Day 4245 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

John 3:20 NIV

The darkness deception

It’s something of this invention whose intention is the confusion of, well, everyone. And that’s because, well, the devil seeks still to steal and kill and destroy as many as he might and that from both the purpose of this life and thus then too the promise of the next. Indeed, our enemy has never stopped working to make it seem that the darkness is the place for us to be. Mostly only because it’s the place where he resides and I guess he too must be afraid of the dark as he clearly wants for as many to join him there as he can convinced to do so all so that he’s not lonely.

Or something like that.

But the problem is that, well, it makes sense to us too as we too are afraid of the dark. Or at least as kids we were, which, when you stop and think about it kind of adds yet another layer to why it is that Christ implores us unto a life explored through a childlike faith. For indeed, kids are afraid of the dark, something we grown-ups mock them for. And why?

Because as we’ve gotten older and thus perceptively wiser, at least in regard to how this world works, we’ve apparently come to find that there’s nothing to the darkness to be afraid of or thus worried about.

My how wrong we are!

But alas, that is the deception of darkness, one especially powerful unto those people who, thanks to such delinquencies as say pride and gluttony and lust and such, find they sort of kind of every now and then don’t really mind all that much that the darkness offers to allow them the benefit of hiding some stuff. And that because, thanks to such delinquencies as pride and gluttony and lust and such, we’ve as adults come up with a lot of stuff that we’d rather have hidden than seen.

Why?

Because as adults we’ve become so wise in both our own eyes and that to the ways of the world that we’ve kind of just stopped trying to do better. We’ve instead chosen to head the other direction on the ladder in which we just eventually slide comfortably to rock bottom and embrace the fact that anything better would take entirely too much effort and so we decide to do what’s impossible rather than realizing the simplicity of that which is promised and walking in a likewise simple accordance.

Indeed, the deception of the darkness offering to hide our many decays and denials and doubts and disbeliefs and other themselves darkened and depraved deeds, it has us all convinced that we’re somehow better off to try forever doing what we can’t than we ever could be embracing what we can.

For the darkness tells us that we needn’t change but can rather just continue doing all the messed up things that we’ve come to do and just hide them where nobody can see them.

But the Light tells us that while not all will sleep, something also usually done in the dark, all will be changed.

A fact we all now fear thanks to both how far the fall and how amazing the fail in regard to how little we care. Because we should care. We should be worried over our vast wickedness. We should despise our decay and simply hate our hollowness and the horrors to which it’s shown us and continues to show us. Yes, we shouldn’t be able to have become so comfortable within our ability to do so much so wrong.

And yet we have because we’ve all become convinced that there’s nothing to be afraid of down here in the dark.

Again, my how wrong we are.

Because, you see my friends, there’s nothing good about the dark. There’s nothing beneficial about the widely desired opportunity to hide that which we’re ashamed of. There is nothing to be gained in our doing inside every day those many things that we know are wrong.

We just continue to do them because, rather than the dark, we’re now just afraid of change.

Indeed, as a people we’ve become so set in our ways that we’d rather continue doing wrong in the hope that we can hide it than we would in learning to do right and not have to worry about hiding it as, well, nobody ever feels the need to hide what they’ve done right now do they? Rather those who do something right, something good, something upstanding, outstanding, aren’t they usually more than okay with everyone knowing about it as such common knowledge tends to lean towards praise and applause and approval and amazement and acceptance?

Though I guess I might be a little bit off in this too as, well, anymore all that most down here seem to do in the ways of praise and applause and approval is itself a matter reserved for darkness.

Indeed, these days people are more prone to be found in approval of the darkness and praise of the deceptive than they are of the upright and honest.

Kind of like how those folks gathered at the foot of the cross on that one day way back when and cheered and laughed and thought they’d won when the darkness they’d let inside managed to get this Jesus guy to die and finally then leave them alone.

Reckon they were just tired of all the healing and help and hope that He’d brought.

But that’s probably because the darkness also makes it really hard to see. Which is oddly enough the thing that we’ve come to consider the most beneficial about it. It’s the promise of concealment, or at least the hope of concealment. It’s that it offers to hide our mistakes, our misunderstandings, our misconceptions, our messed up parts and many imperfections. The darkness gives us all these shadows in which to store away our sins and stupidities.

The darkness promises to never let anyone else see who we really are as is defined by all we’ve really done.

Problem is that the Bible says that “there is nothing hidden that will not be disclosed, and nothing concealed that will not be known or brought out into the open.”

Why?

Because, well, “God is light; in him there is no darkness at all.” And it’s this same God, the only One there is, who will stand to judge us all one day, a day upon which He will “repay each person according to what they have done.” Which, granted, sounds pretty good to everyone as, well, repayment, or as some translations translate it “reward”, does seem to sound pretty harmless if not in fact hopeful. I mean, being paid back for all we’ve done, or again “rewarded” as some versions put it, that’s usually a good thing as far as we’re concerned.

After all, we’re all pretty easily convinced that we’ve done quite a lot of pretty good stuff. May have made a few minor mistakes here or there, but for the most part we’ve done mostly good. Just look at how great our lives look! Look at all the prizes and treasures we’ve won. Look at all the incredible things we’ve done. Indeed, “Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and in your name drive out demons and in your name perform many miracles?”

Yes, look at all the important and meaningful and borderline miraculously amazing things we’ve done and become and accomplished.

Just don’t pay any attention to that steaming pile of our life’s garbage smoldering in the shadows.

Because we both don’t want you to see all the sins and shortcomings we’ve not merely settled for but so vastly accepted that, having fully embraced them for the fun, the fame, the fortune and friendship that such filth and foulness finds for us here, we’ve become so unwilling to lose them that we’ve become unable to change them.

No, this is the deception of darkness.

It manages to convince us that we’ll have more luck, find better success, get further in terms of life and making sure that it goes our version of right should we continue attempting what inevitability says we can’t accomplish than we would in humbling ourselves and accomplishing what little we can.

For we’ve become a people so adverse to change that we now prefer to remain the same.

We prefer to remain the same.

Why?

Because the devil has us convinced that we can find more success in staying the same than we ever could in agreeing to change. Yes, he’s convinced us all that we have something to lose. That in our lives as we’ve chosen, yes, chosen to live them that we have in them things that we can’t afford to let go or let be known. That we have to continue hiding, a responsibility willingly undertaken because, well, we know we’ve done a lot that’s really wrong.

But rather than changing that, trying to do better, trying to be better, no. No we’ll just settle for doing the impossible rather than turning and embracing the promise.

A promise that the darkness helps us to ignore.

The promise that one day we will wash up on Heaven’s shore and there and then be judged for all we’ve done.

Even those things, especially those things that we’ve done that we tried to hide. A judgement in which our every attempt to hide them will become then a personal testimony that we ourselves knew them to be wrong.

For, again, nobody tries to hide what they know they do right.

And so if we continue trying to hide anything, doesn’t this prove that we know that it’s something not worth being seen? That it’s something not good? That it’s something wrong, something bad, something horrible, monstrous, wicked even?

Problem is that the darkness offers us places to hide such things. Or at least it says it does. But you see, that’s the issue. It’s that, well, it can’t. For now it can. For now it does. Indeed, everyone has their little skeletons in their little closets which are things that they don’t talk about at parties or let their coworkers, neighbors, friends or even family members know about.

The danger is that we even think that maybe God won’t know about them.

But, again, “there is nothing hidden that will not be disclosed, and nothing concealed that will not be known or brought out into the open.”

Thus hiding is actually impossible. Concealing anything from Him is something that cannot be done. It’s a war that can’t be won. Friends, He knows our hearts! He’s heard every word that we’ve never spoken anywhere nor to anyone other than to ourselves and that inside our minds. He knows everything about us. There is nothing that has ever been hidden from Him.

How do I know this?

“God is light; in him there is no darkness at all.”

He sees everything, knows everything, hears everything. Because He is light and, well, He’s too then omnipresent which means everywhere. And because He’s everywhere, in everything, so too then is He omniscient, meaning that He has complete and total knowledge and understanding, meaning then that He knows everything there is to know, even about me and you and all we’ve done. And, perhaps biggest problem of all, He’s also omnipotent which means that He also has unlimited power and ability and authority.

Basically this is all His show and there’s nothing about it, about us that He doesn’t know and won’t retain the final approval or disproval of.

Issue then becomes what we yesterday discussed in regard to His having all but already rendered His verdict via the coming of the Christ. Indeed, “this is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but people loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil.” And that because, “everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that their deeds will be exposed.”

And that’s a very big problem because He who is the Light who has come into the world, the Light that we’ve all hated because He dared expose our wickedness and sinfulness and selfishness and sliminess, He’s coming back! And when He does all that we’ve tried to hide will be known and all that we’ve then done will be known too.

Hopefully we can see why this is an issue.

Indeed, I pray that we’re all terrified of that Day. I pray that we all become so very scared of it that we find the audacity to start changing in light of it. That we stop doing those things that we feel the need to hide. That we quit settling for doing, saying, thinking those things that we know don’t feel right, look right, sound right. Yes, I pray we stop living lives that we know aren’t right.

Something we all know already as, well, if we’re trying to hide it then there’s an obvious awareness that we’re not good with it. Otherwise, as the next verse points out, “whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what they have done has been done in the sight of God.”

That’s the simplicity of openness and honesty.

It has nothing to hide and thus no need of the darkness nor its offer to help us hide, and that only for a time, the things we’d rather not change.

It does everything as if we understand that God knows we’re doing it. It does everything in awareness that God will judge it. It does everything without fear of His being disappointed by it or disapproving of it. Rather if we live in the Light, the same Light that literally died to live inside of us, then we’ll be able to actually start looking forward to that Day rather than feeling as if we need to keep looking for some way to avoid it, postpone it, hide the many mistakes we’ve made and make before it.

All things we can’t do.

And yet all things that the darkness says we can.

Friends, that’s the problem. It’s the deception of darkness. It’s managed to convince us that we’ll have better luck hiding that which cannot actually be hidden than we could in changing what will be changed.

Darkness has us fleeing from that which is inevitable in preference for attempting the impossible.

And, well, that’s pretty much as stupid as it gets.

Look, the point is that, yeah, we’ve all become pretty big fans of the dark because it offers us shadows which promise to conceal our sins and shortcomings and so many flaws and even more failures. But darkness doesn’t overcome light. Light will rather always illuminate the darkness.

Darkness cannot win and so then it cannot really accomplish what it so clearly continues to offer.

For nothing will be hidden. Nothing will be kept secret. Nothing will ever manage to slip by God.

Perhaps we stop living as if those things are possible and start living as if we know they’re not.

Will that be easy to do? No. And that’s because we’ve all of us spent an entire lifetime learning to not be afraid of the dark, actually managing to sadly become friends with it instead. But again my friends, He calls us to a childlike faith and, well, kids are often afraid of the dark. They avoid the dark. They appreciate a good nightlight to keep the boogeyman away.

Jesus is our light in this night and He is there to lead us away from the boogeyman.

Why don’t we let Him? Why do we refuse Him, deny Him, reject Him?

If not simply because we know that He has no reason to like, to accept, to approve of what He will see whenever we do let Him in?

Friends, Jesus isn’t afraid of us and all the problems we’ve found in these lives spent stealing ever away into the shadows of self and sin. Told us plain that He understands that it’s the sick who need the help.

He knows how sick we are.

And He’s proven He will do anything He can to help, even when it meant His laying down His life in our place on our cross.

He won’t run away from us when He sees who we really are and what all we’ve sadly done. In fact He came and tracked us down to help us see that who we’ve been doesn’t have to be who we become but that we can change, we can turn, we can repent and we will find everlasting life because of it.

For that’s a part of His promise too. That if these darkened lives we will lose, He will then see Him in us and thus us in Him and He will then invite us in to spend forever with Him in all that Heaven is.

Which side of the promise do we want to experience?

The worry of hoping that all the wicked stuff we’ve done and do won’t be seen even though He says it will? Or rather the joy of knowing that we’ve nothing left to hide thanks to His having come to save our lives via our agreeing to have them changed?

Don’t know about you but I’ll take joy or worry every time.

Because, again, I know that the darkness only offers what is impossible as nothing can be actually hidden from God. Do we then keep trying the impossible or do we rather allow Him to humble us unto the point in which we can finally see and understand the joy of His promise?

Again, as for me, I’ll take accepting the promised inevitable over trying the literally impossible.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold