Show Notes
When life feels uncertain and your purpose seems unclear, God calls us to encounter Him in the midst of struggle. What John of the Cross called the “dark night of the soul” is no longer reserved for midlife—it’s a reality many face in their twenties, as we wrestle with doubt, dissatisfaction, and questions about the meaning of our lives. In this episode, you’ll explore how pressing into discomfort can lead to a deeper, transformative encounter with God.
Discover how the Bible teaches us to confront life’s uncertainties with courage, surrender, and persistence. Learn the power of setting aside achievements and possessions, wrestling with God like Jacob, and allowing Him to meet you in your darkest hours. Experience the difference between intellectual knowledge and intimate, soul-deep knowing, and see how God’s presence can shape the way you live, walk, and carry yourself through life.
Nuance’s Formed for Faithfulness is a weekly liturgy to encourage all of us to be faithful to Christ in the public square. Join Case Thorp as he follows the Church calendar through the reading of Scripture, prayer, and short reflections on faith in all facets of public life.
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Episode Transcript
Welcome to Formed for Faithfulness in this 19th week of normal time.
God’s word found in Genesis 32 beginning in verse 22.
22 That night Jacob got up and took his two wives, his two female servants and his eleven sons and crossed the ford of the Jabbok. 23 After he had sent them across the stream, he sent over all his possessions. 24 So Jacob was left alone, and a man wrestled with him till daybreak. 25 When the man saw that he could not overpower him, he touched the socket of Jacob’s hip so that his hip was wrenched as he wrestled with the man. 26 Then the man said, “Let me go, for it is daybreak.”
But Jacob replied, “I will not let you go unless you bless me.”
27 The man asked him, “What is your name?”
“Jacob,” he answered.
28 Then the man said, “Your name will no longer be Jacob, but Israel, because you have struggled with God and with humans and have overcome.”
29 Jacob said, “Please tell me your name.”
But he replied, “Why do you ask my name?” Then he blessed him there.
30 So Jacob called the place Peniel, saying, “It is because I saw God face to face, and yet my life was spared.”
31 The sun rose above him as he passed Peniel, and he was limping because of his hip.
What John of the Cross calls “the dark night of the soul,” used to largely be the domain of the middle age when people began to assess their progress and question what life was really all about. Stereotypically, a man conscious of his fading youth might start sucking his stomach in, dying his hair, and maybe even splash out on a flashy little red sports car. But that season of dissatisfaction, doubt and distress is now more universally experienced. The challenges of 21st century life have ushered in the quarter century crisis, those in their mid-twenties, looking for their place in a rapidly changing world are facing serious concerns about the meaning and direction of their lives. At some stage, most of us will find ourselves, like Jacob, coming to an end of ourselves. All of our relationships, all of our achievements and acquisitions, as significant as they are, need to be set aside as Jacob sent his household and possessions ahead of him across the Jabbok to wrestle with God and encounter him in a deeper way. The good news is that if we will press into the discomfort and hold on, we will see God more clearly and intimately just as Jacob did. This will not result simply in more knowledge and more awareness of God in a theological or intellectual way. It will be a deep, intimate knowing that goes down into the core of our frame. Like Jacob, we will walk differently as a result. We won’t need to tell people something has happened because they will be able to tell from the way we carry ourselves. We may walk with a limp, but we will walk more confidently and surely. And when people ask, we can tell them of the God who meets us in our darkest hour with his light of love.
Paul’s second letter to Timothy chapter three beginning verse 14.
14 But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have become convinced of, because you know those from whom you learned it, 15 and how from infancy you have known the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. 16 All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, 17 so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.
2 Timothy 4
1 In the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who will judge the living and the dead, and in view of his appearing and his kingdom, I give you this charge: 2 Preach the word; be prepared in season and out of season; correct, rebuke and encourage—with great patience and careful instruction. 3 For the time will come when people will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. 4 They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths. 5 But you, keep your head in all situations, endure hardship, do the work of an evangelist, discharge all the duties of your ministry.
A prayer written by Debbie McDaniel:
We come before you God, humbly and broken, for our spirits are heavy and our souls can find no rest outside of your presence. We need you Lord to show up strong on our behalf right now. We’re tired of wrestling. We’re weary in the struggle of it all. We don’t understand what you’re doing. We can’t fully wrap our minds around your ways, but our hearts cry out to you for help and peace in our time of desperate need. We proclaim again and again that no matter what we face, we trust you, Father God. We know that your plans for us are good and filled with hope. We know that you have the best in store for us, even though our circumstances seem too hard to bear right now. We believe that this storm won’t last forever. We know that light will break through the dark and we have confidence in you to bring us through. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
The Gospel of Luke, Chapter 18, verses one through eight.
Then Jesus told his disciples a parable to show them that they should always pray and not give up. He said: “In a certain town there was a judge who neither feared God nor cared what people thought. And there was a widow in that town who kept coming to him with the plea, ‘Grant me justice against my adversary.’
“For some time he refused. But finally he said to himself, ‘Even though I don’t fear God or care what people think, yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will see that she gets justice, so that she won’t eventually come and attack me!’”
And the Lord said, “Listen to what the unjust judge says. And will not God bring about justice for his chosen ones, who cry out to him day and night? Will he keep putting them off? I tell you, he will see that they get justice, and quickly. However, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth?”
