1 - Introduction - Living like a real Christian PATIENCE | Page 4

MONDAY
Genesis 1
There is a common phrase that runs through Genesis 1 namely “…and there was evening and
there was morning of the … day.”
I find it intriguing that “evening”, in the context of creation, is spoken of before “day”. Could it
be that what God did in the night he revealed in the light; that the work that God had done in
the darkness was revealed to all the heavenly hosts in the light of day. I make this statement
in order to substantiate the thesis that GOD DOES HIS BEST WORK IN THE DARK. This
principle is illustrated not just in creation but in life as well. Think for a moment, if you will,of
Moses who spent forty years in the darkness of the deserts of Midian and, at the end of the
forty years in the dark, God revealed what He had done in Moses in the light that culminated
at his burning bush experience. Moses could well have said,“But Lord, I have been sitting here
for forty years doing nothing and now all of a sudden You reveal that You still have a purpose
for me, how can this possibly be?!” And God could well have replied to Moses, “You may have
thought that you were doing nothing, but I was certainly doing something. I have been
shaping you, Moses, and I have been knocking a few rough edges off of you in order to make
you the person that I need you to be. I could not have done that in the light, as there are some
things that I can only do in the night.”
Think now of Jesus, on the mount of temptation how, in order to prove that He was who He
claimed to be, God took Him into the dark and subjected Him to all the temptations that are
common to man. And the Jesus that came out of the wilderness temptation was the Jesus to
whom we look right now as being the One who has been tempted in all the ways that we are
and is therefore able to identify with us at o ur point of need.
Won’t you contemplate too the death of Christ, how God subjected Him to the ultimate
enemy of man, death itself, but as Jesus went through the darkness of death everybody
thought that that was the end, but I believe it true to say that it was only the end of the
beginning in that God did a great work in Jesus and through the darkness of death came the
resurrection of life. God, I believe, surely does His best work in the dark.
The character Joseph has been the subject of our conversation much over this series and his
life beautifully portrays the principle that we have just spoken of. When I look at Joseph’s life
and recount the story in my mind of the man who was able to run from seduction, forgive so
readily and fulfil so completely God’s mission for his life. I realise only a person of deep
character would be able to do that, we need to ask ourselves the question, where was it that
enabled Joseph to develop sucha deep character that he was able to do all those things?The
answer is simply found in that he developed the character sitting inthe darkness of a slave pit
and that while in a place of deep darkness God was at work developing his character. There