Warnings for the Dark Night of the Soul

By: Nancy Missler; ©2003

Three areas we need to watch out for when we are going through difficult times are demonic lies, false visions and false prophecies, and the feeling of wanting to quit or give up. Nancy Missler shows us how to avoid these traps.

As in the dark night of the soul, there are several important areas to watch out for during this critical night season. “Deception” often follows the feeling that we have been forsaken by God, so we must be particularly careful. Here are three major areas of concern:

1. The first area to be particularly concerned about in this second night is demonic lies.

When our spirit is cleansed and purified, we will be able to commune directly with God. As we have learned, our spirit is the place where He meets with us and the place He speaks to us. All communication with God must occur in our spirit, not in our soul. The reason this is so important is because the enemy has no entrance to our spirit.

When we are born again, God gives us a new spirit (a spirit that is “positionally” united with God’s Spirit) and a new heart filled with His supernatural Life (His Love, Wisdom and Power). This is “…the hidden man of the heart…which is not corruptible.” (1 Peter 3:4)

Thus, our spirit and our heart are incorruptible and inviolate, because they now fully belong to God. This means that the enemy has no access here. Our soul and our body (the flesh), however, since they are not yet renewed, remain wide open to the enemy.” They are redeemed by the blood of the Lamb, but they are not yet made new by the Spirit of God. This is what the sanctification process is all about and why it’s soimportant.

Satan’s scheme is to get us to react emotionally to all that is going on in our lives. He does this by stirring up the sensory part of our soul with suffering or hurt or doubt or fear or bitterness or guilt or expectation or disappointed hope, etc. If he can stir up some fondness for our self and we fall for it, then he’s got us. This is his battle plan: to stir up our senses in any way he can, in order to gain a foothold in our souls, cause a distraction and stop communication with God’s Spirit. Then we will be forced to operate, once again, on a level where the enemy can agitate and torment us immensely.

The devil can always interfere with fleshly communication, but never with spiritual communication. That’s why all spiritual communication should be Spirit to spirit.

The Lord seeks to work through our cleansed and purified spirit, whereas the enemy seeks to work through our natural and unsanctified body and soul (the flesh). God works on us from the inside out, whereas, the enemy works on us from the outside inward. When the enemy is able to stir up our souls in one of these ways, we become “sitting ducks” for his deceptions. At this point, he can easily deceive us by giving us visions, counterfeit words, revelations and prophecies, and, even at times, physical manifestations.

In our night seasons, we are very vulnerable because we are so anxious to hear or see something from God. If we are operating only on the fleshly level, then we become wide-open targets for the enemy’s deception. Because, if what was promised does not occur, on top of everything else we are experiencing at this time, there will be indescribable spiritual anguish. The resulting terror is greater than any other torment in life.

These conflicting communications can snap us back and forth like a rubber band. It’s an unbelievable horror, because we begin to think that God has deceived us. We feel like God tricked us into believing something and when we chose to follow it (thinking God was in it), it turned out to be a lie. This type of pain goes far beyond any type of sensory pain we will ever experience.

Horrible thoughts keep coming back to us such as, “If I didn’t hear God correctly this time, then I must never hear Him!” This kind of thinking produces a torment that is literally “hell on earth.” The enemy makes it look like we have not only been abandoned by God, but now we have also been deceived by Him.

“See what your God did now… He abandoned you… He dropped you.” “How can you trust Him now?” “How can you believe in His promises now?” When we are guided only by our fleshly senses, this kind of deception is impossible to avoid.

The Scripture very plainly tells us, however, that it’s impossible for God to lie. There is only one who “lies” and that’s the devil! He is a “lying spirit” and the “father of lies.” (John 8:44)

This is why it’s so very important that genuine spiritual communication with God occur only Spirit to spirit. Then there will be no room for fleshly deceptions. The more removed from our senses we can become, the less the devil will be able to disturb us.

Something that is received in your spirit by the Spirit of God will also be confirmed by His Word. No matter what physical events transpire in our lives, we must always seek to have a pure dependence upon God’s Spirit—Spirit to spirit—and His Word.

2. Let’s talk further about false visions and false prophecies during this sensitive night.

God allows the enemy to send us counterfeit visions and prophecies to enkindle the fire in our soul. He is testing our faith to see if we are able to be deceived, and also if we will believe the lies of the enemy. Satan wants to use all the things in our night seasons to destroy us; God, however, wants to use these things to crucify our soul, so that our spirits can be strengthened, purified and able to genuinely receive communication from Him.

As we mentioned, the dark night of the spirit is such a vulnerable time for us, because we are so hungry to hear “anything” from God. This, of course, becomes a perfect opportunity for the devil, especially if we have given him an opening. He wants us to think that God has spoken to us. Of course, we are so desperate that we fall right into his trap. Thus, if we keep our eyes upon what was said, promised or shown us, and not on our Creator and His Word, we will find ourselves deceived.

God is always faithful to His Word and, if He makes us a promise, gives us a vision or a word, and it truly is from Him, then we needn’t worry; it will occur in His timing and in His way.

It seems the closer we get to freedom of spirit, the more active the demonic lies become. The enemy knows that we are getting closer to experiencing intimacy with God and to sharing this newfound freedom with others, therefore, he becomes more aggressive with his lies. Since many of his old ways do not work with us any longer, he spares no tricks in order to excite our senses and destroy what God is doing. The devil wants to block our capacity to receive and enjoy God’s presence and, above all, he wants to prevent our sharing this truth with others.

3. A final dangerous area during this critical period of time is demonic depression or the feeling of quitting, and giving up.

This period of time when the Lord begins to take away all our internal supports can be one of the most dangerous times in a Christian’s life. Many believers become overwhelmed with discouragement and give up the journey here, which is exactly what the enemy wants. He wants us to be so downcast and so depressed that we’ll throw in the towel and totally give up. We have talked extensively about discouragement and doubt. Remember, if we give the enemy a foothold in our soul by entertaining these attitudes, then we’ve had it. We are “dead in the water” before we have even begun. All the enemy needs is one small hole.

Now, the sad part is that many people give up just before they break through the darkness into the light, just before the victory. People often say that the hardest part of faith is the last half hour, just before the dawn. And it’s certainly true here.

Charles Spurgeon once said, “The wilderness is a way to Canaan. Defeat prepares us for victory. The darkest hour of the night precedes the dawn.” Therefore, unless we look at this period of time through God’s eyes (through His Spirit), and try to understand what His overall plan is, we can slide into the darkness and never come out. If we keep our eyes upon Him, like that eagle, He promises that He will eventually turn the darkness into light. “Unto the upright there ariseth light in the darkness…” (Psalm 112:4)

The book of Job represents a last day’s believer to whom a series of events happened that seem totally opposed to the loving designs of God. Many of us are in similar circumstances. We have been stripped of everything: our children, our homes, our finances, our dreams, our hopes, our ambitions, our views, our feelings, our memories, our self-interest, etc. Although Satan desires to pour out upon us a spirit of fear and despondency at this time, just as he did Job, God wants to use this time not only to conform us more and more into His image, but also to separate the fleshly things in our lives from the spiritual and to bring us into experiential oneness. Then we will be able to “meet with Him” and enjoy His presence and He can give us the Love and the intimacy that we have been searching for all our lives.