Whispers in the Dark

They come out of nowhere. The voices. They climb inside you and tear at everything they can find. They speak every moment that they get. Nocturnal voices that remind you of everything that hurts you--the names, the places, the faces. Whispering some truth, mostly lies, and a mixture of both.

We--I--am haunted these whispers in the dark.

Skillet captured everything I could ever hope to say on this topic, with their song "Whispers in the Dark." I'll quote a bit for you, and basically shoot straight with some thoughts on these voices. The voices and whispers in the dark.

"Despite the lies that you're making/Your love is mine for the taking."

  The darkness is full of lies. It seems that there hasn't been a night since I got on campus that I haven't had the voices start coming to me at night and telling me lies. Telling me that I'm not good enough. Telling me that I can't deal with the stress of the semester. Telling me things that continue to eat away at everything I do.

But God cares, and that's the truth. The lies are the making of those voices, but the truth is always going to prevail in the end. The truth of the lie is that we aren't good enough, but the voices never seem to remember that we don't have to be. We'll sin all our lives, but all we need is One Person that has never and will never sin. We do have self-worth because of Him, and we can be confident in ourselves (through Him) and not worry when we aren't good enough for other people.

"I will be the one that you run to/My love is a burning, consuming fire"

The voices would love for us to run to something. In fact, every time the voices start whispering, we will run to something. The difference lies in what that something is going to be. Too often I fall back on hard hitting music that merely entertains me while I pace around the cage of my depression. Things would look a lot different if I fell back on something that could open the cage instead.

The love of God never fails. The love of people might, but (as Matt Redmond sings) "The heavens ring/The saints all sing/Great is your faithfulness." The fact that God's love is a burning and consuming fire (see the book of James) is both scary and awesome. Sometimes even scary awesome and awesomely scary.  He is so jealous for his people Israel (check out the minor prophets), but that can mean that He fiercely chastises them. Yet thankfully, that also means that He fiercely protects them. That flame of God's love will never burn out, no matter what enters our mind in the dark of night. And I do mean that literally.

"You'll never be alone. When darkness comes, I'll light the night with stars. Hear my whispers in the dark."

I find that night is the time when we (again, I) tend to feel the most alone. All it takes is for me to walk across campus at night, or sit in my room at night, or lie in bed at night, and the voices decide to make their rounds and remind me of how sucky life can be.

But here's the most crucial thing: God is whispering in the dark as well. Every time the demonic voices start to creep out of hiding, God's voice is there too. Sometimes it's hard to pick out the promises God is whispering to us when the voices from the dark are closing in. But as artist Todd Agnew said, "You speak with thunder and lightning. Your voice shakes the mountains, the foundations of the earth." It is so much more powerful than anything that can be whispered to us. It can feel so overwhelming until we remember the truth.

God whispers in the dark too.