The dark night of the soul. This phenomenon describes a disease that, from time to time, makes the greatest Christians suffer, was the disease that soaked David in the pillow of tears and earned Jeremiah the nickname “Prophet in Tears”. It was the same disease that afflicted Martin. Luther to such an extent that his melancholy threatened to destroy him, but this evil is not only a normal attack of depression, but a depression specifically related to a crisis of faith, a crisis that occurs when one feels the absence of God or when a feeling arises that he has abandoned us.
This spiritual depression is real and generally intense, one may even wonder how it is possible for a person of faith to experience these spiritual depressions, however, the causes that lead to this feeling are true and cannot be ignored. constant and uniform action, is unstable. We go from faith to faith, but in this movement we can go through periods of doubt when we cry, “Lord, I believe!Help me in my lack of faith!?
- Can you also think that the dark night of the soul?It is something completely incompatible with the fruit of the Spirit.
- Not only that of faith.
- But also that of joy.
- Once the Holy Spirit has flooded our hearts with indescribable joy.
- How can it be important to distinguish between the spiritual fruit of joy and the cultural concept of happiness.
- A Christian can have joy in his heart as long as there is still a spiritual depression in his mind.
- During these dark nights and cannot be destroyed by spiritual depression.
- It is the joy of the Christian who survives all the recessions of life.
In writing to the Corinthians in his second letter, Paul recommends to readers the importance of preaching and communicating the gospel to the people, but in the midst of this, he reminds the Church that the treasure we have, of God, is a treasure that is not in glasses of gold and silver, but in what the Apostle calls “glasses of earth”. For this reason, he says, “that the excellence of power may come from God and not from us. “Immediately after this warning, the Apostle adds: “In all of us, we are troubled, but not afflicted; perplexed, but not discouraged; persecuted, but not abandoned; slitting, but not destroyed; always carrying the death of Jesus in the body, so that his life may also manifest in our bodies?(2Co 4. 7-10).
This passage indicates the limits of depression we can experience. Depression can be profound, but it is neither permanent nor fatal. Note that the Apostle Paul describes our condition in several ways, says that we are “troubled, perplexed, persecuted, and massacred They are powerful images that describe the conflict that Christians must endure, but wherever he describes these phenomena, he also describes their limitations, troubled but not distressed; perplexed, but not discouraged; persecuted, but not abandoned; massacred but not destroyed?.
So, in difficult times, we have this pressure to put up with, but the pressure, even if it’s severe, doesn’t overwhelm us. We may be confused and perplexed, but this depressive point to which bewilderment leads us does not lead to complete and even in persecution, however serious, we are not yet abandoned, we may even be devastated and passed out as Jeremiah said, but we will still have room for joy. Consider the prophet Habakkuk, who, even in his misery, remained confident that, despite the setbacks he suffered, God would make his feet like those of the deer, so that he could walk in the high places.