Day 269: Exposing Darkness

Ephesians 5:11-14

For once you were full of darkness, but now you have light from the Lord. So live as people of light! For this light within you produces only what is good and right and true. Carefully determine what pleases the Lord. Take no part in the worthless deeds of evil and darkness; instead, expose them.  It is shameful even to talk about the things that ungodly people do in secret.  But their evil intentions will be exposed when the light shines on them, for the light makes everything visible…

This statement might be familiar to some of us, but I remember when I was younger, a way my mom scared the truth out of us or stopped us from doing things we knew we weren’t supposed to do was by saying, “What’s done in the dark will come to light.” Every time she said this to us I would freak out, like I would have a few mini heart attacks. Thinking about all the things she would find out, I started freaking out about things I hadn’t even done, but I was convinced that I would get in trouble no matter what. This was a life lesson, it kept me an honest person, and someone who was willing to clean my closet before all the skeletons fell out. God knows what we are doing when no one else is looking. He sees the things we do in the dark that we try to hide from everyone else. The difference between God and my mom is that I could hide things from her, there’s nothing i can hide from God because He is all knowing. He. Sees. Everything.  

God is calling us to live an honest life before Him. He’s calling us out of darkness and telling us to take no part in it, as a matter of fact shine a light on it and expose it. Here’s the  thing about darkness is, it is only the absence of light. That’s literally the definition. So simple yet so profound. Seeing that Jesus is the light, He is telling us to only take part in things that are of Him. Taking part in darkness or living in darkness means we are living outside of the will of God. We are trying to navigate through life without our Savior. When we shine a light on the darkness that was once our lives, we begin to see clearly. Christ can now clean up the mess that was our lives. There’s no use of trying to walk through darkness because we will never get to where we are trying to go. In darkness we have no direction, no vision, nothing. There’s too much in front of us that we cannot see causing us to fall and stumble. Christ wants us to expose that, all of it. Now I know when we think about our sin being exposed our minds go to humiliation, but Christ is not in the business of humiliating us, in fact He would rather be humiliated so we wouldn’t have to. He was humiliated for us. He wants us to bring our sin to Him so He can clean us off.

The scripture says, once we were filled with darkness but now we have light from the Lord. What that means is God gave us direction. He gave us salvation, He sent His son so that we would no longer have to navigate in the dark. When Jesus came He did not come pointing at people and embarrassing them for their sin, but He offered forgiveness, He gave us a way out. He turned us away from a life that was leading to death and gave us an eternity. But here’s the catch, the people had to be willing to accept Him, the had to be willing to accept His forgiveness and walk in this light that He has given us.

Sometimes we are so consumed by our sin that it seems nearly impossible to give up. We tend to hold on to the very things that are killing us as if they could save us. We have been walking in darkness so long that the sight of light doesn’t give us hope, instead it irritates our eyes so we turn away from it. What I’m saying is that sometimes darkness feel too good to us to give up. Everything that feels good isn’t good, I think we can all agree on that. We know this, we know that the things we are doing is not okay because we are trying to hide them from God, so why do we continue to live in darkness as if it can be overlooked? It poses the question, would we rather God expose us for our sin or would we rather come to Him and confess? Lay it down at the cross and accept salvation. I don’t know about you, but the latter seems to be the easier road to take. Jesus doesn’t judge us, He died so that we wouldn’t have to live in darkness. He gave us His life to do away with darkness, why would we go back to it after we’ve been set free?

There are some things in our lives that are so hard to let go of. We all that one thing that stays creeping up on us. As I’ve stated before, that thing for me was pornography, I could go to church, read my bible everyday, pray all day, and still be struggling with pornography. Even when I thought it was gone, it came creeping up again. Sometimes us Christians are walk 95% in the light. What I mean is we sometimes have a closet with a few skeletons lying around, making appearances every now and then. We just tend to overlook them as if they’re not there. What I’m saying is, there’s corners in our lives that could use some light.

All this to say, walk in light and when I say walk in light I mean walk in Christ. Do not be consumed by sin. When we invite Christ into our lives we must allow Him into every part of our lives, so that He can drive out darkness in every corner and crevice of our lives.  There is nothing we can hide from Him no matter how hard we try, so there’s no use in trying. There is always room at the cross to lay down our sins and expose the darkness in our lives. Sin was defeated by Christ, darkness was defeated by light. So if we want to defeat the darkness in our lives we must shine a light on it. If we want to get rid of the sin in our lives we must accept Christ into our hearts and give Him every part of us. Letting go of anything and everything that is unlike Him.

Reflection

1. Are there things in your life you are overlooking because you can’t seem to let them go?
2. If so, what are they?
3. Take the time to respond to what we discussed today, in whatever way you feel led.  

Prayer Time

Allow your answers to the above questions guide your prayer today. Talk to God about whatever is on your heart, if you want to confess to Him take the time and do it. This is between you and God, whatever is on your heart release it. If you want a way out, here is it. If you want God to shine a light on you so that you are no longer walking in darkness take the time to tell Him. If you want to make that decision to accept the Lord as your Savior or rededicate your life to Him, now is the time to do it.  

If you want to make that decision today, pray this prayer with me.

Jesus I declare that you are my Lord and Saviour who died for my sin and was raised three days later. I repent of my sins and I give my life to you. I believe in my heart that you are the true living God. I pray that you shine  light on me and bring me out of the dark. I love you Lord. Thank you for saving me. In Jesus name, Amen.

If you made the choice to follow Christ, rededicate, or to submit your life to Him fully, Go to Romans 10:9-10

If you declare with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you profess your faith and are saved.

I love you and I hope you have an amazing day or evening! If you made a decision to follow Christ, congratulations! Get plugged into a church and don’t hesitate to reach out with any questions or prayer requests. Im praying for you on your journey. I love you, be sure to share this with someone and come back tomorrow for day 270!

Day 137: How Are You?

Ecclesiastes 3:4

A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance;

“Hello, How are you?”

“I’m good, and you?”

“I’m great, thanks for asking.”

This conversation or set of statements look familiar to you? We go through these statement on a daily basis. Without really thinking about it; it has become second nature to already have a prepared answer when asked how we are doing. Usually, the answer is, “good”, “great”, “fine”, and on a rare occasion we might get an “okay”, Rarely do we tell people how we are actually doing, not even our closest friends.

“How are you?” has become another way of saying hello, instead of a real concern. I’m not saying that we are not concerned with how others are doing, I’m saying that the question “how are you?’ does not mean how are you anymore. It means hello. Many times we already know what people are going to say when we ask and we know what to say when we are asked. But I have a question, if God asked us how we were doing, what would we say? Would we be honest with Him about everything going on with us, or would we tell Him that we are “fine” or good?

Now to take it a step further, sometimes we say fine when everything is falling apart, we say well when we are doing terrible, and we say okay as a cry for help. This may not be true for everyone, but I know it is true for many of us. We talked before about how there are many people walking around broken and if we just take the time to pray for them or with them, they will experience God’s healing. We talk about how we can save a life just by checking in on someone. Now what about ourselves, what about when we are walking around broken. Many of us are walking around broken but ignoring our feelings. We must stop this and take care of ourselves.  We often believe in healing from God for others, but why is it so hard to believe for ourselves? Why is it so hard to pray for ourselves? Why is it so hard to check in with ourselves when we are falling apart? Why do we cover up our own pain? We are not helpful to anyone else if we are at the bottom of the pit ourselves. It reminds me of when I’m having a bad day and I’m sure most of us have experienced this. I can walk around falling apart on the inside, but I’m holding it together on the outside, barely, but I’m holding it together. The moment someone asks if I’m okay, everything comes pouring out. We hold things in until we cannot hold it anymore then it all comes storming out of us. We hold too much in and we become like a ticking time bomb, all it takes is for someone to press the right button and we will explode all over the place. My friends, this is not how we are destined to live, we serve a God who works around the clock, giving us twenty-four-hour service. We can come to Him at any time of day or night and He will be there. We do not have to harbor the pain we go through. We do not have to silence our struggles or whatever it is we are going through. We do not have to suppress our emotions, it is okay. God is here for us.

We neglect ourselves too often, sometimes we have to sit back and consider how we are actually doing. What’s going on inside us, check in on our soul, see how everything is going. We all want to be selfless, but that does not mean that we neglect ourselves to do so, it does not mean that we forget about our own feelings. Sometimes we just have to stop and pray for ourselves, sometimes we have to cover ourselves. Sometimes we have to give ourselves some “me time”. It is necessary, please don’t neglect or overlook yourself, it’s not a healthy way to live.

Reflection

1. How are you doing?
2. Really, how are you doing?
3. If God asked you how you were doing right now, what would you say?
   
   

Prayer Time

Take the time today to check in with yourself, search your heart. Bring it to God. Pray for yourself today, you know what you need to pray for yourself, lift yourself up in prayer today.

I love you, and I pray you have an amazing day or evening. Take care of yourself today. Share this with someone and be sure to come back tomorrow for Day 138! Enjoy you day!!!