[This is the journal entry from my quiet time with God today. I use the stop, look, listen, and respond format for my quiet time. I stop to confess sins, pray for people and concerns, and then ask God to show me the truth in His Word that He wants me to see and apply that day. Then I read at a chapter of Scripture. This year, I'm following a plan for reading the New Testament created by the Navigators. In this process, I look for the specific verse or verses in which God seems to be most communicating with me in the reading. I then spend time listening, seeking to discern what I believe God is telling me in that passage that has caught my attention. Then, I respond to the truth that I've prayerfully discerned in some way. Today, I looked at 1 John, chapter 1.]
Look: “If we claim that we have fellowship with Him and are walking in the darkness, we are lying and not doing the truth. But if we are walking in the light as He is in the light, we have fellowship with one another and the blood of Jesus His Son cleanses us from all sin.” (1 John 1:6-7, Disciples Literal New Testament translation)
Darkness is that place that is outside of fellowship with the God we meet in Jesus. In the prologue to his gospel, John says of Jesus, God the Son Who came to share our human lives: “In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.” (John 1:4-5, NIV)
Because we’re born in sin, born with an impulse to get our own ways, to “be like God” as Genesis puts it, we’re born in darkness. I may know the difference between right and wrong because God’s Law is written on my heart. But I still like darkness for several reasons, I think:
1. I don’t want to see my sinful impulse or the sins I commit because of it. I’d rather go on living in the blissful delusion that I’m a good guy, righteous, right with God.
2. I don’t want others to see that I’m not as good a person as I portray myself to the world as being. All too often, I value my appearance over my character. I can be one of those whitewashed tombs Jesus talks about.
3. I don’t want God, when I get around to thinking of Him, to see my sin. Like Adam and Eve, I want to hide from God. But of course, that’s impossible.
In the wilderness, when God’s Old Testament people saw the bright reflection of God in Moses, they begged not to be made to see God face to face. In the perfect presence of God, my imperfections become painfully clear. But when God came into our world in the person of Jesus, the Light invaded this dark planet and today, by the power of the Holy Spirit, the crucified and risen Jesus confronts me. He commands me to repent and to believe in Him so that I can be part of God’s eternal kingdom. In essence, He wants me to:
1. Own the dark places in which I like to live and the dark acts I’ve committed that I try to hide from Him. US Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis said famously about public wrongs, “Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants; electric light the most efficient policeman.” It’s equally true of what Jesus, the Light of the world, does for me when I come into His presence. I can see how desperately I need the forgiveness of God that is available through Jesus. I also can see the clearly-illuminated path to life with God, Jesus Himself.
2. See the perfection of God and thereby see my need to worship Him, not myself, not my desires, not my family, not my country. I’m to worship the God Who made the universe, revealed definitively in Jesus, alone. When Jesus uncupped His hand allowing three of His disciples to see Jesus in His divine perfection, the disciples did the only sensible thing there was to do, they bowed down and worshiped Jesus. In Jesus, I see the ever-new life that He offers to me each day as I follow Him. (Also here.)
According to John in the Bible verse that has my attention today, when I willingly come to the Light of Jesus, God gives me fellowship with all the other confessed sinners who make up Christ’s Church and Jesus’ blood, shed on the cross, washes me clean of my sin, of my preference for and addiction to the darkness.
Listen: Today, God is calling me to absolute honesty in my dealings with Him. He isn’t calling me to a moral perfection of which I am incapable. He’s calling me to own what I try to conceal from Him, to bring it into His Light so that He can set me free from the darkness, the sin, that will otherwise be an ever-bigger wall between Him and me.
John carries this idea forward in the next three verses of his letter: “If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. If we claim we have not sinned, we make him out to be a liar and his word is not in us.” (1 John 1:8-10)
I need to run to the Light, not away from Him!
Respond: Today, Lord, not as an exercise in self-abasement or self-recrimination, but from a desire to be renewed in You and Your grace, help me to bring all my darkness into Your presence. Help me to see the sin that clings to me. For the sake of Jesus and what He has done for me and the whole world, forgive me. Help me not to be afraid to walk in Your Light. Help me to see and live in the awesome love revealed in Jesus, a love that cares about me and calls me to live in Your bright kingdom now and always.
“Search me, God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts.See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting…” (Psalm 139:23-24)
In Jesus’ name I pray. Amen
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