Living in Light

Friday, February 10, 2023

If anyone claims, “I am living in the light,” but hates a fellow believer, that person is still living in darkness.  Anyone who loves a fellow believer is living in the light and does not cause others to stumble.  But anyone who hates a fellow believer is still living and walking in darkness.  Such a person does not know the way to go, having been blinded by the darkness.   

1 John 2:9-11

John, the beloved apostle wrote about loving others…a lot!

But John wasn’t always so compassionate; at one point in time, he and his brother James were nicknamed the sons of thunder[1] by Jesus.  This was because the brothers were prone to anger and knee-jerk reactions. 

On the road to Jerusalem some of the crowds rejected Jesus.  James and John asked for permission to call down fire from heaven to burn up the unbelievers.  Jesus rebuked them and they had to recheck their theology of crowd control.[2]

Question?

How does a man go from wanting to incinerate a whole crowd for simply disagreeing with your position…to one who says that kind of hate means you don’t know the first thing about God?

Pretty simple, actually; John was not so set in his dark ways that he couldn’t entertain the possibility that he was wrong.  That’s called “being teachable.” 

And when that’s possible, then light coming into your life is also possible.  And the kind of light Jesus brings will dispel a multitude of darkness!

Paul said to be transformed by the renewing of your mind.[3]  This is what had happened to John, a thunderous, judgmental, hard-headed reactionary; He entertained the truth of Jesus’ kind of love and it changed everything.

John went from that kind of mindset where you’re absolutely certain you could straighten out anybody, because you’ve got a corner on the truth market, and everyone should do things your way…..to living in the light of God’s truth, that loving others is the only way to keep from stumbling around in life.

John learned the humility of love; he learned how to live in the light.

For You Today  

How’s the light in your world today?

If it needs turning up a little, do a love-check on your relationships; entertain the possibility that loving others is better than convincing others you’re right.

Better to be beloved, than a son of thunder!

You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road; have a blessed day!

Go to VIDEO (read by author)

There are about 2,000 devotional posts and 400 sermons in the Rocky Road Devotions library.  To dig deeper on today’s topic, explore some of these: 

Where Love and Truth Meet  and  Against the Tide 

This is an updated version of “Living in LIght published on Rocky Road Devotions August 13, 2013

Images:  Title via Wikimedia Commons   Images without citation are either personal property of the author, or in public domain.

Unless noted, Scripture quoted from The New Living Translation^©  

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[1] Mark 3:17

[2] Luke 9:53-55

[3] Romans 12:2

The Secret to King David's Greatness - Part 4

[1]

Monday, April 18, 2016

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Teach me your decrees, O Lord; I will keep them to the end.
Give me understanding and I will obey your instructions; I will put them into practice with all my heart.
Make me walk along the path of your commands, for that is where my happiness is found.  Give me an eagerness for your laws rather than a love for money!  Turn my eyes from worthless things, and give me life through your word.
Reassure me of your promise, made to those who fear you.  Help me abandon my shameful ways; for your regulations are good.  I long to obey your commandments!  Renew my life with your goodness.          Psalm 119:33-40 ^(NLT)

We have been looking at keys to unlocking the human heart, transforming the evil in our human nature into Godliness – turning the heart towards God’s will.  King David is our example.  We have learned that David was teachable, pro-active in his walk with God, and he had a keen sense of what constitutes real riches.

The final piece of King David’s greatness puzzle:

David trusted God and it created a 

longing for God within

Reassure me of your promise, made to those who fear you.  Help abandon my shameful ways; for your regulations are good.  I long to obey your commandments!  Renew my life with your goodness.

Plugging-into greatness, or anything God wants to bring about in your life always, always, ALWAYS finally rests upon the leap of faith – a surrender to His will over your will.

David’s prayer at this point is asking for reassurance; he asked God to create faith within himself.  He trusted, yet knew he needed help to trust deeper.  David was asking like the centurion in the Gospel account who approached Jesus to heal his daughter.  Jesus told the man it was possible if he believed.  The centurion replied, I believe; help me with my doubts.[2]

This is the kind of thing that reveals the heart’s longing to be better, to love better.  It reveals the desire to be cleansed and pure within, not just the appearance of goodness that others can see.  David said, I long to obey…help me with my wandering will. 

David’s greatness was never a matter of accomplishments or physical strength, or even his popularity among the people of Israel – David’s greatness was a heart that longed to be God’s servant, and a mind that understood he was unequal to even the smallest part of that without God’s grace working on him from the inside-out!

Sometimes I look at my desk while I’m writing (like right now)

and see the incredibly disorganized mess of my workspace, and I think:  how in the world do I ever get anything done?  And then, in my visible shortcoming, what I realize is that the longing to be better, more organized and productive in God’s Kingdom simply highlights for me how unalterable is the reality that I am not only not perfect…I am woefully-inadequate to do anything for God; it is HE who is doing all things through me. 

Now, it’s hard to imagine my desk-mess could inspire confidence – but it’s the very reassurance I need; it brings renewal to my soul to know that God can work even through the disorganized, frenzied soul who is willing to trust him deeper.

For You Today

Like David, you can find the greatness God has in store for your heart and life.  It’s a matter of going a little deeper in the trust department…whatever YOUR desk looks like!

You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road today…and have a blessed day!

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[1] Title Image:   By Jastrow, via Wikimedia Commons

[2] Mark 9:24^(NLT)

The Secret to King David's Greatness - Part 2

[1]

Thursday, April 14, 2016

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Teach me your decrees, O Lord; I will keep them to the end.
Give me understanding and I will obey your instructions; I will put them into practice with all my heart.
Make me walk along the path of your commands, for that is where my happiness is found.  Give me an eagerness for your laws rather than a love for money!  Turn my eyes from worthless things, and give me life through your word.
Reassure me of your promise, made to those who fear you.  Help me abandon my shameful ways; for your regulations are good.  I long to obey your commandments!  Renew my life with your goodness.          

Psalm 119:33-40 ^(NLT)

We are looking at a few of the keys found in the heart of King David which transform human nature into Godly nature – turning the heart towards God’s will.  The first noticeable one is that David was teachable; his prayer was:

Teach me your decrees, O Lord; I will keep them to the end.
Give me understanding and I will obey your instructions; I will put them into practice with all my heart.

Next we discover that:

David wanted a Pro-active Faith

Make me walk along the path of your commands, for that is where my happiness is found.

One of the reasons God gave his people the law through Moses was so they could make positive steps towards God.  Unfortunately many people never grow out of the childish notion that the only reason we have God’s law is because the Lord is always angry and wants to find new ways to punish us.  And we, poor frail humans, can’t possibly keep up with all the do’s and don’ts of the Ten Commandments.

But that isn’t the case; God gave the law as a gift, a helpful instructor to show us how impossible life is on our own, and as an invitation to trust his grace.

A passive walk with God, (which is the child’s here I am, feed me, clothe me, soothe me and never let me be unhappy posture) would be a contradiction; passive and active are opposites.  Even though the commandments are written mostly in the negative sense, (don’t steal, lie, kill, etc.), they do not imply simply DOING NOTHING.  To the contrary, the commands, by excluding evil, demand movement towards good…which is movement towards God. 

For instance, in this way:

·       don’t lie means live in truth

·       don’t steal commands, learn to be generous 

·       don’t kill means preserve and promote life.

The movement from negative to positive is seen in David’s life.  When he was being hounded by King Saul, David had the perfect opportunity to take-out his persecutor.  Saul rested in a dark cave during the pursuit; he just didn’t know David was already there, and as David stood over the unprotected king, a simple thrust of the sword could have ended all his problems…at least from a human standpoint…vengeance!  But David moved to the higher ground of a proactive stance of leaving vengeance to God.

Jesus told the story of a woman who swept her house clean and then made the analogy of getting rid of bad stuff (don’t lie, steal, kill).  The problem, Jesus taught, was that as soon as you evict these bad friends, if you don’t fill the space with good, proactive steps, the bad will gather seven-fold their original number and move back into your house.

Just like nature abhors a vacuum, so an empty space in your spiritual walk will be filled with something.   In his life David (mostly) chose proactive steps of moving towards God.  He put into practice the positive side of God’s law, promoting life, truth, honesty and generosity.

For You Today

So…go ahead and explore Exodus 20 today; pick one of those commandments and figure out how to read the negative and receive the positive.  And then, like King David, put it into proactive practice…wholeheartedly!

You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road today…and have a blessed day!

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[1] Title Image:   By Jastrow, via Wikimedia Commons

The Secret to King David's Greatness

[1]

Wednesday, April 13, 2016

Go to VIDEO

Teach me your decrees, O Lord; I will keep them to the end.  Give me understanding and I will obey your instructions; I will put them into practice with all my heart.  Make me walk along the path of your commands, for that is where my happiness is found.  Give me an eagerness for your laws rather than a love for money!

Turn my eyes from worthless things, and give me life through your word.  Reassure me of your promise, made to those who fear you.  Help me abandon my shameful ways; for your regulations are good.  I long to obey your commandments!  Renew my life with your goodness.  Psalm 119:33-40 ^(NLT)

In the New Testament, ^{(Acts 13)} Paul preached the Gospel to the synagogue at Antioch.  In that sermon He pointed out to the Jews that their great ancestor, King David, one whom God declared a man after God’s own heart, was also the ancestor of Jesus, the Son of God, who had been crucified. 

If there was a hero in ancient Israel, it was David.  And the secret to David’s greatness is found not so much in events like his successes in battle, or taking out Goliath, the giant Philistine, or his rule as the king.  These were merely events that displayed David’s greatness, but were only the natural results of the source, which was the heart of a man devoted fully to JHWH.

In this Psalm (attributed to David) we see several clues to that greatness:  humility, desire to know and understand God’s ways, and a willingness to be taught how to honor God in everything he did.  These are the keys to a great heart.

For the next few days let’s look at a few of the keys to transforming human nature into Godly nature – turning the heart towards God’s will.  The first quality is:

David was Teachable

Teach me your decrees, O Lord; I will keep them to the end.  Give me understanding and I will obey your instructions; I will put them into practice with all my heart.

To be teachable does not mean you are willing to sit and accumulate knowledge; it means the disciple is willing to understand as God imparts knowledge AND then put it into practice in his life – wholeheartedly.

I knew a young man once who told me he had come across the Biblical command to tithe.  He wanted to know all about that, because he wanted to be obedient, but it seemed rather a large demand that God was making on his life.  After we talked about it for a while, it seemed to dawn on him that his initial question to me, does God expect me to tithe on my net paycheck, or the gross, had revealed that his so-called willingness to be obedient was a sham.  He had come asking the preacher how little he could give and still be a tither.  He really didn’t want to know how much he could give; he wanted to know what he could hold onto.

I’m happy to report that young man truly began to understand God’s instruction that the tithe is a beginning place, and as you grow on the inside because of faithful tithing, the joy from obedience becomes a hunger to give as a blessing to other’s needs.  I’m still in touch with that young man (who is now an old man), and his hunger to BE a blessing has left his desire to hold onto God’s blessings in the dust.  And God’s faithfulness in meeting that man’s needs – well that’s a whole book to be written!

Tomorrow we’ll look at another key – the pro-active walk.

For You Today

When it comes to being teachable, you can start with small things if you want – but that is only if you want to keep doing what you want…and live in your own strength…and wind up not listening to God at all. 

Rather, start rather with the largest issue – start with your heart!

You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road today…and have a blessed day!

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[1] Title Image:   By Jastrow, via Wikimedia Commons