Promises In The Dark

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t is sometimes necessary to enter the darkness to find all that God has in store for us.  On the slopes of Mount Sinai, Moses entered into a thick cloud of darkness to talk to His God while the rest of the people remained at a distance.  Oh, what a blessing we find when God separates us from everyone and everything and calls us into the darkness where we discover His light!  After all, light shines brightest when all around is pitch black!

Abraham, that great man of faith, whom the Bible describes as the friend of God, also had his dark moment when God spoke to him in darkest night and made him the greatest promise of his life.  It was in the darkness that Abraham learned that he was to be the father of many nations and that his descendants would be without number.

Genesis 15:12-16 records this for us. “As the sun was setting, Abram fell into a deep sleep, and a thick and dreadful darkness came over him.  Then the LORD said to him, "Know for certain that your descendants will be strangers in a country not their own, and they will be enslaved and mistreated four hundred years. But I will punish the nation they serve as slaves, and afterward they will come out with great possessions. You, however, will go to your fathers in peace and be buried at a good old age. In the fourth generation your descendants will come back here, for the sin of the Amorites has not yet reached its full measure."

Again we find God’s man in darkness; in fact it is a “thick and dreadful darkness.”  I would ask if there were any other kind of darkness.  If you can see, it isn’t dark!  But in this impenetrable fortress of darkness God makes His everlasting promise to Abraham.  There are, in fact, five promises here.  1) Abraham descendants will be strangers and slaves in a foreign land for four hundred years.  God has given Abraham’s descendants a history when none of them yet existed!!!  2) When the years of slavery are over the country responsible will be punished.  3) The people will come out with great possessions. 4) Abraham will die in peace at an old age. 5) His descendants will gather at the very place where he is having this conversation with God.

We know from the Scriptures and from history that every one of these promises was fulfilled.  Had it not been for the thick and dreadful darkness as well as the deep sleep that fell upon him, Abraham would have never received these promises from God.  When we earnestly seek our Father, we find His most endearing and enduring promises.  Sometimes, and perhaps more often than not, God surrounds us with thick darkness outwardly so that His light can shine on us inwardly.

Promises in the dark!  Is God speaking to you today?