In a season of deep spiritual darkness, joy in God can feel like a beautiful dream we once had. Try as we might, we can’t seem to recapture the feeling. The song slipped away. The light faded. The best of days left like a dream.
Spiritual darkness comes in many different shades: Grief. Doubt. Guilt. Loss. Sometimes we know exactly where it comes from. Other times we have little or no idea. I can remember an August day years ago when, without warning, the sun seemed to drop clean out of my sky. I didn’t know where the darkness came from. I just knew it was dark.
The singer of Psalms 42 and 43 knew something of the feeling. He could point to some reasons for his soul darkness, but he still couldn’t shake his questions. Ten times, he sends the word why into the night. Why does his soul sorrow? Why do his emotions toss like waves in the wind? Why does he wander adrift and alone? And when his enemies turn to him with a question of their own — “Where is your God?” — he cannot answer with the “glad shouts” he once had (Psalm 42:3–4). Those joys are now a memory.
Yet Psalms 42 and 43, dark as they are, tell more than a story of joy lost. They tell a story of a man who still refers to God as “my exceeding joy,” even amid his own exceeding grief (Psalm 43:4–5). Therefore, they tell a story of joy that lives and fights in defiance of the darkness.
If we listen carefully, we’ll hear how that kind of joy talks as it waits for the light.
‘I remember.’
Memory can feel like an enemy to those in soul darkness. Maybe, like the psalmist, we remember how we once went “to the house of God with glad shouts and songs of praise” (Psalm 42:4). Once — but not now. Now we weep (verse 3). Now we feel forgotten (verse 9). Now each day brings another wave that makes it hard to breathe (verse 7). And yesterday’s joy only reminds us of how much we’ve lost.
Only? No, that’s not quite right. For the psalmist, memory is more than an enemy. As he calls to mind his former joy, he feels loss, yes, but also longing:
As a deer pants for flowing streams,
so pants my soul for you, O God.
My soul thirsts for God,
for the living God.
When shall I come and appear before God? (Psalm 42:1–2)
These are not the words of a man who remembers and despairs. These are the words of a man who remembers and hopes, who knows that joy back then can become his joy again. Even more, these are the words of a man who somewhere, deep down, still knows God as his joy. Why else would he pant and thirst, ask and ache for God and God alone? As John Piper writes,
A Christian, no matter how dark the season of his sadness, never is completely without joy in God. I mean that there remains in his heart the seed of joy in the form, perhaps, of only a remembered taste of goodness and an unwillingness to let the goodness go. (When the Darkness Will Not Lift, 48)
If any part of you groans for God or sighs as you remember better days, don’t let that little seed go. Let memory serve longing, and let longing stir hope that the future, and not just the past, can hear your shouts of joy.
‘I declare.’
Darkened believers may readily repeat the psalmist’s sad question:
Why are you cast down, O my soul,
and why are you in turmoil within me?
But we may falter before saying his next words:
Hope in God; for I shall again praise him,
my salvation and my God. (Psalm 42:5–6)
Maybe you struggle to see anything but sorrow ahead. Maybe today’s darkness seems to cast its shadow over all your tomorrows. So, how can you declare, “I shall again praise him”? Only as you focus less on the “I” and more on the “him.”
Listen to how the psalmist talks about God, even with his soul so cast down. The one to whom he prays is not simply “God” but “the living God,” “my God,” “the God of my life,” and “my rock” (Psalm 42:2, 5–6, 8–9). He may seem far, but this God is still my God.
Do you know him to be the same for you in Christ? If so, then his covenant promises rest upon you even if you don’t feel them and struggle to believe them. He still “commands his steadfast love” to hold you, keep you, and carry you in his good time to days of abundant praise (verse 8). Because he has said in Jesus, “I shall love you,” you can say in darkness, “I shall again praise you.”
Of course, some darkness so desolates us that we don’t know if we can call God “my God.” Is he mine? we may wonder. Or is this darkness proof that I don’t know him? Doubting one, keep before you the person and promises of Jesus Christ. Yes, fight your sin and battle your unbelief. But do not dwell within your darkened soul. Consider his mercies. Consider his merits. And in time, the Spirit will bring you from “God” to “my God,” and from “I may again praise him” to “I shall.”
‘I defy.’
“I remember” shows us the joy behind us; “I declare” lays hold of the joy before us. But what about today? What about now? How does darkened joy speak about this afternoon? In a word, “I defy.”
As one who knows how stubborn the darkness can be, I take courage from the fact that the psalmist tells his cast-down soul to hope in God three times across these two psalms (Psalm 42:5, 11; 43:5). Soul darkness, like nighttime, usually disappears gradually. Dawn comes by degrees. And it does so as weak, embattled, tempted, sorrowful believers dare to defy their despair. As Martyn Lloyd-Jones once preached on this passage, “Defy yourself, and defy other people, and defy the devil and the whole world, and say with this man: ‘I shall yet praise him’” (Spiritual Depression, 21).
But for how long must we defy? We don’t know. God deals with his children individually, lifting the darkness of one after a month, another after a year, another after a decade or more. But in the name of Jesus, we do know this: Even a lifetime of defying the darkness is better than giving way to it. For those who defy and keep defying will find the one they long for. And the one they long for will never disappoint.
One day, dear saint, God will send out his light and his truth, and they will lead you to the place where praise is your deep and daily portion. For God will be your deep and daily joy — your “exceeding joy” (Psalm 43:3–4). Your tears will turn to songs and your night to breaking day. And the joy that seemed impossible as a dream will belong to you again.
Desiring God