You have probably had the experience before of going from a very bright room into a very dark one. Maybe you get home late, you get ready for bed, and you then have to tiptoe into a bedroom where someone else is sleeping. You find that when you go from the brightness of the hallway into the darkness of the bedroom, you can’t see very much. That’s because in the bright room the pupil of your eye became very small so it wouldn’t be overwhelmed by light, but when you go into the dark bedroom, your pupil needs to grow wider to allow more light into it, and that takes a bit of time. If you just wait for a few moments and allow your eyes to adjust, you’ll soon find that you can see much better. It just takes some patience and some adjustment to the new circumstances.
I find this a helpful illustration of what can happen in your life when you suddenly go from times of joy to times of sorrow. All has been well, and your life has been good. It has been easy to love God and trust him, to pray to him and sing his praises. But then suddenly you are struck by a great trial or a deep sorrow, and for a time it can be difficult to adjust. You may struggle now to trust God as you did before. You may find it hard to pray to him and sing his praises.
Theodore Cuyler, who buried three of his own children, wrote this: “It is the easiest thing in the world … to trust God when the path is all sunshine. The real victory of faith is to trust God in the dark and through the dark.” I like that phrase, “the victory of faith.” I sometimes feel as if Reformed folk like me may have given up the word “victory” too easily (possibly because other Christians have been prone to misuse it). But I think there is something to be said for acknowledging and celebrating a faith that, by God’s grace, is victorious.
I recently pondered Romans 8:28 (“And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose”) and drew from it four truths you can preach to yourself in times of sorrow—truths that will equip you to have that kind of victorious faith. If you minister these truths to your soul and live according to them, you can emerge victorious from your trial—emerge with your faith in God and your love for him not only intact, but strengthened.
God Loves Me
God loves me. It’s the simplest of truths but also the most important and the most formative. Why? Because if you really believe that God loves you, you will respond differently to your trial than if you think God hates you, or if you think God is apathetic toward you, or if you just aren’t certain how God relates to you. Preaching to yourself “God loves me” establishes your relationship with God in your own mind and heart. You may be tempted to reason from this hard thing to the belief that a bad circumstance must point to a bad relationship. But when difficulties come your way, it does not mean that God’s character has changed. It does not mean that his disposition toward you has changed. It does not mean that his relationship to you has changed.
To the contrary, the same love that saved you must be present even in this time and in the very same measure. And for that reason, even as you stand amid the rubble of your life, even as you stand by the grave of a loved one, even as you read the deadliest diagnosis, you can say this to yourself: “God loves me. Whatever I feel, whatever else anyone may be telling me, whatever the Devil may be whispering to me, I know this: God loves me and he will never stop loving me.” A victorious faith begins with clinging tightly to this fact: “God loves me.”
God Has a Purpose
The second truth is this: God has a purpose. This world and everything within it exist to bring glory to God. God’s glorifies himself not only through the joys but through the sorrows, and not just when the path is bright but also when it’s dark as night. Whatever you experience, you can have confidence that there is a divine purpose in it.
A victorious faith trusts the character of God and believes in the purpose of God even when it can’t see the completed work of God. By faith, you can receive sorrow from God and trust that eventually God will make his purpose clear. That clarity may come later in life or it may come only in eternity. But you can have confidence that God will at some point show you what he was up to, and you will see in that day what you take by faith right now: God has a purpose.
God Is at Work
Here is the third truth to speak to yourself: God is at work. You always need to remember that this is God’s world, not yours. You have given your life to him, and that means handing it all over to him. You don’t just give him your heart, though that’s the place to begin—you give him your life, your body, your soul, your children, your marriage, your job, and your dreams. You give it all to him and essentially say, “I entrust this to you; please glorify yourself through it.” And this is exactly what God does–he works through your life.
A victorious faith trusts the character of God and believes in the purpose of God even when it can’t see the completed work of God.
This verse says clearly that if you are a Christian, all things work together for good. You probably don’t need to be convinced or reassured that God is at work through the good things you enjoy. But Romans 8:28 exists to minister this truth to you: God works through the dark days too. There is nothing that God is incapable of using, nothing that is beyond his capacity to redeem for his good and glorious purposes. All means all, and God is at work through all things.
God Is Working Good
The fourth truth is this: God is working this for good. You and I usually define “good” by way of ease, so that what’s good to us is what makes our lives easy or painless. But what’s good to God is what fulfills his purpose of bringing glory to himself. God brings glory to himself in our lives by sanctifying us—by making us more like Jesus Christ in the inner man so we can act more like Jesus in the outer man. God means to have a witness in this world, and though Christ has ascended, he has left us here to act as his disciples, his followers and imitators. God glorifies himself in the lives of his people by setting his love on dead, wretched sinners and transforming them into living images of his Son. He transforms our hearts, so he can transform our lives, so we can be like Jesus and so through us he can transform this world.
No matter your circumstances, you can be confident that in some way they glorify him by further transforming you into the image of Jesus Christ both inside and out. Rough stones don’t become smooth without grinding; valuable ore doesn’t get separated from worthless rock without being blasted and crushed; and you can’t become Christlike or serve his purpose in this world without hardships. There is no path through sanctification and no purpose that doesn’t involve at least some trial, some difficulty, some sorrow. Hence, in your times of sorrow you can know that God is working good.
Conclusion
Romans 8:28 is a beautiful and comforting verse for your darkest days. If you love God, then you have been called according to his purpose, and all things are working together for good—your good and God’s glory. That’s true of the best things and it’s true of the worst things. It’s true of the things you would have chosen anyway and true of the things you never would have chosen. God is working good through your hardest and darkest day just as much as your brightest and most beautiful day.
Dark times are inevitable in this life and, by God’s grace, you can look back on those times and marvel: I might have doubted God, but instead I trusted him. I might have rebelled against God, but instead I submitted to him. I might have turned away from God, but instead I ran toward him. And that is what I mean by a victorious faith. You can enter into your times of sorrow with a living faith, endure your times of sorrow with a tenacious faith, and emerge from your times of sorrow with a strengthened faith. You can have a faith that remains strong and true and bright and beautiful even when everything around you is dark as night.
