Speaking Into The Darkness
This past several months have been hard for me, but not for anything in my personal life or my family, but because of those around me. I’ve called it my “season of sorrow”. I’ve watched many people make decisions that divide families, continue justifying their actions and sorrow continues to win the day. I’ve been moved to tears for others more in this season than I ever have been in my life. The weight of helplessness is heavy.
1 John 1:6 says if we claim to have fellowship with him and yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live out the truth. Waking in darkness implies we aren’t stepping in it or frozen in it because we aren’t sure how we got there or if we should be there. When we walk, we do so with intention and purpose and excitement knowing where we are. We begin to not practice truth because we now live in spiritual darkness. Pursuing righteousness and sin cannot happen. They oppose each other.
We either pursue darkness or light each day and we must decide if nudging further towards either will bring us closer to holiness and joy, even if it’s difficult, or closer to anger and bitterness and selfishness, and the voices and faces of those we love and speak truth begin to grow more faint over time.
I watch as people have one foot in the light and one foot in the shadows and continue to inch towards the darkness and soon enough are not pausing to wonder if they should be that far in, and a step turns to a shuffle and a shuffle into a full on stride.
This is NOT a condemnation, but a loving plea of a pursuit of holiness and living in the truth of who Jesus says we should be, not who we say we want to be and ask Jesus to bless it. Too long have loved ones shed more tears than they ever should have. Too long has sin whispered into the ears of followers of Jesus and lured them into the shadows. Too long have God’s children been fractured.
Sin does not relent and it will not relent and many more children of God will falter, this is even spoken about. But it does not mean we cannot make a call and a plea to the hearts of believers, to implore them to not take another step into the shadows. There is no darkness in God at all and he calls us into the light where there is forgiveness and freedom. We must first realize, is this “freedom” I’ve chosen, or is it just shackles and am I actually imprisoned and don’t even know it?
– Jared