“We separate ourselves from Him sometimes, because we misunderstand His heart. We then feel like He is at a distance and we allow the lies of the enemy to pile on, which is an obvious tactic to push us further and further in the very direction that we want nothing to do with. It’s the bottomless pit of us and what we can do apart from Him…” (Dara Maclean)
How many times have you fallen into this trap? I know that I have. God has promised that He would never leave us nor forsake us, but how often do we forsake Him because we assume He is through with us?
We have a basement at our church. This basement’s primary use at the moment is for a storm shelter and hell. Yes, hell is in our church basement, so come visit us anytime… Well it’s actually that we use the basement for the hell scene in our yearly drama called “The Judgment Seat” that we put on around Halloween for our community and anyone else who wants to come.
The basement is full of stuff as this requires a huge set-up. So anyway, as I was looking for stuff to prepare the stage for our VBS this past June I needed to go down the stairs to the basement. I go to flip on the light and it is out. There is no light to light the stairway so I have to feel my way in the dark down to the next level where there is another light. I do this several more times, up and down the stairs.
Then it’s like God whispers “Stop, I have something to teach you”
So I stop on the stairwell and it hits me. I realize that I could not see coming down the stairs, but I could see perfectly fine coming back up. I look up to the top of the stairs where I had left the door propped open to the light in the hallway. Then the verse, “Thy Word is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path” (Psalm 119:105) comes to my mind along with 1 John 1:5, “This is the message we have heard from Him and announce to you, that God is Light, and in Him there is no darkness at all.”
What I realized at this moment was that whether I was going up or down the stairs the light in the hallway had not changed. The light remained the same, but it was my position to the light that determined whether or not I could see.
The very moment I turned my back on the light, after being in the light, I could not see clearly at all. I was almost blind in the darkness. The further away I went the less I could see and find my way. But, no matter how far down I descended, the moment I turned back toward the light I could clearly see my way back up to it.
I believe this is what God wanted to teach me.
There may be times in our lives that we find ourselves in darkness. It could be that we have for some reason turned our back to the Light, and it is true that after being in the Light, the darkness seems even more dark. We might have stumbled into this darkness. We might be deceived into this darkness. It doesn’t matter how we got there, the way out is the same. We have to find the Light and turn back to it. The very moment we do, the Light makes clear the way. Even the smallest glint of light can be a guide out of darkness.
We have to remember that the Light does not change. God does not change. He is the same today, yesterday, and forever. God does not change but it is our position to God that can change. When our back is to Him we cannot see, but when we turn our face to Him… then… when once we were blind, now we see.
What’s your position to Him today?