Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
Tag Archives: darkness
Living Without Limits
When God sees you, He sees unlimited possibility. He sees unlimited potential. He sees unlimited resources. God’s grace and favor in your life enables you to become what He sees. He is faithful.
“He raised us up together with Him…that He might clearly demonstrate through the ages to come the immeasurable (limitless, surpassing) riches of His free grace (His unmerited favor)…” Ephesians 2:6-7
I’ve been listening to Pastor Judah Smith speak at my church (Lifechurch.tv) about God’s agape love for us. We have a God who knows the past and doesn’t hold it against us, but we also serve a God who knows the future and all the painful decisions we’re about to make, and He still doesn’t hold that against us. He loves us in the present. His love prevails today.
This concept rocked my world to think of the unchanging love of God. I set limits on my life because I don’t understand this kind of faithfulness. I cannot comprehend this kind of non-judgmental goodness. A God who knows darkness and still showers us in love.
I limit God’s work of love in my life because I don’t fully understand His unfading affections. I limit God in my thinking and doubt that He can still love me, with all His might, in my moment of weakness. I limit my steps with unbelief that He will catch me when I go broke and fall.
It’s a struggle to separate my conditional kind of love from the unconditional nature of God.
I’m thinking about in the book of Mark when Jesus couldn’t do mighty works in a particular town because of the unbelief of the people? The limits I put on my life can prevent the hand of Jesus from doing a work here.
Pastor Judah put it in perspective: God loves bad people. God doesn’t waste His love.
I felt so empowered by this. Even when I’m a bad person, God is loving me in that moment. There’s nothing that can hinder or diminish His kind of love.
Just this past week I struggled through a broken heart, burdened by 
loneliness from the Father. Today, my passion is blazing once again. Free in His everlasting love. My heart is awakened to His devotion, His love, not mine. In confidence, I’m stepping out in faith and expectancy. I know He created a life of open doors for His work to be accomplished, and I’m ready to walk through them. Multiply it, Lord.
I’m losing the limits. I’m ready to live the limitless life He has prepared for me!
Father, Your unlimited love and grace astonishes me. I know You have good things in store for me. Help me to remove the limits I’ve projected on my life and live in the abundant joy of Your surpassing love. I give You everything that I am and ask that You use me for Your glory. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
Vision and Darkness
Whenever God gives a vision to a Christian, it is as if He puts him in “the shadow of His hand” (Isaiah 49:2). The saint’s duty is to be still and listen. There is a “darkness” that comes from too much light—that is the time to listen. The story of Abram and Hagar in Genesis 16 is an excellent example of listening to so-called good advice during a time of darkness, rather than waiting for God to send the light. When God gives you a vision and darkness follows, wait. God will bring the vision He has given you to reality in your life if you will wait on His timing. Never try to help God fulfill His word. Abram went through thirteen years of silence, but in those years all of his self-sufficiency was destroyed. He grew past the point of relying on his own common sense. Those years of silence were a time of discipline, not a period of God’s displeasure. There is never any need to pretend that your life is filled with joy and confidence; just wait upon God and be grounded in Him (Isaiah 50:10–11).
Do I trust at all in the flesh? Or have I learned to go beyond all confidence in myself and other people of God? Do I trust in books and prayers or other joys in my life? Or have I placed my confidence in God Himself, not in His blessings? “I am Almighty God . . .” —El-Shaddai, the All-Powerful God (Genesis 17:1). The reason we are all being disciplined is that we will know God is real. As soon as God becomes real to us, people pale by comparison, becoming shadows of reality. Nothing that other saints do or say can ever upset the one who is built on God.
O Lord, with much dimness I draw near to You. Clear the dimness away from me and flood me with the light of Your presence.
Excerpt from ‘My Utmost For His Highest’ by Oswald Chambers
Walk while you have the light
Beware of not acting upon what you see in your moments on the mountaintop with God. If you do not obey the light, it will turn into darkness. “If therefore the light that is in you is darkness, how great is that darkness!” (Matthew 6:23).
The moment you forsake the matter of sanctification or neglect anything else on which God has given you His light, your spiritual life begins to disintegrate within you. Continually bring the truth out into your real life, working it out into every area, or else even the light that you possess will itself prove to be a curse.
The most difficult person to deal with is the one who has the prideful self-satisfaction of a past experience, but is not working it out in his everyday life. If you say you are sanctified, show it. The experience must be so genuine that it shows in your life. Beware of any belief that makes you self-indulgent or self-gratifying; that belief came from the pit of hell itself, regardless of how beautiful it may sound. Your theology must work itself out, exhibiting itself in your most common everyday relationships. Our Lord said, “. . . unless your righteousness exceeds the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 5:20).In other words, you must be more moral than the most moral person you know. You may know all about the doctrine of sanctification, but are you working it out in the everyday issues of your life? Every detail of your life, whether physical, moral, or spiritual, is to be judged and measured by the standard of the atonement by the Cross of Christ. -My Utmost For His Highest