unreal. When our certainty is adrift, as though an undercurrent has pulled us away from shore into the deep, into the darkness. And if this is you—if you're in a dark night of the soul—please know that you are not alone. (And you are not as far away from safety as you may feel or fear.) The night is not your enemy. In fact, the night is necessary. Revered author, speaker, and mentor Dr. Alicia Britt Chole offers a groundbreaking perspective that reveals spiritual disillusionment as an unexpected friend.