Evening THEN Morning

I was sharing in Westville Correction the other day in a weekend seminar. The seminar topic was on "Knowing God", and I was talking how we come to know God through experiences in life both good and bad. There is alot of people who preach a Gospel that proclaims God's ultimate aim is to make you more comfortable. But the truth of the matter is that God is MORE concerned about making your life more conformed to His Son and NOT more comfortable.

What this means is to get to the place of conformity takes PRESSURE! Face it, we NEED pressure! Pressure --the right amount is what gives a guitar string perfect pitch. To little and it is flat and out of tune, too much and it is sharp and can even "break" the string. The good news is God knows what you can handle and promises not to put too much on you. But He does not promise you freedom from pressure--because He knows that is not healthy either.

The fact is before things get better sometimes they get worse. Hidden in Genesis 1 is this principle. It is in verse 3, "Then God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light. 4 And God saw the light, that it was good; and God divided the light from the darkness. 5 God called the light Day, and the darkness He called Night. So the evening and the morning were the first day."

First evening THEN day. Note darkness is first, then light! Think about it, hidden here is a spirtual principle that we must grasp in order to find strength during the times of pressure--or 'darkness', lest we become weary and faint. Did you ever get a word from God that spoke of deliverance and divine help only to find things took a turn for a worse instead of getting better.

You are not the first to experience this. Remember when Moses went to Pharoah with God's word to "Let My PEOPLE GO!" Exodus 6:1Then the LORD said to Moses, “Now you shall see what I will do to Pharaoh. For with a strong hand he will let them go, and with a strong hand he will drive them out of his land.” God had surely spoken to Moses and deliverance was on the way as God 'saw' the pressure they were under(bondage), and promised to send them deliverance. So Moses goes to Pharoah proclaiming the word of the Lord and what is the result?

In Exodus the 5th chapter it tells how that after Moses went in to Pharoah that things got WORSE! Now they have to go out and get their own straw to make bricks and they have to still meet the same quota as when the straw was brought to them. Do you see it? Evening then morning, worse then better. Evening is what makes the morning so beautiful and meaningful.

I shared with the men the darkest time in my life when I lost my son to leukemia. It was the toughest thing I've ever endured, but because of that I was brought to morning! God used that experience to bring me to Him and rather than cursing the darkness He taught me to praise Him for the LIGHT! Many go through such things and blame God, get mad at God, take it out on God by becoming bitter and hard. We make God the scapegoat for our failure and take out our disappointment by holding back from him.

Well in sharing this message I wrapped it up with an exhortation to NOT blame God for the evening, but if you want to get mad at somebody, get mad at the devil and SERVE God with all your heart in order to get even with the devil.

After prayer we took a break for lunch. As I sat there a man walked up to me named Jim(named changed to protect the innocent), he asked if he could talk to me for a second. I said sure and asked him to sit down and share what was on his mind. He started out by telling me he was mad at God and was not serving God out of anger and deep hurt. He began to cry softly and then to sob almost uncontrolably. He couldn't talk for the tears. I put my arm around him trying to console him and after quite awhile he got control of himself and told me this story.

One night while being at home with his 3 kids, his youngest ran out of diapers. He left the kids to go to a convenient store to get more diapers. On returning he turned the corner to his subdivision and saw a dark flume of smoke rising to the sky. He said his first thought was "I hope that is not my house". But sadly it was. Not only did he lose his home but all 3 of his children perished in the fire. He became bitter and blamed God for the tragedy. Consequently he tried to soothe his pain in drugs and alchohol and his whole life went out of control, Thus he ended up in prison and just added insult to injury.

He said he saw that day the futility of blaming God and wanted to stop the path he was walking and see "morning". I assured him God was the only one who could turn such hurt into healing and on the other side somehow there was beauty for these ashes.

Afterwards I thought how awful what this man experienced. I can no way liken my experience to his. My heart hurt for him and yet I was amazed how God in His love reached out to this dad and how morning always follow evening! Think about it--evening THEN morning.