Deep Unto Deep - Week #13

This week we are covering chapters 10 and 11.

Chapter 10 - Prisoners of Hope

The message of this chapter is intriguing to me; the author speaks of how it’s hope that keeps us clinging in seasons of silence and darkness in our walk with God. It’s like being in a “waterless pit” that’s too deep to get out of but is dry so you don’t drown in it.

“One of the scariest things about these prisons is that only one Person know where we are….we cannot explain its darkness to others. Though we yearn to leave our loneliness, no man is allowed to find us here and deliver us…We’re not allowed the comfort of company in these prisons, for they are reserved for God and the soul…One Person has led us here, and He alone can free us once again. Salvation belongs to the Lord (Ps. 3:8), and He is jealous to be the One Who delivers it to our door.”

She goes on to say that our comfort is found in the knowledge of God’s heart. We have asked to know and love Him more and these “prison sentences” are part of His answer.

The Hope that Sustains
“As we find ourselves in the prison sentences of the Lord, this hope (Col. 1:27) has gone ahead of us, entering the Presence beyond the veil. There it lives as a true reality, with our very souls attached to it…This Indwelling One is the Hope that we have as an anchor of our souls (Heb.6:19). In the deep of the darkest place, we have a living flame of fire within us anchoring us to the fiery Man Himself, and by this we know that he will once again come to us and unite us to Himself.”

Hope Deferred
Proverbs 13:12 says, “Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but when the desire comes, it is a tree of life.”

So hope, which is what sustains us, is also that which causes heart sickness when it is deferred or delayed. The season of waiting for delayed fulfillment causes pain and a form of sickness but it helps keep the soul from “the deadened state of unbelief.”

“Though it weighs heavily upon us, this hope keeps us alive…This hope is an inward disturbance that refuses us the comfort of giving up. It keeps us alive by the warring of our members and the wrestling with truth that it provokes. Hope in God, in its deferred state, is as a sickness that gnaws within. But when the longing is answered, and the desire comes, we find in the place of this sickness a healthy tree of life.”

Just as Jesus said about Lazarus, “This sickness is not unto death”, so the sickness that comes from deferred/delayed hope is unto something much greater!

How true I have seen this to be in my life. Both in “smaller” issues and in the bigger issues, the fruit of having to wait on the Lord’s seeming silence or inaction is much greater and healthier than that which comes with immediate results. The deep work of purging and healing that happens in me when I have to wait for the manifestation of His answer is well worth the waiting period.


Chapter 11 – Seasons of Relevance

This is a beautiful chapter about the different seasons of our life. I heard someone say recently something like, “success is knowing what season you are in.” There’s a lot of truth to that. In nature, knowing what season is upon you helps you know how to live during that time of the year.

Dana speaks of “the seasons of winter and spring” but also of the “in between seasons.”

She opens the chapter with a reminder that the day will come, when this age is past, when we will “look with wonder at the times we thought were meaningless and see the grandeur of their significance in the wide scope of God’s call upon our lives…We will gasp to see what He was forming in us even in the dullest of days. Even the times we thought were utter loss because of our own failure, God will redeem and give beauty for ashes. Our responsibility was simply to say ‘yes’ to Him and to agree with the leadership of Jesus over our lives – even when we did not understand His ways.”

The Seasons of Winter and Spring

“The spring is for discovering. The winter is for remembering.”

What a great way to summarize these two seasons of life! All of us who are in Christ can identify with this, I believe. Just as in the natural realm of life, spring is when all the new life appears and there’s so much to experience: the colors, the smells, the sounds, the sights! Our expression, “spring fever,” is very descriptive of what happens as winter loosens its grip on the earth.

In contrast, winter is a time of quietness and seeming “deadness.” Recently we have gotten snow here in Minnesota, and it’s like a blanket that muffles the sounds and brings a sense of stillness and lack of life. Of course, we know that there is hidden life but on the surface, it appears that most of nature has died.

So winter in our walk with God is a season of remembering what we discovered in the springtime of our life in Him…what it felt like to see Him and hear Him, to experience His manifest presence. Winter strengthens our faith because we continue to say “yes” when all seems to be “dead” on the surface. We remember God’s love (Song of Sol. 1:4) and what we experienced of His affections.

Winter is a time of few options; God hems us in during spiritual winter seasons. Because of adverse circumstances (“cold weather”), we “stay indoors” more and get spiritual cabin fever, yearning for winter to pass. We find we aren’t enjoying the pleasures that once stimulated us because His jealous love is cutting off desire for those second loves. This can be painful for us, but is part of His loving strategy to win our wholehearted love.

The author goes on to say that hard as winter may be, it takes even more of the power of God at work in our lives for us to stay focused once springtime comes, because suddenly we have many more options and now we must continue to say “yes” to Him as our First Love in the midst of many other appealing and good options.

“Just as the winter freeze holds an invitation to trust and believe in the unseen, so too these spring rains hold within them a doorway of invitation. They invite us to not forget the etchings of identity that God drove deep within us in the wintertime and to remember that He alone is our Reward…When the south winds (of blessing) are present and all is well, we must guard very carefully against the appeal to comfort our souls with things other than God Himself…Good is always the enemy of the best, and the man now has a far greater chance of losing his heart by secondary pleasures than when he spent his day in a sovereign prison where God was His only comfort and pleasure possible.”

“In my prosperity I recognize that I can do nothing apart from Him (Jn. 15:5), and in my poverty I remember that I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me (Phil.4:13).”

This chapter ends with some comments about the in-between seasons…these are the times tucked between the two extremes of dark night and exhilarating day. They are the menial and mundane times when we are most prone to discouragement, and yet they are just a important to our spiritual maturing.

“In these times, the best way to position the heart is in rest. We rest in the understanding that all His ways are love…”

All the seasons of God in our lives are for the purpose of knowing God and being known in love by Him and of experiencing great fruitfulness in our lives. It’s because of the seasons that nature can bear fruit. Even the climates that don’t have the extreme weather changes have their seasons that are needed for the bearing of produce.

So Lord, we say “yes” to Your perfect leadership in our lives, trusting in Your love and goodness and sovereign oversight of our hearts and circumstances. We love you…in Jesus’ name.

We will end the book, Deep unto Deep, next week with chapter 12, Consumed in Love’s Fire. God be near you this week!