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Jaime Luce’ story begins with emotional and financial struggle as a single mother trying to survive. Today, she has been married to the love of her life for almost three decades, owned two companies, and has become an author and podcaster. She is on a mission to help others walk through the valleys of life with hope and knowledge that God always has a way.  Learn more.

Related reading:

• How To Heal Through Responsibility and Faith
• How To Use Your Kingdom Authority In Prayer
• Plug Into A Warfare Prayer Source
• Have a Different Spirit
• Be A Good Gardner

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Full Transcript

This transcript is auto-generated and not perfect. We hope it blesses you.

[0:00:00]   You.

[0:00:02]  Welcome to the Jamie Luce podcast. I’m your host, Jamie Lewis. Thank you for listening today. All of my blogs, social and YouTube links can be found on my website jamieluce.com. If you enjoy this podcast, you can support it by liking, subscribing, getting notified, and sharing this broadcast. Another way you can help is by rating and reviewing on Apple podcast. My hope and goal in every episode is to give you tools found in Scripture, either by teaching discussions, testimonies, or interviews that encourage and equip you as you navigate living a real Christian walk in a difficult world.

[0:00:43]  I would love to hear from you. Whether you have a comment, question, or prayer request, you can email me at [email protected]. If you’re watching on YouTube, drop me a comment. I’d love to partner with you on your journey of faith. If you’re listening today on any podcast platform, take a screenshot and tag me and I’ll post it to my Instagram story. And now join me for today’s episode.

[0:01:12]  Hello. Thank you so much for joining me today. This is the Jamie Lewis podcast, and I’m welcoming you into the studio with me today. I really had something burning on my heart for you, and I wanted to be able to bring you some encouragement. I know that in the world we’re living right now and the continual change that is going on around us, it can almost seem overwhelming that it just seems, as the scripture has said, that as the closer we get to the coming of the Lord, the darker and darker that it will seem to get all around us.

[0:01:50]   And I wouldn’t want us to be those who fear the darkness. And this is the topic for today, and I want to bring some understanding to where I think that we as Christians have something a little backward, where we believe something that is just the way that the Western world tends to believe this, but we’ve got an understanding wrong. And by having that wrong understanding, we leave ourselves in a place of doubt, where we’re not strong in faith, where we look at the darkness around us and think that that means that we are alone or that things are helpless or that somehow in the dark, that there is no way that we grope in darkness, as one scripture puts it.

[0:02:36]  But there’s a song that’s a worship song that’s kind of popular out right now, and one of the lyrics in that song says that day and night, night and day, let incense arise. And that incense is referring to a passage of Scripture in the Old Testament where they continually would put incense on the altar. It was to be lifted up to the Lord on a regular basis. It was not to quit. And we equate that to the prayers of the saints, that we are to pray without ceasing. We are the incense that goes up day and night.

[0:03:14]  But I want to really concentrate on the one passage, the part of that that says not day and night, but night and day. And the reason I want to go there is because that’s where the catch is. The term day and night is not defined the way that we tend to define it. We think of a new day starting as soon as we see the sun begin to rise. Then we think, okay, there’s a new day coming on us and that somehow in the darkness, that’s where the night is.

[0:03:52]  But I wanted to give you God’s perspective. So if you have your Bibles, I always encourage you to do this. Get out your bibles. I’ve got mine here with me. It’s always a good idea to get out a pen and paper and be able to take some notes. You can go back and check this for yourself. You always want to be like the Bereans and those who study and go look up the Word for yourself and make up your own mind, right?

[0:04:14]  But I want to take you to Genesis, where it all began, where God begins to teach us about Himself, about his character, about who he is and what he has done in this creation that he has given to us. In Genesis one, verse five, it says And God called the light day and the darkness he called night. Well, we seem to do that too. So the evening and the morning were the first day. Now, isn’t that interesting?

[0:04:42]  He just told us that the light is day and that the darkness is night. But what he’s saying is that the way that that comes about is first evening and then morning. He says, the evening and the morning are the first day. Then if we go to verse eight and God called the firmament heaven. So the evening and the morning were the second day in Genesis 113. So the evening and the morning were the third day.

[0:05:18]  Again in verse 19. So the evening and the morning were the were the fourth day in verse 23. So the morning and the evening I wrote them backwards were the fifth day. And then in Genesis 131, it says then God said everything that he had saw, everything that he had made, and indeed it was very good. So the evening and the morning were the 6th day. So let’s look at what God then does once it’s dark. In Matthew, chapter eight, verses 16 to 27, he says this when evening had come, they brought to him many who were demon possessed.

[0:06:00]  And he cast out the spirits with a word and he healed all who were sick that it might be fulfilled. Which was spoken by Isaiah the prophet, saying, he himself took our infirmities and bore our sicknesses. Now, did you catch the very first part of that verse? He said, when evening had came? So Jesus is letting us know that we don’t know what happened during the day. But when evening came, he began to work.

[0:06:34]  In the evening he was casting out spirits. In the evening he healed all who were sick. This is a picture for us to carry into our own personal experience, even though it might seem dark. And I get it. I know that things are crazy right now in that darkness, we can say, but this is where God starts. He begins in the evening. He doesn’t wait until the morning. He begins in the evening. His days begin the evening and the morning.

[0:07:15]  Let’s look at this is verse same passage in Matthew. Let’s jump down to verse 18. And when Jesus saw great multitudes about him, he gave a command to depart to the other side. So Jesus has spent the evening now doing all this wonderful work. Healing and deliverance is what he’s been doing. And there’s such a crowd coming. He says, we need to go to the other side. Let’s go to verse 23. Now, when he got into a boat, his disciples followed him. And suddenly a great tempest arose on the sea, so that the boat was covered with waves, but he was asleep.

[0:07:59]  Then his disciples came to him and awoke him, saying, Lord, save us, we’re perishing. But he said to them, why are you fearful, o you of little faith? Then he arose and rebuked the winds and the sea, and there was a great calm. So the men marveled, saying, who can this be that even the winds and the sea obey him? So we see in the evening a storm arises. And isn’t that usually what happens with us? We think that sure.

[0:08:34]  When we feel like we can’t see, when the darkness feels like it’s encroaching, then that’s when the storm all of a sudden happens around us. The wind starts just howling, things start happening. We start hearing things. The waves are crashing. And it’s in that place, in that darkness, that fear rises up. And the disciples, even though they had Jesus in the boat, their fear was, we have Him here, but nothing’s going to change, it’s not going to make a difference.

[0:09:03]  We’re still perishing. And that’s something we can get caught in. We can think that even though Jesus is in the boat, he’s asleep. He doesn’t care that we’re perishing. Don’t you care? And yet we’ve got to continue on. Let’s go to verse 40 and 41. I’m sorry. Let’s go to Luke. We were in Matthew. Let’s go to Luke, chapter four, verses 40 and 41. And it says, when the sun was setting again, with the sun setting, we know that the evening is coming.

[0:09:33]  All those who had any that were sick with various diseases were brought, they brought to him, and he laid his hands on every one of them and healed them. And demons also came out of many crying out and saying, you are the Christ, the Son of God. And he rebuking them, did not allow them to speak, for they knew that he was the Christ. I know that the storms always come up in the evening. I know again, we’ve got all those who feel the worst. You know, isn’t it funny, my husband and I talk about this and maybe it’s because we’re getting a little older, but you’ll be fine during the day. You’re moving around even physically in your body. Everything feels fine.

[0:10:18]  You’re going the whole day and it’s great. Then all of a sudden evening comes. You go to bed and you’re laying down and you just all of a sudden feel the aches and the pains. Things all of a sudden just start I don’t know, you start feeling them in the evening. And we have talked about this. Why is it that when I lay down to rest that I’m suddenly attacked in my body? Why is it when all of a sudden I’m in this position where I should be comfortable when the evening comes, when I should be able to rest, that it seems that discomfort comes and that interruption of our peace comes in the evening?

[0:10:53]  We know that the evening represents dark, but God does some of his greatest work in the dark. In fact, in First Kings, chapter eight, verse twelve, solomon says that God dwells in the thick darkness. I mean, we’re not just talking about a little bit of darkness here. And I’m not going to go back and read all about Moses, but how many times did he go into the thick darkness in the cloud to hear the voice of God?

[0:11:24]  It wasn’t in the brightness of day. It wasn’t when things seemed great and wonderful. It was in the darkness that he would go in a season of fasting where he’d climb the mountaintop to be able to hear from God. And he waited until he got that instruction before he came down that mountain, regardless of who was waiting on him at the foot of the mountain. But it was in that darkness that God would speak.

[0:11:51]  The darkness is actually a promise of what’s coming. It’s a promise that a new day is dawning. Paul said in Acts 26 seven. To this promise, our twelve tribes, earnestly serving God night and day, hope to attain. They understood as a Jewish culture, as the Jewish people who heard and know the oracles of God, that God begins in the evening. God starts and begins his work in the dark. Let’s even go back to the beginning again. Let’s go back to Genesis one and look at God’s mo, his modus operandi. What does he do? How does he operate?

[0:12:37]  If we go back to verse one. Genesis one, chapter one, verse one. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void, and darkness was on the face of the deep and the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. I love that. Some translations will say brooding. And I love that word because it’s just that sense of he’s not just hovering, but there’s activity, there’s something going on there and God is doing that.

[0:13:13]  And in our darkness, in the times when we feel like we can’t see, when we know that God is our God, we have made Him ours, that in that darkness, that thick darkness, he is brooding over what’s going on in our circumstance. His spirit is moving and he’s creating on your behalf. He’s moving on your behalf. He’s not looking at that and thinking, what am I going to do? I don’t know what to do for them. I don’t understand what’s happening for them. I don’t know what’s happening.

[0:13:43]  That is not the time for us to fear the darkness we should never fear. For our God is active. He’s very active in the thick darkness. I know that many of you, even right now, coming out of the season of COVID of change in the way that we live our lives, our freedoms are being shifted, the ground around us is shaking. And in that darkness of not knowing what’s coming tomorrow, there’s just this fear that we are like the disciples, that we trust the Lord. We love the Lord. We’ve asked Him to come on this.

[0:14:24]  Actually, we’ve joined him on his journey. He said, Follow me. And we’re following. He’s giving the command, let’s go across to the other side. And we have Him in our boat. But somehow he’s just asleep. Somehow he doesn’t recognize that this is terrifying to us and that we need help right now. And why doesn’t he do something? I think did they think that he was going to wake up and begin shoveling water out of the boat? What did they expect Him to do?

[0:14:55]  And sometimes we don’t know. We don’t even know what we’re asking the Lord to do. We just know that we’re afraid and we need Him to act on our behalf. But he is the light that even in our darkness, jesus is the light of the world, that regardless of how dark it seems, we have Him with us. We are not alone in the darkness. That darkness is a picture of the new day that is coming. I find this interesting that we even in our American culture, we look at our clocks.

[0:15:36]  We have 12:00 A.m.. We don’t go off of a 24 hours clock. For the most part we go over a twelve hour clock. And so from 12:00 A.m., which to us is midnight. But think about that. That is 12:00 A.m.. That’s a new day. At midnight is a new day. And we go for hours in that new day in darkness. Now it already starts getting dark. What we call evening, maybe five 607:00, depending on the time of year. It could be as late as 08:00, 09:00.

[0:16:12]  But the sun begins to set on that day. But in that same time we’ve got hours of darkness that are considered the evening. And yet for the Lord, that is still day. It’s the midnight hour. How many times we’ve heard about the midnight cry. That midnight hour is not the dark hour, even though it’s dark outside. That midnight hour. Let’s change our perspective is the dawning of a new day. It doesn’t have to look like it looked yesterday.

[0:16:48]  It’s actually a new day while it’s still dark outside. It’s actually a new beginning, even though it’s dark and it’s difficult to see. Let’s look at some examples of that in Acts, chapter 16, verses 25 and 26, it says and at midnight, Paul and Silas prayed and sang praises unto God, and the prisoners heard them. And suddenly there was a great earthquake, so that the foundations of the prison were shaken.

[0:17:22]  And immediately all the doors were open and everyone’s bands were loosed. Your chains can fall off in the darkness in that midnight hour. Your chains can fall off. You don’t have to wait till it looks like it’s light outside. You don’t have to wait for the sun to shine again. You can have a new day, a new start, a new beginning. Right now, even in the dark, you can feel like your circumstances are bleak and that things are just hopeless around you. The darkness is thick.

[0:17:59]  But you can know that in that darkness, in your midnight hour, god is present and he is there to deliver you. He is there to cause a great earthquake, to shake things up for you, and to cause your chains to fall off. Not only did their praise in the midnight hour let their chains fall off, but it affected everyone else in that prison. All of those prisoners chains fell off. In fact, it was a moment that God had ordained, not just to bring salvation and deliverance to his two ministers, but to an entire prison, including the jailer who thought that by them being freed, they would have run off and his life was in danger. He would have taken his own life, but instead he was saved. And then his whole household was saved.

[0:18:55]  God does his best work in the thick darkness in the midnight hour. Let’s look at Isaiah 58, verse eight, which says then your light shall break forth like the morning. Your healing shall spring forth speedily, and your righteousness shall go before you. The glory of the Lord shall be your rear guard. Then you shall call, and the Lord will answer. You will cry for help, and he will say, here I am. He was in the boat with the disciples.

[0:19:33]  He was in the prison with Paul and Silas. If we even think of Jesus himself in the tomb, in that tomb, dead in the darkness of death for three days, and yet the morning did come. That dark place is just a promise of what’s coming. Your morning is coming. You’re not going to be in this darkness forever. It will not always be like this. It won’t always feel like this. It won’t always look like this. God has a new day for you, but it begins in the dark.

[0:20:14]   You don’t have to wait. We don’t have to wait, folks. You don’t have to wait till it turns and looks different to think that all of a sudden the day is different. There’s a new day. That new day begins while we’re in that thick darkness. Psalm, chapter 30, verse five says, for his anger is but for a moment, his favor is for life. Weeping may endure for a night, but joy comes in the morning. I love that verse because sometimes we fall into the trap of letting the enemy condemn us.

[0:20:56]  He tells us that you’re in this dark place because you created it, you did it. And maybe we did. Maybe we did something we shouldn’t have done, and now we’re dealing with the consequences of that. But we can come to God and say, Lord, forgive me. I want to make it right. I want to do this the way that you would have me do it. I want to trust you in this and make this new. I want to rely on You, Lord, and give me a new day.

[0:21:23]  And this verse actually tells us that he does. He says that even though for the moment you felt that anger, you felt the weight of the sin, you felt the consequence of the decision, though you did in his scope of things and his way of doing things, he’s saying he has such abundant grace that his anger is just for a moment. But his mercy, his grace, his favor, it lasts a lifetime. What God gives is eternal.

[0:21:59]  Whatever dark place you’re in, you don’t have to be there forever. You could have a brand new life, a brand new day, a brand new start, a brand new life. The darkness is not indicative of your circumstance. It may be dark, but that doesn’t mean it’s not a brand new day. We’ve got to change our thinking. We’ve got to see it the way God sees it. We’ve got to go from this natural mind to the supernatural mind to understand that our God broods over the darkness that we find ourselves in. He doesn’t just wait.

[0:22:33]  He doesn’t sit by and watch what’s happening and let us fall into that darkness and stay in that darkness and deal with it until we can claw our way out. He has a plan and a purpose for your life. Let’s look at why it’s in the dark that faith is activated. Let’s go to two Corinthians, chapter five, verse seven, which says we walk by faith and not by sight. So our faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God.

[0:23:07]  What does that tell us? That no matter what I see, my faith should not be brought up or strengthened or taught by my eyesight. My faith comes by hearing that hearing is what we will hang our faith on. That’s where we hang our hat. Faith grows by hearing, and it’s by hearing the word of God. It’s by hearing the testimony. It’s by hearing what God said about it. It’s by going back through the Word and looking at all the places and all the ways that God did whatever needed to get done. That God brought a victory where there was difficulty, where in the dark hour God showed up in the evening, where he brought healing or deliverance or where he set people free.

[0:23:55]  Whether that was Paul and Silas or whether that was Peter. I mean, Peter in the dark, the thick darkness, was so at peace. In his darkness, understanding that he was where God had him and that God was with him, that an angel actually had to slap him to wake him up and make him realize. You need to get up. I’ve set you free to come walk out of this place. He had so had a piece about the darkness because he’s not moved by the darkness. He understood that God was with him in that darkness.

[0:24:28]  God does dwell in the thick darkness. I want to encourage you, no matter what you’re facing today, that thick darkness, you are not alone in your god is there. He’s there watching over you. He’s brooding over it. He’s hovering and he’s making changes. He’s organizing and planning. When you think of how this great earth was created and how beautiful it is and all the preservation that God has put into the earth for us to still be taking its bounty for us now, even all these thousands of years later.

[0:25:03]  When you think of what God did, the thought process over that darkness, the decisions he was making and the orchestrating that was going on, he’s doing that in your darkness too. He’s not leaving you in that darkness. He’s working it out for your good. We are believers. As Christians. We are not to be doubters. We are not the unbelievers. We are believers. Our faith is that God is with us and he will move on our behalf.

[0:25:32]  Let’s look at Habakkuk two four, which says, the righteous shall live by faith. And then in Romans, chapter one, verses 17, it says for in it, the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith. So we’ll go from a circumstance that it took faith. We go from that dark place where we needed the faith and we laid hold of faith. But then that catapults us to the next place of bigger faith, more faith, where we recognize we go from being the One who needed deliverance in the darkness to being the one who’s at peace when it’s dark, knowing that’s already a brand new day.

[0:26:17]  God is already working on our behalf. He’s already doing for us what needs to get done. He’s already making the plans, fixing what needs to get fixed, delivering what needs to get delivered, healing what needs to get healed, bringing to life those things that are dormant or dead. God is working and brooding in that darkness. There’s an old gospel song that I used to as a child, listen to. My father was a gospel singer in a quartet, and we traveled all up and down the California coast and in a couple of other states while he would sing. And so I was at many places, and we had Western state quartet conventions, and at those conventions, we would get to be with all the other quartets as well.

[0:27:06]  One of those quartets was called The Goth Family, and they had an album out that had this particular song on. And even as a child, I understood the value and the importance of this song. And I would listen with giant headphones on and the giant cord plugged into the old stereo and lay there listening and singing the song over and over again, not knowing that I was feeding my spirit, and that years later, as I got older and had dark moments, went into those hours of darkness.

[0:27:38]  And these words have continually over my life, come back over and over again. And the lyrics say it always gets the darkest just before daylight. Old Satan fights his hardest in the middle of the night. But the dawning of a brand new day is drawing near. Thank God the sun will soon appear. I can feel that even now I know that that ministers even to your heart. Right now you can know that God is moving on your behalf.

[0:28:11]  The sun will shine again but even in the darkness it is a brand new day. We have the blessed hope the sun is going to soon appear and when we see Him, our faith will be made sight. I pray that that was an encouragement to you today. I want you to take note and know that God is in the darkness with you. You’re not alone. Thank you for joining me today.

[0:28:39]   Thank you for listening to the Jamie Lewis podcast. If you enjoyed today’s episode, please rate and review the show on Apple or spotify and subscribe wherever you listen. For more, visit jamieluce.com. That’s Jaimeluce.com. You’ll find a free chapter of her new book. You don’t need money. You just need God. And a fresh word from Jamie on the blog each week. See you next week.