I know what the long, dark night of the soul is. Mine lasted for eighteen years. Shortly after being filled with the Holy Spirit in 1972 I enjoyed several periods of unbridled joy over the next four years. Then, after we moved to Pittsburgh in 1976, it seemed that the lights cut off. Compared to the joy I had experienced before, I began to feel as though I had lost God's presence although I knew doctrinally that He wouldn't forsake me. I tried periods of fasting and praying to regain the joy. I tried to purge my life of anything that might offend the Lord and to work for Him as hard as I could. If faithfulness was what He wanted, I would try to prove myself faithful even if I couldn't feel anything.
For eighteen years, from 1976-1994 I never again knew the joy I had felt at the beginning. I felt periods of peace and took pleasure in the work of the ministry, although that pleasure was sporadic since the ministry brought periods of heartache and feelings of failure. At times God graciously interrupted the heartache with brief periods of fun. God gave us gifts, some very wonderful people and doors were opening in the field of Christian writing. But the years of dryness had created in me both despair and desperation for the reality of what I had once known, the fullness of the Spirit. In spite of all my efforts to energize myself with fresh vision, by the time 1994 came, I was ready to give up. I remember thinking, if only I can just hang on until I die, I'm sure when I see Him it will all have been worth it.
Esther's preparation to marry the king required two periods of soaking, each lasting six months. As her preparation process began, spices were applied to her body. Then she was wrapped in cloths for several hours until the fragrance absorbed into the pores of her skin. It sounds too much like embalming to me. Indeed, Esther's first soaking was in a bath of myrrh, the ancient burial spice of the Middle East. What I didn't know in 1976 was that God was immersing me in a bath of myrrh, too, that would last for years. The dark night of the soul is our myrrh bath of preparation. I believe every believer will endure a season like this.
I wonder how Esther felt soaking for days in a burial spice? I wonder if she thought she was going to become a sacrifice instead of a queen? By the time her period of myrrh was over, she probably hated the smell and the monotony of repetitive, seemingly pointless activity. Just about the time she was probably ready to sneak out of the palace, her preparation process changed and the second soaking began.
The second soaking of Esther was a bath of sweet spices and fragrant perfumes. Once again spices were applied to her skin, and she was covered with cloths, but this time the spices were sweet. Perhaps she didn't understand the long bath of myrrh until the sweet spices were layered over it. The odor of sweet spices blended with the scent of myrrh on her skin was to create the aroma that pleased the king the most. Without the experience of both baths, the preparation would be incomplete.
In 1994 the Lord changed the bath in which I had been sitting. It was then that Bill and I made our first trip to Toronto. For the first time in over 20 years I saw real, God-sent revival descending out of heaven on a local church. The trumpet sound that drew me in came through a woman testifying on the platform. "My husband and I, a year ago, were chronic TV-watchers. We didn't even want to go to church ... But tonight, I'm more in love with Jesus than I have been in all of my life!" It didn't matter to me that her head was shaking as she testified; I wanted my love for Jesus back, too.
That was November of 1994. That night God began to touch us very gently at first, but I felt hope and a supernatural sense of God's presence I hadn't felt in years. During the next few months, I began to make pilgrimages to Toronto to experience the awe of God's visitation and to bask in the sense of His presence which was returning with greater joy than I'd had when I was first filled with the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit also began what has become a continuous River of revival in our own congregation, too. Every service whether at home or in Toronto became another opportunity for me to bathe in His love. It had been so long since I'd felt anything that it was difficult to relax and let my emotions go to Him. No one knows unless you've been through it, how years of dryness can cause you to grow accustomed to the absence of the sense of His presence. It causes you to turn all your emotions off and to brace yourself against what seems to be Divine rejection.
As I continued to soak in the Holy Spirit's presence, I started to regain my first love for Jesus. But I still wrestled with the fear that one day, this wonderful bath of sweet spices would abruptly end, and I would once again be plunged back into the bath of myrrh.
Then one night a new promise came. I will never forget Stuart Bell's words of prophecy, " I say over you, Melinda, that the days of tears and sadness are over..." Could it be that my myrrh bath was over for good? All I knew was that as I soaked in the Holy Spirit's presence, my hunger for Jesus was increasing. Then, without any warning, it happened.
Once in the room, they let me down on the bed. At that same moment my spirit was sucked upward into the living presence of Jesus Christ. A wall that had separated Him from me fell away and for the next several minutes I was caught up in His glory. I had been basking in the joy of the Holy Spirit's presence and hungering for more of the Lord as I received prayer for several months, but I never dreamed that such a realm was open to believers in this life. Now the Holy Spirit was lifting me out of myself to see a glimpse of Him.
As He opened my eyes to see Him, powerful waves of love were washing over me causing my whole body to violently shake involuntarily under the power of the revelation. His is a love you can feel, the highest pleasure in the universe, pure, holy, clean and completely trustworthy. I understood in that moment why we have to die to be near Him. There is no way that we can take in His love and reciprocate it in our human frames. And yet His love was fixed on me as though He was longing for the moment when I could experience the full power of it. I understood why the Bible simply says that God is love. There is no point in attempting to use any human adjective to describe it. All words in any language are less than He is. And He is all love.
I could not physically see Him. It was as though I was looking through a dim mirror, as though God had covered my eyes so that I could live through the experience, and yet my spirit could see Him. I understood what John meant when He wrote, "...But we know that when He appears, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is." (1 John 3:2 NIV) Instantly I was adjusted in all my attitudes and thinking. I could see how things I had been concerned with were of no importance. In the glory of His presence, I was being adjusted by simply being near Him. Basking in the wonder of His Divine adjustment I understood what judgment means. Earthly possessions were nothing; all the pursuits of this life were nothing. And yet He didn't condemn me for them. He didn't have to. I no longer wanted anything but Him. I knew in an instant that it is all Jesus, there is nothing but Jesus and nothing else matters in all of the world but Him.
The scriptures were flashing through my being at lightning speed. I was in the presence of the Word of God. I remember thinking, " Everything I've ever read or heard about Him is all true and yet nothing that has been written about Him does any justice to Him." If I could spend the rest of my life worshipping Him and then eternity, it wouldn't be enough. He would be worthy of more.
For months before I first went to Toronto, I had been awakened at night with panic attacks combined with the fear of death. Now as I was "seeing" Him there was no fear in that place. I wanted to die because the pleasure of being near Him was so great. I could feel the powerful waves of His love and knew that if He didn't withdraw His hand, I would die, and yet seeing Him caused me to long for death. I knew what Paul meant when he wrote, "To depart and be with Christ is far greater..."
I tried to speak, but my mouth was trembling and the wail was increasing. He was drawing the words from me by the sheer magnetic force of His presence. I could barely form the words, "Lord, Lord!" and yet I could tell that hearing them from me brought Him His highest pleasure.
I understood the scripture, "Every knee shall bow and every tongue shall confess that He is Lord." You could not possibly stand in His presence or even choose to kneel or fall on your face. The ecstasy of being in His presence causes the human frame to involuntarily collapse at His feet.
The unbeliever will have no choice but to acknowledge Him. Oh the torture of seeing Him, of having the revelation of His love and then being separated from Him forever! No torment would be worse than the knowledge that one acknowledgment of His Lordship from your lips could have saved you from eternity without Him. This alone would be Hell itself.
The women in the room with me were worshipping and some were on their knees. They could see nothing although they knew something was happening to me. They couldn't see that the heart of Jesus was longing for their love. In that moment, I felt my heart torn open and compassion beyond human comprehension began to be pulled out of me. For the rest of the day, the people I saw caused me to feel the anguished longing of His soul for them. Even those who are unlovely by human standards evoke torrents of the Lord's compassionate love. Yet there was no jealousy at all in knowing His great love for them. The only pursuit of value other than worshipping Him is gathering other people into His arms because that is what pleases Him.
The phrase, "the holiest of all", kept flooding through my mind. I knew I was there in a dimension of His presence that had been concealed from me before, yet I had done nothing to gain admission to that place. I wasn't fasting or even praying. It was all His grace. I did not know that such a realm existed; but those few moments in His presence changed my life forever. It left a permanent brand on my soul and my spirit that trials and losses have not been able to erase.
After several moments I felt the Holy Spirit setting me back down in what we think is reality. It is not reality. He is. I awoke from this place saying, "I will serve Him forever. Nothing will keep me from Him. I want to spend the rest of my life immersed in the luxury of pleasing Him." All I live for is to be back in that place. I have wondered since how I can wait several more decades until I see Him again.
None of what I experienced was in the realm of imagination or visual impression. If it were, I could re-imagine it. Nor is it easy to talk about. When I am compelled to tell it, I find my words shamefully inadequate. For some reason it is not easy to look at people when I'm describing Him.
I believe what happened to me may encourage you to keep loving Him, blindly if you have to. Nothing in this life is comparable to the pleasure of seeing Him. The nature of revelation is that it destroys you and makes you good for nothing but loving Jesus. Like Esther when she finally saw her king, when I saw my King, I became betrothed to Him forever. Nothing will separate me from Him. I spend most of my days thinking about Him.
Reward in heaven will not be "things"; it will be proximity to His presence. I've often thought since then, "Oh Jesus, just let me crawl up under your throne and rest my head next to Your feet. I don't need crowns or thrones or glory of my own. The only thing that is worth anything is being near You."
Since that moment I've come to realize how precious the Holy Spirit is. It is He who sustains me now until I'm able to go to Jesus. I want the Holy Spirit to spare nothing whether it's more myrrh or more spices, more trials or more joy, if it will bring Jesus more pleasure from my life.
If you are reading this and somehow feel unworthy of His love, know this: to feel unloved is to be deceived. We have only one problem. We do not know how much Jesus loves us. If we did we would know that to even think the thought grieves Him.
Four years later, I'm still soaking in the Holy Spirit's presence, enjoying the bath of sweet spices. In spite of recently losing my mother, I am still filled with joy and expectation. Revelation fades in the same way as an encounter with another person becomes reduced to a memory. What is left is the wonderful scar on my spirit of having been touched by the power of His great love.
Melinda Fish and her husband, Bill, pastor Church of the Risen Saviour in Trafford, PA (Pittsburgh). Melinda is the editor of Spread the Fire Magazine.
Melinda has also written a book called The River is Here
which includes this testimony.
It contains some very helpful things about opening your heart to
receive God's love.