Here you can find the video script written for our first session as a reference.
In this little mini-series of devotionals, which I’ve titled “Treasures of Darkness” we’re looking at some of the wonderful, unexpected treasures that God has for us, stored up in the hidden places, the dark and secret places.
They’re deep lessons — the type you can only really learn when life takes you down into the shadows, deep into the valley.
It’s a title I’ve taken straight out of Isaiah 45 where the LORD, speaking to Cyrus, the Persean Emperor who, without realising it, is used by God to conquer the Babylonians and liberate his people who have been taken into exile.
To this Cyrus he says “I will break in pieces the doors of bronze and cut through the bars of iron. I will give you the treasures of darkness and the hoards in secret places.”
To Cyrus this is literal. Literal treasures of the nations he conquered, hidden away in secret vaults. Treasure that was later used to fund the rebuilding of both Jerusalem and the Temple.
But to us I think it can provide a beautiful metaphor for the wonderful treasures we can find in dark places, when life takes us deep underground into chasms and caves. Our Father has things for us there that we can find nowhere else. And this treasure doesn’t just look nice — it’s not just decorative. It’s loaded with purpose. Perhaps more than you could ever anticipate.
No one chooses the valley. No one chooses paths that leads through darkness. We try our best to escape them. We do everything we can possibly do to bypass it altogether. In our modern day we’re able to side-step a lot of physical suffering in so many ways that our ancestors couldn’t. Yet God — in his infinite wisdom — leads us through the valley none-the-less. But he promises to be with us at every step.
Perhaps you’re in that season now, and you just don’t know how long it will last. Perhaps as you look out and survey the horizon, you can’t quite see the end of it. It looks bleak in every direction, and you don’t know which way you should go.
If that’s the case, know that you are definitely not alone! It can often feel like that, especially when scrolling through social,and it looks like everyone else is living their best lives.
My prayer is that these devotionals would be a source of comfort, hope and joy, as we realise the very things that were meant to take us out of the action and rob us of purpose can be flipped inside out, and used for God’s purposes in a ways we never expected.
And this word “comfort” is interesting. The historic meaning of the word is a little different to the way we use it today. It doesn’t really mean “tell me nice things”, “make me feel good” or “make things easy”. It means “to put in strength”, “to fortify”. Think of a fortress. You could think of the word “comfort” as “come into the fort”. In this historic rendering of the word, to be comfortable actually means to be full of strength. And you can be full of strength in difficult situations.
This is the type of Christian our Father wants to develop in each and every one of us. He wants you strong. Spiritually, emotionally, mentally.
God is in the business of strengthening you — the inner you. Even if that’s at the expense of your outer self, for a time. But even in our physical bodies we can trust him. God’s got some incredible resurrection plans stored up for the future, when Jesus returns. And I believe we’ll need the imperishable, glorified body our Father will provide to withstand the eternal pleasures he holds in his right hand (Psalm 16).
But for now, we place our hope in the unseen. As it says in 2 Corinthians 4 “we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light and momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison” (2 Cor 4:16-17).
Don’t miss the mechanism at play here. As the body fails, as we age and experience our physical outer self gradually deteriorating, our inner person can be propelled into renewal. The two realities are very much connected. The failing of our physical selves causes us to transfer all our hope to the things that are unseen, which are eternal. This happens incrementally, day by day. Bit by bit we have to learn to stop trusting ourselves, and the things around us, and instead place all our hope and trust in God.
There’s two pictures I want to share at the outset. One is of the kintsugi vase, and the other is of the inverted valley.
The Kintsugi Vase
I don’t know if you have ever seen this, the Japanese art of kintsugi, which means to “join with gold”. I came across it in this beautiful little book called “Art and Faith” which my friend Jurgen gave me. It goes into how Kintsugi was refined out of the Japanese tea culture in the 16th century. Instead of throwing away broken pottery, it’s painstakingly put back together, piece by piece; reconnected with the Urushi lacquer technique and overlayed with gold.
And the end result, in a way, is even more beautiful than it’s unbroken form. All the fractures and cracks and stress lines can still be clearly seen, but now they’re fused together with gold. It immediately draws you to the work of the mender, the craftsperson, who didn’t throw this thing away but restored it — not back to the way it was — but into something new, and in a way, even more precious.
This is a picture of what God can do with shattered lives.
If we invite him into our broken lives — broken for whatever reason, and broken in whatever way — he will lovingly and painstakingly put us back together, piece by piece. It will take time, and we won’t be the same as before. Instead, our lives will have a new beauty around them. Perhaps people will still be able to see the fractures, the breaks and the fragments of what happened. But the work of the Healer will be unmistakable, and it’s value will be there for all to see.
Only he could put us back together the way he did. It’s not really a testimony of our own efforts, other than our faith that he could do it, and our submission to him — to hold still, to go with the flow, and let him do what only he can do. In this our very lives become a treasure of darkness; our life stories point people towards heaven, to the one who recreates.
And no matter how violently our lives were blown apart, or who was responsible, or how many fragments it got smashed into — our Father can put us back together. In a way, the more the fragments, the finer, the more intricate and beautiful the final piece is.
The Inverted Valley
The second picture is one I had when I was preparing this content. It was a picture, of someone being deep down in the valley, at their lowest point, only for that valley to be inverted, flipped inside out; and now they found themselves standing on top of a mountain.
It’s a picture where your lowest moment becomes your most significant moment — and the thing which brought you closest to God. It infused your life with purpose.
This is the story of Joseph. It’s the story of Job and of Jonah; and many others in the Bible. Their lowest moments changed the story, and what the enemy meant for evil, God used for good.
It’s also the story of Jesus. His lowest point — his most despised and humiliating moment, became his crowning achievement.
There’s something about following God’s plan for your life that takes you through difficulties, trials and troubles as his refining fire purifies us. But what we come out with is more precious than gold. God doesn’t just take us through the valley, he’s in the business of flipping them inside out, and completely changing the narrative.
That’s it for this intro video. But I really hope you’ll join me in the next session where we start right down in the depths — and talk through what might be your lowest moment — where you feel like you’ve been forgotten, or even abandoned by God.
My Story
If you want to catch up with my story, I geeked out a couple of years back filming it super early in the mornings, at what felt like quite a pivotal moment working through some of this hard stuff. If you want a bit of context for these Treasure of Darkness devotionals, you’ll find it here. Absolutely no pressure to watch it, but if the mood takes you, it’s online at www.kings.church/treasures
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