I was leading a mission trip last spring, and I was responsible for leading the guys in the morning. The morning after a full day of concrete is not an easy morning to wake up teenage boys up. So I decided to just turn on the lights and do the loudest rooster crow I could. When teenage boys wake up quickly things go bad. Did I abuse my authority by waking them up an hour early… Maybe.
John the disciple knew Jesus as good as any man did in this time. He wrote 4 books of the new testament and never referred to himself by name. He referred to himself as the disciple Jesus loved or the beloved. He knew Jesus. In his letters he referred to Jesus as love and light. When we think of the light of Jesus we are often afraid.
John 3:20 All who do evil hate the light and refuse to go near it for fear their sins will be exposed.
Yet John says we miss understand the light when we are afraid. We think Jesus is going to use the light the way I did in Honduras. We think it will hurt and expose. But that is NOT the gospel…
1 John 1:5 This is the message we heard from Jesus and now declare to you: God is light, and there is no darkness in him at all. 6 So we are lying if we say we have fellowship with God but go on living in spiritual darkness; we are not practicing the truth. 7 But if we are living in the light, as God is in the light, then we have fellowship with each other, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, cleanses us from all sin.
Followers of Jesus love the light. They know it is gentle and kind. They know even when brought into christian community there is no condemnation, no record of wrongs kept, or fear. Instead they know that by bringing sin in the light they will receive mercy, grace, and freedom. As a result, this believer walking in the light can walk in joy! Real joy… Joy without consequence… Joy without shame… Real Joy! I want this joy! I want this kind of christian brothers! I want to walk in the light!
Where is there darkness in you that needs to be brought into the light? What if we simply misunderstand the gospel? Often we believe that sin is fun. We believe that the ecstasy found in sin and the thrill in perversion is better than life God’s way. Could Jesus replace that ecstasy and thrill found in sin? If this were true we would come quickly to Jesus!
John is saying this is the Jesus he knows. When you know Jesus you do not want to sin because it is not light and there is not real life and joy in it. So today who do you need to confess the things you have hidden in darkness? What do you need to bring into the light?
Go be vital! Be in the Light!
Recklessly, obsessively following Jesus
Brandon Sereg
