light is costly. light is risky. light reveals dark things in dark places.
casting a light on things and people and situations and elephants in rooms.
light overcomes darkness.
light is always better than darkness.
king Solomon wrote this in Ecclesiastes.
“I saw that wisdom is better than folly, just as light is better than darkness.”
Ecclesiastes 2:13
light is better than darkness.
in Heaven there will be no more darkness. no more night
there will only be light, and glory, and magnificence. and Jesus.
God is the Father or light, and there is no darkness in Him.
There is no shadow of turning with Him. AKA if God were spherical, like a planet, there would be no shadow when He turned. Because He is 100% light. There is nothing dark about Him. There is nothing hidden from us. He is light.
And we are called to shine our light before others. And not hide it, but display it for the whole room to see!
Light is better than darkness.
I used to believe operating in the dark was safer. It was okay for me. Because I had things to hide. I was hiding myself sometimes. Things were hidden from me sometimes too, because I was constantly operating in the dark.
I didn’t like it when someone turned on the light because then:
A) they would see what I was doing
B) my deeds would be exposed, however dark, dirty, embarrassing, unworthy, lacking
C) I would be known, and probably not fully loved
But darkness can’t beat the light. Darkness can’t win. When light enters the scene, the darkness disappears.
Since God is light, when God enters the scene, darkness trembles.
Since God made His children light, when we enter the scene, darkness can’t stand against us.
Thank you Jesus. Thank you for setting me apart as light. Thank you for teaching me that light is better than darkness. Thank you for exposing the sin in me to myself and working it out of me. Thank you for using me to expose the sin in others! Thank you for using your people as your hands and your feet to do your work and help refine others and conform them to the image of Christ. Thank you for using us to glorify yourself.
Thank you Jesus, that you don’t leave your children in the darkness. You don’t let us scrounge around, trying to figure out how to live on our own. You know we can’t. <3
And Lord, the truth and the light is your GIFT. Not leaving us alone to fight the darkness is your gift to us. Not leaving us alone in our darkness and sin is your gift.
Your accountability and guiding of the Holy Spirit, the convictions you enable us to have… this and these are gifts to us. Because Lord, we wage war against the flesh and blood constantly. The war waging inside of us that fights for righteousness and that fights for sin and self is in full-throttle. The warriors that scream “I’m doing the very thing I don’t want to do, and I’m saying the very thing I don’t want to say… God help me”.
ROMANS 7:15-25
“I do not understand what I do.
For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do.
And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good.
As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me.
For I know that good itself does not dwell in me, that is, in my sinful nature.
For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out.
For I do not do the good I want to do,
but the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing.
Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it,
but it is sin living in me that does it.
So I find this law at work: Although I want to do good, evil is right there with me.
For in my inner being I delight in God’s law;
but I see another law at work in me,
waging war against the law of my mind
and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within me.
What a wretched man I am!
Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death?
Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord!
So then, I myself in my mind am a slave to God’s law,
but in my sinful nature a slave to the law of sin.”
A “slave to God’s law” and a “slave” to the “law” of sin. If you are a believer bought by the blood of the lamb, you are no longer a slave to sin. You are a child of God, and have the power to put sin to death every day. You have the power to choose God and choose morality and choose justice and choose faith and choose righteousness.
Choose righteousness … for it always brings peace.
Choose light…. because it is ALWAYS better than darkness.
So call out the thing you need to call out. Shine a light on it. Call it for what it is.
Stand up for what’s good and right and true. Shine light. Be light. Live in the light. Know your power. Know who you are, and whose you are.
xxx
V