Turn The Light On

Imagine, if you will, going into a dark room and trying to gather up all of the darkness and push it out the door. Would you start in the darkest corner, and try to sweep all of the darkness out? Or get a net and try to catch it all? The images create a pretty comical picture - don't they? After all the task would be impossible.

But walk into the same room and simply turn the light on, and immediately the darkness flees! The concept is simple, darkness is vanquished by light, and not vice versa. Darkness is simply the absence of light. So in order to get rid of darkness we have to bring in the light.

Now take those same principles in the natural world and apply them to the spiritual. Why do we keep trying to fight the darkness in our lives by trying to eliminate the it? Our hearts are symbolic of the room that is filled with darkness - sin. We know that the darkness needs to go, so we go in with a baseball bat to beat back it's stranglehold on our lives. The harder we try to eliminate sin from our lives the less effective we become, because we expend all of our energy on fighting something that doesn't exist! Simply put, sin is the absence of God's light in our lives. Granted there are all kinds of vices that help define that darkness, but they cannot be overcome apart from the light of God's power.

What if we simply turned the light on? What if we walked into that room with the presence of God? Wouldn't the darkness/sin have to flee? Once God comes in, there would be no room for anything else. Since darkness is simply the absence of light, in God's presence sin can not abound.

Let's stop trying to catch the darkness and throw it out the door. Instead let's turn the light on, and watch the darkness flee!

43 “When an unclean spirit goes out of a man, he goes through dry places, seeking rest, and finds none. 44 Then he says, ‘I will return to my house from which I came.’ And when he comes, he finds it empty, swept, and put in order. 45 Then he goes and takes with him seven other spirits more wicked than himself, and they enter and dwell there; and the last state of that man is worse than the first. So shall it also be with this wicked generation.” (Matthew 12:43-45)