Being a Child of the Light Means Stepping Out of Darkness

 

When I say darkness, what do you think of? What images are stirred in your mind? Can you feel the darkness? Can you taste it? Smell it? I want you to close your eyes and picture darkness.

Now, picture YOUR darkness? Was it that depression you experienced some time ago? Was it the loss of a loved one? Was it drowning in addiction? Take a moment and let it bring forth emotion and senses. Let it resonate within your being. When you’re ready, open your eyes and continue reading.

We enter into being a human being in darkness. We were created and formed in our mother’s womb. I don’t know about you, but I could probably make an educated guess in that the mother’s womb is pretty dark. I don’t know much about the birthing process from a baby’s perspective, but have you ever watched “Look Who’s Talking” with John Travolta and Kristie Alley (mind you it plays “I get around” by the Beach Boys)? The first movie begins with that birthing process and the directors did a fantastic job (in my view anyway) of what it would be like from the baby’s perspective.

Quick synopsis: Baby sees light at the end of the tunnel, starts to go towards it, realizes it is now leaving it’s comfort zone, has now entered a world of Light (and cold wind drafts) wants to be put back inside the mother’s womb, gets wrapped in a blanket, held by mother, and now says that it’s not so bad (I hope my memory served me right on this description. It’s been a while since I watched this movie seeing as how it was publicized in 1989.)

Well God works the same way. God shows us a glimmering light at the end of the tunnel. Whether you are seeing it for the first time or rediscovering the Light, you are still drawn towards it. Once you see that the light takes you to where you’ve never been before, you start to panic. You don’t want to be there. You don’t even know what you’re doing. You want to retreat and go back into the zone of comfort.

But that is when God wraps His loving arms around you like a blanket and holds you until you stop crying. He’ll hold you and you suddenly realize that He is comfort. There is no need to panic. There is no need to fear. Now you say, “Wow, this isn’t so bad.”

Stepping out the darkness is a giant leap of faith. Stepping out of the darkness can be uncomfortable and cause a lot of pain. We have grown custom to how we were living in that state of darkness, so moving into the light can be quite the change, but that’s what God calls us to do. He doesn’t want us to be hiding anymore. He doesn’t want our residence to be darkness. God never promised life would be easy, but He did promise that He will never leave you alone. He promises to be everything you’ll ever need. He promised that with Him you will have light. “I have come into the world as a light, so that no one who believes in me should stay in darkness” (John 12:46).

Stepping out of the darkness and stepping into the light is like going from one dimension to the other. Living on this earth and living in the afterlife, whether it’s Heaven or hell, is stepping from dimension to the other. Our relationship with Christ has new dimensions. As God opens your eyes up to Him and He reveals more to you, you step into a new dimension of the relationship. Here is a personal story about my dimensions:

I began to notice all of the relationships I had before started changing. You see, the friends I had before I started my walk with Christ are part of one dimension. After I started my relationship with Jesus, I have entered into a new dimension. Since, I have entered this new dimension in my life and those friends are part of an old dimension, it’s hard upgrading past friends into this new life of mine. I associate it to the time I upgraded my phone. I’ll give a brief summary so as not to bore anyone.

I have an old IPhone. One day, my ITunes told me I needed to upgrade my operating system (O.S.) on the phone. I thought I had backed up all the files and information and clicked that “Yes” button to update the phone. After the update, the backup couldn’t be reloaded onto the phone because the upgrade was pretty large. I waited too long to upgrade the O.S. from the last time I did, so when I did it this time, there were about four different upgrades. I took a big jump instead of taking little baby ones. Therefore, I had to start fresh with my phone wiped clean and clearly upset that I had no contacts, no text messages, or any notes.

Now that I took that large step in my life, my stepping out of the darkness of sin and allowing Jesus to be my Light, I have met some pretty spectacular friends in this new dimension. However, I took one huge leap and didn’t move in little baby steps. Now, I feel so terrible because I feel like I am leaving my best friends from the old dimension behind. I feel like I made this huge “upgrade” and things from the backup just can’t be reloaded.

I was naïve to think that everything would just remain that same, but I quickly found out, that once you change and start walking in the Light, the old life will be left behind. That’s not to say that I no longer have communication with people from the old life, but those interactions have changed over the past few months. They are necessarily what they used to be.

A wise friend told me “pain is necessary for growth” and dimensions don’t come without pain. Yes, I traded my old life of darkness to have a new life of light, but God gave me so much more than I ever could have asked for. Because I chose to live by Ephesians 5:8, God has made me rich in His blessings and His mercies. Stepping into a new dimension with Christ will cause some necessary pain. It will make you grow. It will make you uncomfortable, but just like a mother and a new born baby, God wraps us up and gently holds us until we feel comfortable, and even then, like most mothers (especially the over protective ), He won’t let go as long as you live).  

God started the earth with light (Genesis 1:3). We start each day with a sunrise (and if you don’t know by now, that is Light). We open our eyes and we see light. No matter how big or small, there is always light in the darkness. You just have to train your eyes and adjust yourself so that you can see it. Jesus said that “I am a lamp unto your feet and a light unto your path” (Psalm 119:105). Once you have seen the Light and experienced the Light, you will not want to go back into hiding; you will not want to go back into darkness. It’s like a craving; like an addiction. You want more of it. You want all of it!

Take the step! Don’t hide! In a world full of so much pain, so much hatred, so much sin, go and be the light that God calls you to be in this world. “You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden. Nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a stand, and it gives light to all the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in Heaven” (Matthew 5:14-16).

BE CHILDREN OF THE LIGHT!!!!

The words of my favorite Christian rapper:

“No more living in the darkness/no more living heartless/ You’ve got that Holy Spirit dwelling inside your carcass/Your life’s been changed up, rearranged up/you’ve been reborn and you don’t have to do the same stuff! (Represent – LeCrae)

Until next time!

~ Not for my glory but for His. Not for the kingdom of this world, but for God’s Kingdom in Heaven. God be with you now and forever! ~

Beauty of the Lord (the Beauty in You)

Have you ever stood on the outskirts of a city looking into the beauty of the lights in front of you? Have you ever taken the time to notice how the lights fill up the city guiding its people in the darkness? Looking at the city from a distance, it looks like it's in order and it looks beautiful. The lights glisten on the horizon and they dance to the song of the night. It looks like things are okay and while not necessarily peaceful, they are calm.

But then you decide to get closer to the city hoping to get closer to take in more of the calmness, to see more of the peace, and be closer to the beauty of it all.
However, the closer you get the more you realize it's not as it seemed from a distance. As you get closer to the heart of the matter, you see it is a mess. There is little to no calmness but instead fearfulness. There is little to no peace, but calamity. And what you thought was beautiful turned out to be unpleasant sights and repulsive smells. Remember this description; it will become handy in a few paragraphs.

Today, I was folding race applications at my job when this thought occurred to me. The inside of the application was off-centered and askew. It wasn’t very appealing. Anyway, I had the task of folding them and let me just tell you, I am a perfectionist and very frugal, to a degree.

Well, like I said, the way the copier copied them, it made the information on the inside become off-centered. The margins were wrong and the font was crooked. I didn’t really pay attention until all copies were made and I had already started folding. They were tri-folds, so when I opened up the one application, I noticed that the one folded line goes through the middle of the application part. Now me being a perfectionist, I wanted to fix it, but the frugality in me didn’t want to just waste the paper.

So I did the next best thing. I made the outside look pretty (because we all know that it’s what catches the eye that sells). Then the idea that convicted me and gave me serious provoking thoughts was “it doesn’t matter how it looks on the inside, but it’s the outside that draws them in.”

Then I got to thinking, a very dangerous thing at times. Society used to teach us “it’s the beauty on the inside that counts.” And this is something we preach to people today, but somehow we fell away from that. Most of us fall victim to the aesthetic value of beauty. We all want to look and be like someone else. We constantly struggle with wanting to be thinner so we created Hydroxycut, Alli, and steroids. We have people wanting to be pretty so we use Cover Girl, Mary Kay, and Axe.

We do everything that we can to draw people to us, especially in “attracting the opposite sex.”. We dress up, put on make-up, and make sure we smell good to pull them towards us, but after they get close enough, they start to realize that we aren’t that beautiful on the inside. Have you ever noticed that the most beautiful people in the world are not celebrities with hair stylists and make-up artists? Most celebrities have colorful faces but their hearts are black! The most beautiful people I have seen have been those who give money to the beggars on the streets; people who serve the less fortunate at soup kitchens; people who give of themselves so others can have.

This goes back to the description of the city at night. The beauty of it from a far distance pulls us in as we are drawn into its beauty. However, as we get closer, we see that the heart of the city is black and full of sin. Proverbs 31:30 states that “Charm is deceptive and beauty is fleeting.” We are entranced and deceived by the beauty from a distance. How is the depiction of the city any different than our own lives?

God didn’t create us to put on a different face every day or to transform our bodies into something He didn’t create. Beauty is dangerous. There are plenty of accounts in the Bible in which when mentioned, beauty always led to sin and destruction. For example, beauty led King David to sleep with Bathsheba (sin #1: 2 Samuel 11:3-5) which then led to David lying to Uriah the Hittite (Bathsheba’s husband) and trying to get Uriah to sleep with his wife to cover up his first sin (sin #2: 2 Samuel 11:12-13). After his first failed attempt to cover up sin #1, he then sent Uriah to the front line of the army so Uriah would die in battle (sin #3/destruction #1: 2 Samuel 11:16-21).Lastly, Bathsheba bore King David’s son but because of David’s wickedness, the Lord took the son through illness (destruction #2).

Other stories of beauty, sin, and destruction can be found in the story of Sarai/Sarah, Rachel, Leah and Dinah in Genesis and Tamar in 2 Samuel 13. Their beauty led to sin and their tragedy. Sarai’s beauty almost got her in trouble with the Pharaoh. Rachel was beautiful and Leah had “soft eyes” in which Leah was thrown into an unwanted marriage that led to her being unloved by her husband. Bathsheba slept with David in a short lived affair. Dinah and Tamar were both raped. I challenge you to read their stories in its entirety.

What comfort to know that our “God does not judge by external appearance” (Galatians 2:6). He doesn’t care about your hair color. He doesn’t care what type of face product you use or the brand of your perfume/cologne. God doesn’t care if you are dressed the fanciest or have holes in your clothes. God doesn’t care if you have the perfect smile or the world’s most gorgeous eyes. He already knows you because He created you just the way you are. He planned every detail of your life including knowing the number of hairs on your head (Matthew 10:30). Even as I write this, the song “How He Love Us” by David Crowder Band (mind you it is my favorite!) comes on my ITunes. How form fitting for this message! The song sings “And I realize just how beautiful you are…How He loves us.” God loves you just the way you are.

Can I get personal with you for a second? The past couple of weeks I have been struggling with my self-worth, especially in how someone can love me the way God does. My prayer has been around the fact that how can I be worthy of some earthly man’s love when I am not even worthy of God’s love. I always tell myself that I can’t be in a relationship with another man if I can’t get my relationship right with my God. How can I romance a guy if I can’t romance my Creator? I haven’t felt beautiful in a long time. I don’t see myself the way I used to and it’s because I put up this barrier and I put distance between God and me. However, as I began writing this tonight, God started changing my thoughts as I was getting in the Bible and looking at how He views my beauty. Here are a few verses to meditate on:

Song of Solomon 4:1 – How beautiful you are, my darling! Oh, how beautiful!

Song of Solomon 4:7 – You are altogether beautiful, my love; there is no flaw in you

Proverbs 31:30 – Charm is deceptive, and beauty is fleeting; but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised.

Don’t ever feel like you are not beautiful. Don’t ever feel like you are unworthy of love. God tells me I am beautiful; that it’s better for me to fear Him than to want to be beautiful. Beauty is found within your heart. It’s found within your actions. It’s found in your relationship with Christ. I believe that a person becomes 10x more beautiful/handsome when I find that they are living for the Lord instead of living for the world, and that is the truth. I can look at someone and think they are “pretty/handsome,” but when I find that they walk with the Lord, it just makes them more attractive. I believe that in walking with the Lord, He makes you beautiful. He makes your skin glow. He makes you smile. He makes you feel loved.

Don’t participate in the things of this world just to feel pretty, but know that God made you and loves you for who you are. “For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place. When I was woven together in the depths of the earth, your eyes saw my unformed body” (Psalm 139:13-16). Don’t be somebody you’re not. Don’t follow the ways of this world or “need” to look like those in the media. So friends, even when you feel unloved, know that God loves you. Whenever you feel ugly, know that God thinks you’re beautiful. You are His daughter and son; His princess and prince; His bride; His beloved.

“The King is enthralled by your beauty; honor him, for He is your Lord.” ~ Psalm 45:11

Songs to listen to:

How He Loves Us – David Crowder Band

Something Beautiful – NeedtoBreathe

You Are More/Love is Here – Tenth Avenue North

Beautiful – MercyMe

More Beautiful You – Jonny Diaz

I Need You to Love Me – Barlow Girl

Beautiful, Beautiful – Francesca Battistelli

What Love Really Means – JJ Heller

For the Ladies – KJ-52 (rap song )

Cry on My Shoulder – Overflow

I’ve Always Loved You – Third Day

 

Until next time!

~ Not for my glory but for His. Not for the kingdom of this world, but for God’s Kingdom in Heaven. God be with you now and forever! ~