The Light in my darkness
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As I grow in Christ, it can be disheartening when He reveals dark places in my heart. I’m thankful for the words of C.S. Lewis when he said,
“When a man is getting better he understands more and more clearly the evil that is still left in him. When a man is getting worse he understands his own badness less and less.”
I know that God will be good and faithful to finish the work He started in me, but it doesn’t remove the discomfort of having my lingering sin patterns revealed and brought out into the light. Seeing new depths of my own weakness, pride, selfishness, and self-destructive tendencies stings. The revealing of shadowy places in my heart uncovers a new layer of my need for God, His wisdom, His cleansing, His renewal, and His steadfast love.
Times like these can lead me to despair, shame, and hopelessness. I get so fed up with myself that I start to think God might feel that way, too. But as I struggle to hold on to God in faith, He is always faithful to show me that He is the one who is holding on to me.
A few years ago, on the heels of a difficult week, God was at work in my heart and led me to the truth I needed to hear: Jesus came to bring Light into a world of darkness.
Maybe you’re like me and grew up in a Christian home, often hearing that Jesus is the Light of the world. We can miss the weight and wonder of truths like these when they’re so familiar. But as I became aware of the darkness God was revealing in me, I needed the reminder that my darkness is why the Light came.
Jesus didn’t come into a “dimly lit” world or for people who were kind of okay. He came to save a world of spiritually dead people living in total darkness. Actually, God has been bringing light and life into dark, lifeless places from the beginning.
The gospel of John says that Jesus, who was with God in the beginning and through whom all things were made, was the one who spoke light and life into the darkness and created everything out of nothing. Before the fall, Adam and Eve lived and walked with God in the full light of His glory. But when pride and doubt gave way to sin, they were forever separated from the light of God’s presence. Since that day, we have all loved the darkness rather than the light.
Ephesians 5:8 says we were not only walking in darkness, we were darkness. Our light had gone out, and we had no resources from within to rekindle it. But at just the right time, Jesus, “the life and light of men,” arrived to reveal the full light of God’s glory and to give His life so we could have life forever in Him. 2 Corinthians 4:16 says it this way,
“For God who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of God’s glory in the face of Jesus Christ.”
Friend, the reality of the Gospel is so much better than we deserve or could have ever imagined. No sin is too great, and no darkness, past, present, or future, can overcome the life-giving Light of the world. Let’s look to the Son in all of our need with the empty hands of faith, again and again.
