Sarah Jakes Roberts - A Strategy for Seeing in The Dark

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
I have to have a strategy in darkness. Oh God
help me. I need to have a strategy for fighting
in the dark. One in four businesses fail within their
first year. Part of the reason why these businesses fail,
it's not because they didn't have smart founders. It's not

(00:24):
because they didn't have brilliant ideas. It's just that too
often when we create our strategies, we create them in
the light. We don't always create our strategies to survive
dark times.

Speaker 2 (00:37):
We don't even know what dark times.

Speaker 1 (00:38):
To anticipate, and so we have strategies that are contingent
on light times. This is why I think marriage they
should start having marriages closer into the evening, like nighttime,
because I feel like it just sets a perfect foundation
for what it's like to be married. Is that sometimes

(01:00):
and marriage it's not about the beautiful moments that.

Speaker 2 (01:02):
You see in the fairy tales and the rom coms.

Speaker 1 (01:05):
Marriage is really tested in those dark seasons where you're
just feeling one another out where you don't even know
where you end or they begin, because.

Speaker 2 (01:14):
Life has changed so rapidly that you're in a dark season.

Speaker 1 (01:18):
My father told me one time when I was getting
remarried and he told me, I want you to think
about marriage in this way. You were picking the person
you want standing next to you when you're lowering me
in the ground. We're not talking about who you want

(01:40):
to hold hands with when you're watching a movie. We're
not talking about who you want to cuddle with. We're
not talking about who's gonna be funny. We're talking about
who you want to be with you in a dark season.
Some of us, we start the new year and we

(02:01):
have all of these resolutions and I'm gonna do this,
I'm gonna workout, I'm gonna do this, I'm gonna eat right,
I'm gonna do no more fried foods. And we plan
those in light seasons, but we don't plan for what
happens when we.

Speaker 2 (02:17):
Have that long day at work. The kids have gotten
on our nerves.

Speaker 1 (02:20):
We still haven't worked out, and you want me to
go home and eat a salad. You see, when I
started this diet, it was a light season. I didn't
plan for a dark season. And in a dark season,
I need a dark piece three please, two legs, one thigh,
and a biscuit.

Speaker 2 (02:34):
I'm in a dark season. Hand me that chocolate chip cookie.
I'm in a dark I was on the diet, but
then I hit a dark season. You know what I mean.
Life has just got real hard in this dark season.

Speaker 1 (02:57):
I was in school, but then the financial aid fell
out and I thought I was gonna graduate. But now
I've gone through a dark season. I was climbing the ladder,
but I didn't realize that the ladder had a glass
ceiling at the top. Then I got to the glass
ceiling on to find out it was really a cement bottom.

Speaker 2 (03:13):
And now I'm in a dark season in.

Speaker 1 (03:15):
This job because I planned to break a generational curse,
but I didn't know the route was gonna take me
through a dark season. I wasn't planning to go through
a dark season. And you have to have a strategy
for dark seasons. Too often, when we strategize, we're only

(03:39):
planning for things to go well, and so when things
go wrong, we completely give up. My husband has a
leadership podcast. It's called the Called Podcast, and one of
the things I'll come on some of you already know.
I only meant that because I'm about to steal, and

(04:01):
I just at least wanted to lay the foundation that
I heard this from someone else him right there. So
I didn't want them to get into cariminals like your
sermon was anointed, But there was one part that sounded
awfully familiar. He says that sometimes when entrepreneurs start businesses
that they're overly optimistic, and because they are overly optimistic,

(04:24):
they never plan for what could go wrong, and because
they don't plan for what could go wrong, they easily
give up. I wonder how much different your strategy would
be if you planned for dark seasons.

Speaker 2 (04:40):
Not so that you can give up, but so that
you can survive them.

Speaker 1 (04:45):
Come on, somebody, because some of you know how to
plan for dark seasons so much so that you find
yourself in a depression.

Speaker 2 (04:52):
But I want you to.

Speaker 1 (04:53):
Start planning for a dark season and how you will
overcome that dark season.

Speaker 2 (04:58):
What's the worst thing that could happen.

Speaker 1 (05:00):
I could lose the job, the job not work out,
But you know what, I'll still have my mind. I'll
still have the spirit of God on the inside of me.
I still have this marriage, I'll still.

Speaker 2 (05:08):
Have this I may go through a.

Speaker 1 (05:10):
Dark season, but I'm gonna go through that dark season.
That dark season doesn't get to hold me. I'm planning
on going through some dark seasons I know that I've
never seen the righteous forsaken nor their seed begging for bread.

Speaker 2 (05:22):
But I also know that the rainfalls on the chest
and the unjust.

Speaker 1 (05:26):
So my plan for dark seasons is I'm gonna learn
the praise and worship even in.

Speaker 2 (05:31):
A dark season. If I can't do nothing else but lift.

Speaker 1 (05:33):
My hands, I can't write a check, the check might bounce,
but I'm gonna lift my hands because.

Speaker 2 (05:38):
I'm going through a dark season.

Speaker 1 (05:40):
I don't know whether the child is coming or going
because I'm going through a dark season. But I'm still
here anyway, because I can't afford for that dark season
to stay in me.

Speaker 2 (05:51):
Paul and Silas were going through a dark season.

Speaker 1 (05:55):
They had been arrested, and they were in prison, and
they were going through a dark season because they were
under attack for.

Speaker 2 (06:01):
Preaching the gospel.

Speaker 1 (06:02):
And when they should have just sat in the prison
cell and let themselves be prisoners and let themselves feel
ashamed and let themselves feel like two people who had
messed up, they did something crazy. Instead, at midnight, in
the middle of the dark, these men start praying and worshiping.

(06:23):
Because I'm in a dark season, but I got night fishing.

Speaker 2 (06:27):
I won't let this dark season keep me from seeing God.

Speaker 1 (06:33):
I wish you could do a little bit better than that,
but I realized some of you are going through a
dark season right now, and praying and worshiping in your
dark season sounds crazy, But I want you to know
when Paul and Silas started praying in the middle of
the night, that all of a sudden, the ground started shaking.

(06:54):
Because I'm in a dark season. But his word is
a lamp unto my feet and light into my path.

Speaker 3 (07:01):
So whenever I'm in the dark and I need a
little bit of light, I don't wait for God to
come get me.

Speaker 2 (07:08):
I go and chase him down.

Speaker 3 (07:10):
I'm in a dark season, but I'm praying and worship
it because something happens.

Speaker 1 (07:18):
He inhabits the praises of his people. That's why the
enemy will do everything he can to keep you from
being in the house of the Lord. He'll do everything
he can to keep you from turning on the sermon
because he recognizes that when you're in a dark season,
that the light conceal invade that dark season.

Speaker 2 (07:38):
The enemy is trying to keep somebody in the dark season.
But I rebuke you now in the name.

Speaker 3 (07:44):
Of Jesus, somebody is coming out of a dark season tonight.
Somebody is going to get some light tonight.

Speaker 2 (07:51):
I dare you to touch your neighbor and say, the
light is coming. The light is coming, The light is coming,
The light is coming.

Speaker 3 (07:57):
The light is somewhere in your souls. You're in your praise,
It's somewhere in your worship.

Speaker 2 (08:02):
Good.

Speaker 3 (08:02):
I know you don't feel like worshiping good. But if
you wait until you feel like it, you might say
in the dark. But if your worship anyway, even when
you don't feel like it, your spirits and your mind
will catch the light.

Speaker 2 (08:22):
I'm sorry. I got some light catching to do. I
got some light catching to do. I'm worshiping because I
got some light catching to do.

Speaker 3 (08:29):
When I was a little girl, we'd go outside at
night and we'd catch lighting bugs, and it was hard
to catch up because we was in the dark. But
we keep trying anyway, because it was so important that
we catch the light that it didn't matter what I
went through.

Speaker 2 (08:43):
I got some light I gotta catch. I'm living in
a dark world, baby, I got some light to catch.
I'm'a just oh, don't do that yelling stuff that made

(09:09):
me think you didn't cost some light. Wow, I don't
know that. I'm sorry. I feel something happening in this room.

(09:34):
It was something about when you beat that.

Speaker 3 (09:36):
Drum that made me think somebody was getting some night.

Speaker 2 (09:39):
Vision in the middle of a battle. I felt the
drums beating because somebody's heart as coming back to light.

(10:04):
My strategy for the dark is my praise and my worship.
My strategy for the dark is my praise and my worship.
That's my strategy. That's my strategy. That's my strategy. That's

(10:36):
my strategy for the headlines.

Speaker 1 (10:41):
That's my strategy for the headlines. I'm gonna just make
the ground shake.

Speaker 2 (10:52):
They building, but I'm gonna make the ground shake. WHOA.
The worst thing you can do in a dark season

(11:18):
just closed your eyes. You gotta keep your eyes open
because your eyes can adapt in the dark.

Speaker 1 (11:31):
Isn't it funny that the creator of our bodies, the
one who decided what we would need in order to
function in this world, created our bodies in such a
way that he prepared our eyesight to not just exist.

Speaker 2 (11:54):
In the daylight.

Speaker 1 (11:58):
It may take them some time, but their eyes can
adapt to the dark. So if you close your eyes
in a dark season, you will miss how you can
adapt and still see even in the midst of darkness.

(12:21):
If I didn't say nothing else, we could pack up.

Speaker 3 (12:25):
And go home.

Speaker 2 (12:26):
You were created to see in the dark.

Speaker 1 (12:31):
I don't know what you're going through in your life,
and I know that amazing like things are turning off.
But I want you to understand that God created you
to see in the dark because He needs you to
understand that you were created not just for good times,

(12:52):
but for dark times. And if you don't keep your
eyes open in dark seasons, you cannot see how God
is moving.

Speaker 2 (13:04):
Even in the dark. Do you know that we serve
a God who can still move even in the dark.

Speaker 1 (13:15):
That sounded like just a church response. I wish I
had some like real authentic people in this room who
would tell you about a time when they were in
the darkest season of their life. I don't mean no
qu dark, I mean I don't want to live no
more dark. How did you go from being in that

(13:36):
dark of a season to where you are now? Unless
we serve a.

Speaker 2 (13:40):
God who knows how to move in the dark, how.

Speaker 1 (13:43):
Did you go from that depression that was on your
spirit and to who you are today?

Speaker 3 (13:49):
Unless we serve a God who knows how to move
in the dark, How did I go from the fourteen
year old old girl carrying the baby to the grown
woman carrying a wire?

Speaker 2 (14:00):
Unless we serve a God who knows how to move
in the dark, how did you go from being lost
and not of your mind?

Speaker 3 (14:07):
Dude, and to somebody who has the spirit of love,
power and that sound mind.

Speaker 2 (14:12):
Unless we serve a God.

Speaker 3 (14:14):
Who knows how to move in the dark, shouldn't be
in even be in this room. But I serve a
God who knows how to move in the dark. Shouldn't
even have this idea, But I serve a God who knows.

Speaker 2 (14:28):
How to move in the dark. You sit next to
some people who were no longer afraid of the dark?

Speaker 3 (14:34):
How did you get to a point where you were
no longer afraid of the tark because I.

Speaker 2 (14:39):
Saw God move in the middle of the night. I
saw God move in my darkest hour, So the dark
don't scare me. I see now why I've been fighting

(15:05):
over this word. I was thinking.

Speaker 1 (15:16):
About the Tenth plague for the children of Israel, when
Exodus would not let them go and God tells them
to take the blood of the lamb and put it
over the doorpost, and at night he's going to pass through.

(15:39):
And wherever there's blood over the doorposts, he'll pass over.
What does that tell me about the character of God.
What that reveals to me about the character of God
is that even in dark seasons, God knows who's he is.

Speaker 2 (16:00):
Oh, I wish we could take a minute for that.

Speaker 3 (16:04):
The whole world could have dark over it. But God
knows who's his even in the dark season. God says,
I can see that blood, even in the dark. God says,
I can see that worship. Even in the dark, I
know who's mine. You'll keep the blood over the door post.
I'll do everything else.

Speaker 2 (16:28):
Because God, God's got night vision. I know how to
see in the dark. Darkness was hovering over.

Speaker 3 (16:36):
The face of the deep, but he still started calling
the earth out because I know how to see in
the dark.

Speaker 2 (16:43):
I don't need to see your potential. I can see
you in the dark. You don't have to perform.

Speaker 1 (16:49):
That's why the enemy couldn't have you, because God can
still see you in the dark.

Speaker 3 (16:54):
You gave up on yourself in the dark, but God
couldn't give up on you because even in the dark,
I know who you are.

Speaker 2 (17:00):
Even in the dark. I know you're still mind. Even
in the dark.

Speaker 1 (17:03):
I know you still got potential to do everything I've
called you to do because I can see. I can
see in the dark. I can see it in the dark.

(17:24):
I can see it in the dark. I'm trying to move,
but I want you to know that God can see
it in the dark. God can see it in dark
even when your eyes haven't adapted. God says, I can
still see.

Speaker 2 (17:34):
In the dark.

Speaker 1 (17:35):
He woke Gideon up in the middle of the night.
He said, I need you to reduce your army, and
I need you to invade the camp right now. Giddy says,
it's not enough of us, it's too dark. I says,
I need you to do what I asked you to
do because I can see in the dark. And I'm
telling you that sometimes darkness is your advantage. Sometimes darkness
is how you get the advantage over your enemy. Because

(17:56):
you think that only you can't see, you don't understand
that the enemy can.

Speaker 2 (18:00):
I can't see either.

Speaker 3 (18:01):
And because your enemy can't see, but you're standing on
the side of a man who knows how to take
darkness and turn it into light.

Speaker 2 (18:08):
Dark seasons don't scare you when you're working with the light.

Speaker 3 (18:12):
I wish I had some good susiion what. I don't
even walk by Satan. I walk by faith. If you
see me move, you gotta know its because God's saying

Speaker 1 (18:27):
Doing and I don't know what He's doing, but I
know he knows how to see in the darkness.