Morning Journal
I Thessalonians 5:5
“for you are all sons of light and sons of day. We are not of night nor of darkness.”
Why do we still feel some of the affects of darkness? Two reasons. The first is because we are living in this world. John 3:19 says it’s in darkness. As we go through this world it’s as if we are hiking at night.
The darkness is a spiritual one. We aren’t aware of it with our physical senses, but more so with our spiritual intuition. Hebrews 5:14 says, “But solid food is for the mature, who because of practice have their senses trained to discern good and evil.” As we walk with Christ and grow in maturity, we develop spiritual senses.
The author of Hebrews refers to “solid food”. This is the Bible. It also speaks of practice. As we hear the Word of God (from church and reading it) we practice it. Just as a toddler practices walking, so we have to learn, walk and grow in our spiritual life.
How does this work? As we go through our day, we have multiple decisions to make. Most are small and seemingly meaningless. However, we get little nudges to do or not do things. I can’t say which percentage of these things are the Lord. They don’t have to be spiritual things. This is part of the “practice” that’s referred to. These nudges don’t have to do with guilt. It’s not about God’s approval. He also won’t ask us to do weird things.
As we grow in experience with this type of obedience, it carries over to the more serious situations. Luke 16:10 refers to our practice with small things, and how it prepares us for the big things. Growing in maturity in obedience from small to large areas keeps us out the darkness, bad things.
The second reason we feel the affects of darkness is that our bodies are fallen. We have a natural tendency towards selfishness and sin. Good parents civilize us. Poor parenting unleashes a wild child into the world. Romans 7:19 says, “For the good that I want, I do not do, but I practice the very evil that I do not want.” While our spirit wants to do one thing our fallen part wars against it and drags us into darkness.
We are to feed our spirits with the Bible and deny our contrary part. This is how we stay on the light path. To do otherwise is to allow darkness within. Staying in His Word and yielding to His leading let’s His light turn on to full strength within. Otherwise we have a dim light like a flickering candle.
Lord, help us to avoid the world’s dark influence without and our inner tendency of darkness within.