Watch Pastor Lauderdale’s sermon titled Trust God In The Dark on YouTube!
“But he knoweth the way that I take: when he hath tried me, I shall come forth as gold.”
— Job 23:10 KJV
All of us will find ourselves in a dark place.
Maybe you’re going into one. Maybe you’re living in one right now. Or maybe, by the grace of God, you’re finally coming out of one.
Dark places take many forms.
It can be your finances—when the end of the month arrives and you have more month left than money.
It can be your children. You raised them the best you knew how, poured love into them, tried to steer them in the fear and admonition of the Lord, and now you’re watching them make choices you never imagined.
It can be a marriage you’ve worked diligently to build, yet somehow the harder you try, the farther apart you seem to become.
It can be a friendship where you’ve spent years giving and giving, only to realize nothing ever seems to come back.
It can even be that job where you arrive early, stay late, work hard—and when the promotion finally comes, they give it to somebody else.
You know what a dark place feels like.
But the question is: Can you trust God there?
Can you trust Him when you cannot see Him? Can you trust Him when you cannot trace Him? Can you trust Him when you have no idea what He is doing?
When I was growing up in Houston, there was one Christmas when all I wanted was a camera.
My parents bought me one, and I soon learned something that younger generations may never have experienced. You couldn’t take a picture and immediately look at it on a screen. You put a roll of film inside the camera, took your pictures, removed the film and had it developed.
And that film had to be developed in the dark.
The darkness wasn’t accidental. It was necessary.
That fragile film had captured an image, but the image wasn’t visible yet. It had to go through a process. The film moved through one chemical solution and then another—the developer, the stop bath, the fixer.
Slowly, an image that was already there began to appear.
But imagine if the person developing the film became impatient.
I’m tired of this darkness. I can’t see anything. I can’t stay in here another minute.
And then he flipped on the light.
He wouldn’t speed up the process.
He would ruin the picture.
Somebody needs to hear this today:
Don’t turn the light on too soon.
You may be asking God to get you out of something while God is still developing something in you.
“The dark room is not proof that God has left the building. It may be the very place where He is developing something in you.”
Job understood what it meant to live in a dark room.
He lost his possessions. He lost his children. His body became covered with painful sores. His friends sat around supposedly comforting him while wondering what terrible thing he must have done to deserve it.
Even his wife finally told him to curse God and die.
Job was in one of the darkest rooms imaginable.
And yet, in Job 23, we discover three truths that can help us when we find ourselves in a dark place.
Job says:
“Behold, I go forward, but he is not there; and backward, but I cannot perceive him.”
— Job 23:8 KJV
Job isn’t saying God doesn’t exist.
He’s saying, “I can’t feel Him.”
There is a difference between the fact of God’s presence and the feeling of God’s presence.
“There is a difference between the fact of God’s presence and the feeling of God’s presence.”
And if you don’t understand the difference, the enemy will use your feelings to talk you out of your faith.
Maybe you’ve prayed until you don’t know what else to pray. It feels as though heaven has gone silent. Your words seem to bounce off the ceiling.
You don’t feel God.
You can’t see God.
But that doesn’t mean God isn’t there.
Job continues by saying that when he looks to the left, where God is working, he cannot behold Him.
Did you catch that?
Job couldn’t see God working, but he still knew God was working.
That’s not contradiction. That’s revelation.
“Trusting God when you can’t see Him means believing He is working even when you cannot perceive what He is doing.”
You can be absolutely certain God is working at the very moment you are absolutely certain you cannot feel Him.
Think about Naomi.
She lost her husband and both of her sons. When she returned to Bethlehem, she was so broken that she told the women not to call her Naomi anymore.
“Call me Mara.”
Call me bitter.
See Ruth 1:20–21 KJV.
Naomi couldn’t see what God was doing.
But God was already positioning Ruth.
God was already orchestrating Boaz.
God was already writing a family story that would eventually lead to King David—and ultimately to Jesus Christ.
God was present in Naomi’s dark room even when Naomi couldn’t perceive Him.
And He is present in yours.
Hiding is not the same thing as leaving.
That situation you’re struggling with? God is present.
Those decisions you don’t know how to make? God is present.
That family problem? God is present.
That job situation? God is present.
Before you walk away, before you give up, before you decide God has abandoned you, remember:
The dark room is not proof that God has left the building.
Knowing God is present still leaves us with another question:
Why is this taking so long?
We live in a fast-food, microwave, same-day-delivery culture. We have become accustomed to getting what we want quickly.
But some things cannot be developed overnight.
Relationships don’t work that way.
Marriages don’t work that way.
Friendships don’t work that way.
Churches aren’t built that way.
And spiritual maturity certainly doesn’t work that way.
There are some things that have to go through a process.
Job finally says:
“But he knoweth the way that I take: when he hath tried me, I shall come forth as gold.”
— Job 23:10 KJV
Job moves from “I cannot perceive Him” to “He knows the way that I take.”
That’s revelation.
“You may not know where God is, but God knows exactly where you are.”
You may not know where God is.
But God knows exactly where you are.
And while you are in that dark room, He is processing something.
Remember the film.
It moved from tray to tray in complete darkness. Yet everything being developed had already been captured.
The image was already there.
It simply wasn’t visible yet.
Maybe that’s where you are.
You cannot see what God is doing. You don’t understand why this season is taking so long. You would much rather skip ahead to the finished picture.
But God sees something you don’t see yet.
So let Him process.
God isn’t processing you without a purpose.
He’s producing something.
Before I came to Sioux City, I wrestled with the call. I weighed the options. I wondered what God was doing.
During that season, there was a song by Daryl Coley that I listened to over and over: He’s Preparing Me.
God was preparing me for something I wasn’t ready to handle yet.
Looking back, I can see that His preparation didn’t begin when I arrived in Sioux City.
It began long before that.
There were things God allowed, places He took me, experiences I didn’t understand and seasons that didn’t make sense at the time.
But He was preparing me.
He was producing something.
And He’s doing the same thing in you.
Your dark room isn’t wasted.
God is producing something through it.
That’s why I need to tell somebody:
Don’t you dare quit.
Don’t throw in the towel.
Don’t fold up the stakes.
You may simply be in the dark room of your life.
And God does some of His best work in the dark.
Ask the blind man who spent his life in darkness until Jesus passed by and the lights came on.
See John 9:1–7 KJV.
Ask the woman with the issue of blood who suffered for twelve long years until she pressed through the crowd and touched the hem of His garment.
See Mark 5:25–34 KJV.
Ask the man at the pool of Bethesda who had been confined by his condition for thirty-eight years until Jesus told him to pick up his bed and walk.
See John 5:1–9 KJV.
The length of your darkness does not determine the end of your story.
You may have done what people say you’ve done.
But you are not who they say you are.
You are a child of the Most High God.
You were bought with a price.
God loves you.
And the God who was present with Job is present with you.
The God who processed Job is processing you.
The God who produced something through Job’s suffering is producing something through yours.
“When you can’t see Him, trust Him. When you can’t feel Him, trust Him. When you can’t trace what He’s doing, trust Him. The picture isn’t ruined. It’s still being developed.”
So when you can’t see Him, trust Him.
When you can’t feel Him, trust Him.
When you can’t trace what He’s doing, trust Him.
And when everything around you seems dark, remember:
The picture isn’t ruined.
It’s still being developed.
Watch Pastor Lauderdale’s sermon titled Trust God In The Dark on YouTube!
