My life is sadly full of blunders, humiliations and afflictions, but  also of liberating joy.I wouldn´t do justice to His grace if I omitted that phase of my walk with Christ.

I´ve often wondered if in the household of God there happens to be souls more miserable than I am.  And yet I´m still among His afflicted  (Isa. 49:13).  There seems to be those who are always on the sunny Hallelujah-side, so when you ask them how they´re doing, their answer would often be high-flown words of excitement, but I admit I´m usually not too comfortable with their shallow utterances.

But why those afflictions?  Why that strange darkness?  I don´t know apart from the fact that “He knows what is in the darkness, and the light dwells in Him.”  (Dan. 2:22).  His powerful words, “Let there be light!” is repeated many times in the lives of the afflicted soul “who walks in darkness and has no light” (Isa. 50:10)  though he´s a child of light.  O, wait for Him, “you´ll not remain in darkness.” John 12:46

At one time up in Norway my affliction was so heavy that I asked the assembly I was supposed to preach to, “please for me, for I can´t preach tonight”, but suddenly that very night was the beginning of an awakening  among precious young people.  Then I knew it was the sovereign doing of the Lord but I just watched it with awe.

Such experiences are told by many servants of the Lord.  One reason for being “down”, is to keep you from big thoughts about yourself, an old, godly preacher wrote me at the same time giving me practical good advices about the danger of women that have destroyed many preachers, he told me.  Oh, how right he was.

One of my key words is Ps. 45:1:  “My heart overflows with a pleasing theme, I address my verses to the King, my tongue is like the pen of a ready scribe (writer).”  For I write songs too in the presence of that King. But that same psalmist testifies in Ps. 44:19 how he was “covered with deep darkness”.  This is surely known in the lives of “His afflicted” who are however happily relieved with “the pleasing theme” of Ps. 45, and that theme is the glorified Christ that hasn´t stopped showing compassion with His afflicted, nay with you, afflicted sister and brother. 

4/7/21 - jn