The Revival in the Pit
What happens when you believe in God, but you can barely hear Him over the noise berating your mind?
The past few days, I didn’t want to die.
I just didn’t particularly want to exist.
There’s a difference. And if you’ve ever found yourself trapped inside one of those dark rooms of your own mind, you probably know exactly what I mean.
It’s the what’s the fucking point? place.
The place where things you know are blessings can be sitting right in front of you and somehow you can’t feel grateful for any of them. Where smiling feels impossible. Where something inside you has simply stopped caring.
And then, because apparently feeling horrible isn’t enough, another voice comes along to tell you how horrible you are for feeling horrible.
Look at everything you have.
You should be grateful.
A real Christian wouldn’t think like this.
God has blessed you. What’s wrong with you?
And suddenly you’re not only in pain. You’re condemned for being in pain.
That is one hell of a trap.
I usually don’t write from here.
I tend to wait until I’ve climbed out of whatever pit I was in, cleaned myself off, found the lesson and packaged it nicely enough to tell you what I learned.
Not this time. I’m writing this while I’m still rising.
And maybe somebody needs to know that you don’t have to be completely out of the pit before you can begin to rise.
When Your Mind Gets Bombarded By Noise
Dark thoughts of doubt and condemnation can be deafening.
There can be so much mental clatter that it feels as though it has completely drowned out the voice of God.
Recently, that noise nearly flattened me. Now some of it’s still there.
The difference is that today I can hear it as a thought instead of accepting it as the truth.
That distinction matters.
Your mind can produce a thought without that thought deserving authority over you.
Nothing matters. That’s a thought.
This will never change: Thought.
You’ve ruined everything: Thought.
God has abandoned you: Thought.
Not every voice inside your head deserves your agreement.
Scripture actually gives us language for this. It tells us to take thoughts captive and bring them into obedience to Christ. Not pretending the thought never happened. Not shaming yourself because it appeared.
Examining it.
Challenging it.
Refusing to crown it.
David did this constantly in the Psalms. He would pour out anguish before God and then turn around and speak, as if directly to his own soul: Why are you downcast? Put your hope in God.
I love that because David didn’t deny the despair. He talked back to it.
That’s the difference.
I Know What the Pit Feels Like
I need to say this because social media can make everybody look as though they are gliding through some perfectly color-graded version of life.
I have a beautiful life. I have an enormous amount to be grateful for.
I am also going through a lot of things that are not so beautiful.
Both are true.
Over the past several months, I have carried professional uncertainty, enormous creative responsibility, financial and logistical pressures, and the heartbreak of releasing a path I had hoped would open the next chapter of my life. I truly thought, for a while, this is it. When it became clear that it wasn’t — at least not right now — I was profoundly disappointed and fell into a state of depletion. But even in that, I know it’s God’s timing, not mine.
At the same time, I’ve been building projects I believe deeply in, having difficult conversations, writing other people’s stories, writing my own, speaking up in rooms I never thought I'd be brave enough to even walk into, and discerning where God is leading me in all of it.
Stress has hit my body too. My stomach. My appetite. My energy. And when I’m depleted, I don’t always make the healthiest choices.
So when I tell you I understand what it feels like to be surrounded by things you prayed for and still find yourself sitting internally in darkness, I am not speaking theoretically.
I’ve been there. Hell, yesterday I was there. And I don’t think yesterday will be the final time in my life that I ever feel darkness. But something about the rising is changing.
I used to feel as though I had to claw my way back to the surface.
Now I am beginning to understand that most of the time I don’t need to claw harder. More often than not, I need to reach up. Because there’s a hand coming down to help me.
“The Lord is near to the brokenhearted,” Psalm 34 tells us.
Near.
Not disgusted.
Not standing at the top of the pit saying: Come back when you’ve fixed your attitude.
Near.
The Counterfeit Cycle
Yesterday something shifted for me. For a moment, I could suddenly see what was happening instead of merely being inside it.
And whether you understand this primarily as spiritual warfare, old psychological patterns, physiology, trauma, conditioning, or some complicated mixture of all of them, I think there’s a vicious cycle many of us recognize.
First comes the temptation.
Then you start to believe the darkest thought.
Numb yourself.
React.
Do the thing you know will make tomorrow harder.
Give resentment another lap around the track.
Agree with hopelessness.
Then comes the condemnation.
Look what you did. Look what you thought. Look what kind of person you are.
That is counterfeit as fuck.
The devil is crafty, but I also refuse to give him credit for every thought that crosses my brain. I have a mind. I have patterns. I have wounds. I have choices.
If something is dragging me downward mentally, there may also be some part of me that has agreed with it.
And if I once agreed with a lie, I can also withdraw my agreement.
That’s where God’s Word becomes something more than inspirational language.
It’s called the sword of the Spirit for a reason.
It’s a weapon.
“There is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.”
Use it.
“We know that in all things God works for the good of those who love Him.”
Use it.
“No weapon formed against you shall prosper.”
Use it.
Not as magic words that make human suffering disappear.
As truth to cut through the lies when your mind is temporarily incapable of producing much of it.
The Root Beneath the Noise
I remember realizing something as a child that I didn’t have language for at the time.
Almost everything comes back to love…
The presence of it.
The absence of it.
The hunger for it.
The distortion of it.
The counterfeit version of it.
The desperate things human beings do because somewhere inside them they’re trying to obtain, protect, control, replace or avoid the loss of love.
Christianity makes an eternal claim at the center of all of this:
God is love.
Which means the answer underneath so many counterfeits isn’t simply “try harder.”
It is return.
Return to Love Himself.
Return when you’re strong.
Return when you’re pissed off.
Return when you’re grateful.
Return when you don’t even want to.
Return when your prayer is eloquent.
Return when your entire prayer is: Jesus, I don’t fucking know what to do with myself today.
He can handle it.
I assure you, your honesty is not going to knock Christ off the throne or make Him mad at you. You are already forgiven. You just get to realize that for yourself.
You Don’t Have to Be Out Yet
Maybe this is the revelation I’m finding inside my own pit:
Revival doesn’t necessarily begin once you have escaped the darkness.
Sometimes revival begins when you’re still sitting in it and something inside you says:
No.
Not today.
I may feel hopeless, but hopelessness does not own me.
I may hear condemnation, but condemnation is not the voice of my Father.
I may be exhausted, but exhaustion is not prophecy.
I may have fallen down again, but I am not required to build a house where I landed.
That’s where I am today.
Not triumphantly standing on some mountaintop. I’m getting up — again.
And I think that counts. Maybe more than I realized.
So if you are going through your own dark night, I’m not going to tell you to “just look for the light” or “this too shall pass.”
Sometimes that advice is infuriating.
Sometimes you have looked. You’ve prayed. You’ve done the work.
Sometimes you’re simply fucking tired.
Then be tired. Tell the truth. Let somebody trustworthy help you. Let someone abiding in God pray when you can’t find the words.
And please receive practical or professional help when you need it too. If you are unsafe or thinking about hurting yourself, tell somebody you trust. There is no spiritual prize for suffering alone.
But whatever you do, don’t mistake the darkness around you for the light having gone out inside you.
It hasn’t.
Yesterday I could barely feel mine. Today, I can see the flicker.
And perhaps tomorrow it will burn brighter.
Romans 8:28 does not tell me everything that happens is good. Some things are absolutely not.
It tells me that God is capable of working through all things for good.
Even the pit.
Even the thoughts I’m ashamed I had.
Even the mistakes I made while I was hurting.
Even the thing that knocked me down again.
I don’t know yet what God will make from all of it and I don’t have to.
My responsibility today is simply to keep coming back.
That is the revival.
Not never falling.
Returning.
Again and again and again.
Those of us who have walked through darkness do not emerge carrying less light. Once we learn where the Light actually comes from, we finally know how to wield it.
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