Light vs. Darkeness

Most of us have probably heard our pastor talk about how when light and darkness meet, light always wins.  You’ll never go into a dark room, light a match and have the light of that small flame overwhelmed by the darkness of the room.  The natural transition from this is that the Light of God’s Word can never be overwhelmed by the darkness of the World.  Then how can a Christian hear God’s direction for their life and not understand it?  Or why can a non-Christian hear the Gospel and not recognize the truth of it?

What happens when you’re in a dark room and someone turns on the lights?  You shut your eyes because the light hurts.  You keep opening and closing your eyes until they get used to the light.  Eventually you can keep them open.  How long that takes depends upon how sensitive your eyes are to light and how bright the light is.  God’s light affects us the same way.  It doesn’t matter if you are a Christian or not.   It can hurt when God’s light shines on our lives.

For the Christian it depends upon how sensitive you are.  Christians are not immune from sin.  We all have sin in our lives.  And when God speaks to us about that sin we tend to immediately “shut our eyes” because it hurts.  It depends upon the maturity of the Christian as to how long it will take for them peek out of one eye, then both and eventually keep them open.  It’s painful.  You want to get rid of the sin in your life in order to get closer to God.  And just when you’ve taken care of one area of sin he lets you know about something else you need to take care of.  And when you take care of that area of sin He tells you about another area of sin, or maybe an old area that you’ve started to struggle with again.  What can you do?  Open your eyes quickly.  Keep them open.  The sooner you open your eyes and the more you keep your eyes open the more you get used to being in the light.  You have to be ready to look at the sin in your life that God is revealing to you.  And you have to be ready to get rid of it.  You have to learn to grow up.

We started giving my three year old showers last month.  And she liked them.  If you asked her if she liked showers she told you that she cries at first, but she liked them.  Why did she cry at first?  We washed her hair and she got wet.  Then she was cold while we washed the rest of her.  She didn’t like to be cold so she cried.  We rinsed her off and she stopped crying.  She wasn’t cold anymore.  How often as Christians do we act like that?  We have to be careful about getting too comfortable with our Christianity.  Every once in a while God is going to stop the rinse and start scrubbing again.  We’re going to get cold and some of us will cry.  Then once God’s done with the soap he’ll rinse us off and we start to get comfortable again.

When you’re talking about non-Christians a lot of it depends upon how bright the light is.  If someone is in a pitch black room and you shine a floodlight in their eyes it doesn’t matter how long you wait.  They’re going to keep their eyes shut until you turn the light off.  But lighting a match on the other side of a cluttered room is not going to give them enough light to navigate by.  You have to be able to cater your method of communication to the person.  Communication depends not just upon you speaking clearly, but the other person being able to understand you.  It may be nice that you know sign language, but that doesn’t help you talk to someone who is blind.  And shouting doesn’t help a person who doesn’t speak English to understand you.

When my brother was in high school he didn’t like going to church.  We had started to attend a spirit-filled church and it made him uncomfortable.  He’d go every once in a while to make my parents happy.  Once after the service he was ambushed by two of the “evangelists” in the church.  It wasn’t pretty.  Let’s just say his eyes were shut tight against a couple of floodlights.  After that experience he told my parents that he was never going back to that church.  And I didn’t blame him in the least.  He was already uncomfortable going to that church before a couple of overbearing fools made him feel even more so.  When Christ sent his disciples out in Matthew 10 he told them to be “... wise as serpents, and harmless as doves.”  Those two were neither.  They weren’t wise enough to recognize his discomfort and they were about as harmless as a couple of sledgehammers.

Think back about the times you’ve shared the Gospel with others.  How many times have you shined a floodlight in someone’s eyes?  And then when you realize it you start to use matches and then they can’t see past the clutter in their life.  How can we know how much light to use?  We can’t.  Only God does.  He knows how much light to use with us to get us to open our eyes to see the sin in our lives.  He knows how much light to use to bring someone to trust and believe in Him for the first time.  And He has put the flashlight in our hands.  

Witnessing can be one of the scariest things that we are called to do as a Christian.  Just as with everything else it either comes naturally or not.  If not, every word you speak as you share your faith can be excruciating.  And when you have to consider how your words will be received it makes you even more self-conscious.  But, as with everything else in our lives we have to trust Him and let Him lead us.  He won't lead you wrong.  And even when you think you've made a fool, just know that God will use your words and the love that you showed in ways you can't know.  Just trust Him.  Because whether you ended up using the match or the floodlight, you're still driving away darkness.