Thank you to Georgia Strong for being so faithful to be His vessel and for opening my eyes to so many things. This devotion is inspired from her teaching at Awaken.
Darkness is an overwhelming thing…pervasive…oppressive. In complete darkness, without our eyes to decipher the world around us, we are left with our other senses and most significantly, our minds…our thoughts. It is amazing how much louder that voice within us sounds when we are enveloped in the darkness. And how impossible it is to really see where we are.
This is the place we live apart from Christ. And because the darkness is all we have every known, we cannot fathom what the world looks like in any other form. THIS is our reality and our life.
Now just the faintest of lights…a flickering lantern. Our eyes come into play and this faint light begins to unveil the world around us…although not holistically. Because with this light so faint, the shadows still prevail, and those shadows can look ominous, they surround and move and we cannot decipher exactly what they are. And without really knowing what’s out there, fear plays in, contributing to this mental depiction and morphs our world into something that it is not…a false representation of our reality. Only the places that this small light touches reflect the truth of what they are…everything else is defined by the darkness and in so being, deceives us.
Upon salvation, we are filled with the Holy Spirit. That is the light within us…the very Spirit of God residing within us to open our eyes to truth. He is there, faithfully burning. It is our choices that He gives us to freely make that will hinder this light from growing, or fuel it to become greater. If we choose to continually live our lives without that intimacy with Him, our light remains so and the shadows around us become bigger, they can overwhelm and feed our fears and our anxiety. Despite having that light within us, there is still so much darkness.
We have the power within us to turn this lantern up. The light burns brighter, bigger, illuminating even more of the world around us. The shadows fall away, and the images we thought we saw become what they truly are. The brighter our light grows, the more truth is revealed around us, and the more clarity we have. What once seems fearful pales under the reality of what it is, and our peace grows as we can now see the truth. Our world is not subject to our interpretation any longer, it is subject to the truth of what it is. The brighter the light, the further it reaches, and this illumination begins to expand our world, our reality, our life.
Our choices to spend time with God ignite within us that very Spirit of God…our choices to be obedient to that Spirit and to see the world through the truth of HIS light continue to strengthen the light within us to shine brighter and illuminate our lives in such a way that not only are OUR eyes opened to the truth around us, but we begin to illuminate the world for the people around us as well. As believers, we are the light in this world and living as if THAT is truth has the power to shift everything.
How bright is our light burning? And what choices will we make to strengthen that light within us to burn brighter?
John 8:12
Then Jesus spoke to them again, saying, “I am the light of the world. He who follows Me shall not walk in darkness, but have the light of life.”
Psalm 119:105
Your word is a lamp to my feet And a light to my path.
Isaiah 60:1
Arise, shine; For your light has come!
And the glory of the Lord is risen upon you.
Acts 13:47
For so the Lord has commanded us:
‘I have set you as a light to the Gentiles,
That you should be for salvation to the ends of the earth.’”
Darkness cannot drive out darkness…only light can do that.
Martin Luther King Jr.
Purposed Roots 