My Darkness

One Sunday, during the worship portion of our service, I heard the Lord say to me, “Your eyes have adjusted to your darkness.”

I knew immediately what He was saying to me.

You know when you’re in a brightly lit room and the lights are turned off, you are literally plunged into darkness.  Everything goes black.  You can’t see anything.  You have to grope around to reach for the wall or a piece of furniture to hold on to.  It takes time for eyes to adjust.

But our eyes will eventually adjust to darkness.  We begin to see the shapes of things in the shadows.  We see the cracks of light where it all looked like darkness before.  We orient ourselves to where we are and are even able to move more easily.  Though we are in the dark, we can still operate as though the lights were on.

This is what the Lord was drawing my attention to.  The darkness – or sin – I had allowed in my own life had turned out the light of truth.  And I was used to it.  My eyes had adjusted to my own darkness and I could move through my life “as usual” – but I was not walking in the light.

You know, I think when we go through seasons of suffering it’s easier to let areas of sin go undetected or undealt with.  All of our emotional energy is spent dealing with our hurt or loss – and sometimes in the weariness of it all, we allow ourselves a pass to sin. 

“Lord, You know I’m dealing with so much pain over here – can’t we just not think about that area of unholiness right now?  I just can’t take another thing!”

But suffering is not a pass to forget sin.  It is not an excuse to get to act any way that we want to.  It’s not a reason to allow ourselves to walk in darkness.  And that’s hard, because when we are suffering, we tend to freak out!  We may give in to a vice to medicate our pain.  We may gossip about someone who’s hurting us.  We may act out in anger against God or others.  Suffering – especially initially – can bring out all the uglies within us.

But God will take what the Enemy uses as weapons against us and form them into tools that He uses to grow us.  It may expose our bad habits, our self-medicating or our anger – but that is for our good!  That makes us more like Jesus!

So how do we turn the light back on?  It’s a simple answer:  reading the Bible. 

“Your word is a lamp to guide my feet and a light for my path.  I’ve promised it once, and I’ll promise it again: I will obey your righteous regulations.  I have suffered much, O Lord; restore my life again as you promised.  Lord, accept my offering of praise, and teach me your regulations.  My life constantly hangs in the balance, but I will not stop obeying your instructions.  The wicked have set their traps for me, but I will not turn from your commandments.  Your laws are my treasure; they are my heart’s delight.  I am determined to keep your decrees to the very end.”  Psalm 119:105-112

In the darkest and most painful moments of David’s life, he was always crying out to God.  He was choosing to love God’s ways and God’s words more than his own comfort and he refused to handle life on his own terms.  I want to love God and His Word like that, too!  But that doesn’t always make the first step of turning the light back on an easy one.

When we have been in a dark room and the lights suddenly come back on, it can be uncomfortable!  We blink and cover our eyes because it is so bright – it can even hurt!

And we may feel like doing that when the light of the Bible exposes our sin.

But let’s not turn our eyes away from what God is exposing.  Let’s come to Him, in repentance, and ask forgiveness for our sins and help for our brokenness.  Let’s ask Him to help us love Him first and love His ways for our lives.  God can use our suffering to bring wholeness to our lives – as long as we come to Him and begin to align our lives to the truth of what the Bible says.

Let’s turn on the lights.  Let’s repent of where our eyes have become adjusted to our darkness.  Let’s become like the Light of the world so we can be the light of the world!