It’s Time to Shine in the Darkness!
The other evening my mother called me to see the sun going down, “So what?” you might say. The sun that evening appeared as we had never seen it before at sunset We could only attribute its splendour to the present prevailing dust conditions. It was one of the days that this tiny little island was covered in a very thick layer of Sahara dust, and somehow due to the refraction of those dust particles, the brilliance of the sun was so clearly portrayed. My research discovered that dust causes the shorter wavelength light (blue, violet etc) to be scattered away, which leaves the longer wavelength light (red/orange) to shine through. That is what we saw as brilliant, phenomenal sunset that day!
This natural phenomenon caused creation to speak to me, and it reminded me of two bible verses, these are the main verses for today:
Our first verse:
John 1:5: “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness can never extinguish it.”
Our second verse is:
Isaiah 60: “Arise, shine; For your light has come! And the glory of the Lord is risen upon you. For behold, the darkness shall cover the earth, And deep darkness the people; But the Lord will arise over you, And His glory will be seen upon you.“
The Gentiles shall come to your light, And kings to the brightness of your rising.”
It’s not news that these are some dark days that we are living in. We can think of the darkness referred to in Isaiah 60 on a Macro level, such as the things in Matthew 24 that Jesus described must take place: ‘The wars, rumours of wars, nation against nation, famines, earthquakes, etc’ And we can also think of the darkness on micro level as Paul described to Timothy, in 2 Timothy 3 where men will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, proud, blasphemers,, unthankful, unholy, unloving, unforgiving, slanderers, without self-control,, despisers of good, traitors, haughty, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having a form of godliness but denying its power. We are certainly seeing that darkness!
HOWEVER, there is good news! The gospel of Christ was, and is and will always be good news! The good news of Isaiah 60. It that in very dark times, the Lord’s glory will arise on us. This glory, the hebrew word: Kabowd is translated here as weighty, so we can think of it as the weight of all that the Lord is, everything that makes Jehovah God…His power, riches, wisdom, strength, honour, glory and blessing…that’s the weight of the Light that is shining on us now. That is what has our backs in dark times!
The questions before us are:
- 1. What will happen if we don’t make a concerted effort to let our light shine now?
- How can people come to our Light and leaders to the brightness of our rising, if we aren’t rising and shining?
You see there is no need for light except in darkness. We dont turn on the light switch if the room is bright. It is our responsibility to be luminaries of and for Christ! To be God’s very Light sources on the earth, like the sun is in the heavens. We’re up! As we look around at the gross darkness on a macro or micro level, let’s ask ourselves…are we shining the Light? Or are we hiding them under baskets? Just like the brilliant sun that day, it did its job regardless of the gross darkness and cover of dust, it could not be stopped and neither can we!
So let’s discuss two very important and timely things:
1. How do we shine our Light, and
2. What are the attributes of this Light we are shining?
How do we shine our light?
Practically speaking, here are a few things we need to do:
- We need to arise and shine. The AMPC version of the bible tells us to arise from the depression and prostration in which circumstances have kept us—rise to a new life.’ So we must access healing for our minds and emotions and make a determined effort to not let circumstances keep us pressed down, no matter how dark and dreary. We must seek peace and pursue it! We need to practice this now.
- We need to Live and Walk in the Light. John 1 teaches us that our daily lives matter! God is Light, and there is NO darkness in Him at all. We cannot walk in the darkness, practice the darkness, act just like the darkness, celebrate the darkness, and expect our light to shine! The truth will not be in us, and truth fuels light.
- We need to put on our Armor of Light as described in Romans 13. We are in a spiritual war, Jesus has fixed the end-time victory for us, yes, but we are in a present fierce battle nonetheless, and one of our weapons is LIGHT! However, we have the responsibility of putting it on, just like our Ephesians armour. It is optional.
- We need to Let our Light so shine before men so they can see our good deeds. We must do good deeds. These good deeds could be our daily duties or those special assignments that we have been called to. We can shine our light in the way we care for our parents or our kids; we can shine our light on the job in any of the 7 Mountains of Influence, we can shine our light by using those special gifts or talents or anointings God gave us! So whether we are shining as a warm candlelight or a blinding stadium light. We must Shine it before men!
The Attributes of The Light:
In order for us not to be intimidated in the dark times, we need to remember two very important things about this Light that we need to shine:
- The Light is not ours. Thank God…It is His!
The light we are being asked to shine is not our own light, we didn’t manufacture it or get it on Amazon, the light we need to shine now is Supernatural! We couldn’t trust our own light; they would be too fickle, shining one day, dimming the next, needing to change the bulb every minute. NO! We are taught in 1 John 1 that God is Light and in John 1 that Jesus is Light, the true, genuine, perfect and steadfast Light, Jesus is the light that illumines men! Jesus Christ is our Light Source! Our Light is God Himself who wraps Himself in a Light!
- Light trumps darkness every single time! The AMPC version John 1 assures that:
- Darkness is unreceptive to our Light! That’s why some people won’t like us, and that’s okay! They are unreceptive to our Light.
- Darkness cannot overpower our Light
- Darkness cannot put out our Light
- Darkness cannot absorb our Light
- Darkness cannot appropriate our Light, that is take it for one’s own use.
I want to leave you with this thought and verse today. Revelations 22 says:
5 And there shall be no more night; they have no need for lamplight or sunlight, for the Lord God will illuminate them and be their light, and they shall reign [as kings] forever and ever (through the eternities of the eternities).
Those of us who have given our lives to Christ, get to spend all eternity of eternities being illuminated by God Himself! Until then that very same light is inside of us and is needed right now to dispel darkness and illuminate the earth! This is the GOOD NEWS!
BTW, if you are not sure that Jesus’ Light is in you because you haven’t truly surrendered your life to Him, I invite you to pray the prayer of Salvation and be sure! I have such a prayer on this channel.
Until next time,
Shining with you, Coach D
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