A man ran through a pitch dark room shouting, “I hate you, darkness! Go away! Stop being dark!”
Silence. The darkness didn’t go away. In fact, it didn’t even budge. For hours the man ranted and raved against the darkness in the room, but the darkness never wavered.
Finally another man walked into the room. He did not scream and curse the darkness. Instead, he walked resolutely across the room and turned on the light. The darkness was gone.
Sometimes I get so frustrated with the evil in the world that all I do is complain about how dark the darkness is. There are so many issues that I can get upset about, but there is only one solution: Jesus, the Light of the world.
A few days ago, as I was reading in the Gospel of John, I was excited to find Jesus’ description of how He “turned the light on” for the world.
“If I had not come and spoken unto them, they had not had sin: but now they have no cloak for their sin.
“If I had not done among them the works which none other man did, they had not had sin…” John 15:22, 24a
Jesus spoke and lived in a way that set Him apart from everyone else. However, Jesus was not just trying to be unique. The purpose of His set apart life was so people would know that they had sin. Unless light shines into a room, there is no way to tell what is in the room. Similarly, unless the light of Christ shines into a person’s life, that person will never know the true state of their heart or see their need.
Think back to the day you accepted Jesus as your Savior. Think about how different your life would be now if you had never done that. I remember what I was like. I remember feeling miserably hopeless – and I grew up in a Christian family! I would never have had peace, I would never have gone to VOICE, and my life would be a wreck right now if it weren’t for Jesus in me.
“But after that the kindness and love of God our Saviour toward man appeared” (Titus 3:4). No one becomes a Christian without the kindness and love of God “appearing” to him. That’s “turning the light on!”
As we learn to see unsaved people the way God sees them (see Joel’s post for more on this), let’s look for ways to “turn the light on” for them. How can we speak and live in a way that will shine Jesus, the Light of the world, into the lives of others?
