When you are walking in the dark, even when you know roughly where you are going, you often end up bumping into things. Sure, you correct and go around or in the other direction or something, but it’s entirely different having the lights on and seeing where you are going and choosing a path that doesn’t run you into things.
I have been guilty of walking in the dark so many times in my life that I don’t want to count; but I am gradually learning what it looks like to walk in the light as a way of life and it’s so amazing that I want you to know it too.
1st John 1:6-7 says, “If we claim that we experience a shared life with Him and continue to stumble around in the dark, we’re obviously lying through our teeth–we’re not living what we claim. But if we walk in the light, God himself being the light, we also experience a shared life with one another, as the sacrificed blood of Jesus, God’s Son, purges all our sin.”
The part that really hits home to me in that is that it is “obvious” when we claim to be in the light but aren’t really. Unfortunatly I think that’s the part non-christians often pick up on – that although we claim to have “the way” we still blunder around as if we didn’t.
I don’t by any means imply that we should be pefect. The very next verse from above says, “If we claim that we’re free of sin, we’re only fooling ourselves. A claim like that is errant nonsense.” Walking in the light doesn’t have anything to do with not sinning; it’s different than that. It’s not just a bunch more rules about what do do and not do (that’s dressup) — it’s filling our minds and hearts with so much of God’s word and presence that He is able to direct and use us as a tool — in the process shaping and remaking us into something new (that’s resurrection life).
2 Chorinthians 5:15-20: “…so that everyone could also be included in his life, a resurrection life, a far better life than people ever lived on their own…The old life is gone, a new life burgeons! Look at it!…God has given us the task of telling everyone what he is doing. We’re Christ’s representatives. God uses us to persuade men and women to drop their differences and enter God’s work…”
