By Jessica Brodie
Did you know that if you hold a candle very close to a wall, the flame will cast no shadow?
I don’t know the science behind all of this—it has something to do with the fact that a flame is not a solid object, so the light actually passes through the flames. But to me it’s such a striking analogy of what the apostle John proclaimed in 1 John 1:5 when he said, “God is light; in him there is no darkness at all” (NIV).
As a follower of Jesus, I know very well that we walk in a dark and shadowy world. Forces of evil gather around us, clamoring for our attention, ready to wrangle us astray given just an inkling of a foothold. Those forces are fighting for our children and our families, fighting for our souls, and trying their hardest to undermine the good work we do for the Lord. If they can’t get their way through obstacles and temptation, those evil forces plague us with self-doubt and other spiritual warfare.
Yet in the midst of all of that, God’s light overcomes the darkness. Good outweighs the evil. I see it over and over again.
This morning, I had a good conversation with a disabled veteran who spent many years as a street preacher until his knees and hip got so bad he couldn’t do the work anymore. An older man now, he shared that in his younger years, he’d been an alcoholic and had been living alone in a trailer, drinking his life away. Then one day, drunk and alone in his home, he heard a man’s voice ask, “Are you going to just waste your life, or are you finally going to start living my way?”
The question had him pacing through his home, searching for whoever had spoken. Yet no one was there. He opened the door and went outside, finally realizing it had been God speaking to him.
The next morning he woke up and had absolutely zero taste for alcohol—ever again.
But what happened next was even more profound. His parents asked him to go visit a man’s house, and he agreed. But when he climbed the steps to the house, even before he approached the door, the smell of alcohol was overpowering.
Inside the house, he saw a man. And he knew exactly what to say.
“God wants to know if you want to save your life,” he asked the man.
He and the man’s mom, who was also in the home, spent a long time praying and praying for the man’s liberation from alcohol. A few days later, he bumped into him in the grocery store.
“It’s the craziest thing,” the man told him, thanking him profusely. “I don’t have a taste for it anymore. Not even a drop!”
Soon, the wayward-struggler-turned-street-preacher found he had a gift for evangelism—and that the Holy Spirit within him would show him, with overwhelmingly wretched smells, when a person was also imprisoned by the shackles of alcohol.
The light within him, God’s light, was far more powerful than the evil he encountered, even in the darkest of situations. And over and over again, he was able to help God triumph in a person’s life.
I believe most people don’t want to be evil. They want to walk on God’s path. And just like the prodigal son in Luke 15:11-32, after a time wandering astray—often when the money runs out and they hit rock bottom—they’ll come to their senses and direct their feet once more to righteousness. Sometimes it takes us a while to get there, but I think most of us desire to walk with the Lord deep down.
Even if it’s a person who doesn’t yet know Jesus, doesn’t yet understand the saving grace of the gospel, I think their soul already knows the truth.
It’s the same truth the birds and the creatures of the forest and the fishes in the sea understand. As Luke 19:40 proclaims, even the rocks cry out the majesty and awesomeness of the Lord. God is triumphant and almighty, and nothing else on this earth or in all the universe can possibly come close.
Remember this, my friends. Sometimes it feels like we’re walking in darkness, or maybe like we’re tiptoeing through a minefield. We never know when one wrong step will lead to catastrophe. But no matter what we experience on this earth, we can hold fast to the truth that God is sovereign, that we have salvation in Jesus Christ, and nothing else matters. At the end of this life—one way or the other, however it ends—our home is in heaven, and we know the light of God, the light of Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit, shine with triumph. They overcome the darkness.
Like that candle held to the wall, there is no darkness. God cannot possibly cast a shadow.
Today, know this in your soul: If you belong to the Lord, darkness has no power over you. So stand up straight and walk in the light of the Lord, now and forever. Amen, and thanks be to God!
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