Dear Ones,
Hope you had a wonderful and restful weekend. This morning Al and I are going to the funeral of a friend from church who we have prayed for these past months and now is home with the Lord… no more pain but we will miss him. Later we have an Octoberfest party here at Northern Lakes with German food. The question this week is Have you experienced a dry time when you lacked warm feelings toward the Lord and experienced a Dark Night as the Lord was doing His purifying work?
Devotions from Judy’s heart
Don’t we all wish warm, passionate feelings we had on our honeymoon were with us each moment into the following years of everyday life? But perhaps most of us have found looking back that we were more in love with being in love than the person we married behind those warm feelings.  We probably also discovered that those feelings were partly about ourselves rather than loving our mate unconditionally. We have only to look at the divorce rate, for it verifies that the honeymoon often later turns into a relationship of disillusionment.

We are all selfish by nature and need the Lord to purify our hearts, changing us to become humble, caring and more like Him. Sometimes the Lord uses a purifying process called the dark night of the soul, when our world seems to be turned upside down, in order that we become purged and cleansed.  St. John of the Cross describes this as a season from God when, after we have experienced consolation, pleasure and passion in the Lord, it is suddenly all taken away. We experience instead a time of dryness, boredom, disillusionment and insecurity, much like a dark night.

We might wonder: why would God do this to me? We miss the honeymoon of those days with passion and intensity in our relationship with the Lord. But it is all part of God’s plan to help us get beyond ourselves, our fears and selfishness and even getting hung up on the good feelings themselves. It’s a process of dying to self where everything gets crucified, including our warm feelings and security. We feel like we are falling and unable to hold on to something that feels solid. But in reality, when we are free-falling, we get closer to the Lord, beyond our selfishness and illusions. We come to know truth and to love beyond self-interest. In fact, we come to know real love after the honeymoon has passed.

Challenge for today: Be open to all the ways the Lord would bring purifying to your life, and seek Him not yourself. Read Philippians 1:9-11.
Blessings on your week and prayers and love, Judy