by Debra Neybert, Training Specialist
″I will extol you, O LORD, for you have drawn me up and have not let my foes rejoice over me.
O LORD my God, I cried to you for help, and you have healed me.
O LORD, you have brought up my soul from Sheol;
you restored me to life from among those who go down to the pit.
Sing praises to the LORD, O you his saints, and give thanks to his holy name.
For his anger is but for a moment, and his favor is for a lifetime.
Weeping may tarry for the night, but joy comes with the morning.
Psalm 30:1-5 ESV
We are about to celebrate the greatest joy we could ever know, the death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ. There was however, a night to endure before the morning dawned.
After Jesus was crucified, there was a time of darkness that seemed to overtake any future joy. In fact, the devil thought he had destroyed the only hope of redemption mankind would ever have. He attacked the hearts and the minds of those who had followed Jesus with overwhelming hopelessness. Then, three days later, an earthquake occurred, the stone was rolled away, and the evidence of the Lord’s resurrection was witnessed for the first time.
“For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth” (Mathew 12:40 ESV). Your night season may be longer than three days, but the morning will break upon your night season!
The word for endure in Hebrew means to lodge, stop over, pass the night like a sojourner—someone who lodges for a night, but then moves on. Can you relate to a night season that has remained or endured, and it would seem the enemy had his way? Years may pass; all may seem dormant, lifeless, and the promise unfulfilled, but eventually, the weeping that endured and even lodged for a night time will pass away, and the “sun” will break through.
Mathew 28:2-3 says, “There was a violent earthquake, for an angel of the Lord came down from heaven and, going to the tomb, rolled back the stone and sat on it. His appearance was like lightning, and his clothes were white as snow.”
Just before the manifestation of the resurrection, there was a violent earthquake, as an angel descended from heaven and rolled the stone away. So it is with us. Right before the night flees from before you, there may be a shaking, but that shaking has a purpose; it causes the “stone” to roll out of the way.
The Lord knows what it will take to get the roadblocks and hindrances out of the way. Sometimes in that process, things get shaken, but only to bring you to a place of fulfillment and joy!
As we’re assured in Ecclesiastes 3:11, “He has made everything beautiful in its time.”
