shadows

There's nothing quite like a hot cup of soup and some time alone with the Lord between classes and meetings on a cold Monday morning...

Every Sunday night at youth group I get the chance to have some discussion time with the girls after our message and last night was definitely the best night of that so far. It all becomes so worthwhile when one of your favorite kids comes up to you afterward with a look of excitement and says "I think I just figured something out." So encouraging.

Last night flowed beautifully and we talked about John 3 and how Jesus says in verse 17 that he was sent "not to condemn the world, but to save the world". It's sometimes important when working with middle schoolers to take a step back and look at what the word "condemn" means and we had a really great conversation about how Jesus didn't come just to point out our insufficiencies, but to provide a solution for them. That's kind of what takes Christianity out of being a list of do's and don'ts and into being about hope, love, and personal relationships. I think too often we forget the second half of the story... that Jesus didn't come just to condemn us but also to offer us hope, be the solution, and give us life to the full.

That being understood, we moved into John 3:19 where it says this: "This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but men loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil." Let's pause here.  Right now I'm studying a book called One by Priscilla Shirer that focuses on finding Freedom in Christ. I'll unpack that more another day, but for now I will say this: Today Priscilla was talking about the perks of our sin and how we, much like the Israelites in Exodus, aren't willing to leave things behind and rely on God to daily provide for us. We get caught up in the perks of our sin-- the way it feels, the popularity of it, the ease... Thinking through that I was reminded of our conversation last night about how "men loved darkness instead of light". I'll interject here for a quick story.

I have a friend whom I love to pieces but I hate to play games with. He cheats. It's as simple as that. Once last year a bunch of us were playing Murder In the Dark in my apartment. If you've never played, the concept is simple-- you walk around in the dark and the designated killer grabs people's necks, they fall to the floor, someone screams, the lights come on, and we try and figure out who the killer was. In our situation, once you were a dead person you got to go sit on the couch. Now, my apartment has large windows on the front of it so it didn't get quite dark enough to play properly so we enacted a rule that you would just close your eyes which seemed to work pretty well. I was around the third or fourth person to die so I took my spot on the couch alongside my friend who had died earlier in the game. The beauty of being out was that you could see well enough to figure out who the murderer was thanks to the lights outside the window. It was at that point in the game that I realized my friend (who had been out for several rounds) was getting up off of the couch and killing people quietly, both ruining the game and confusing the murderer.

But in the darkness, nobody had any idea. It wasn't until the light revealed it to me that I had any idea what was going on. Had everyone been able to use that light to see, his cheating would have been ruined. But when the lights came on he looked innocent and was holding secret victories. The point here? We can hide in the dark. When the lights come on, we're often found sitting quietly on the couch looking innocent, having our 'church faces' on, and pretending we've got it all together. That's why John 3 says the men love the dark... it's easy to hide reality in the dark. Though let's be real, nothing is hidden from the Lord anyway.

Having freedom in Christ often means leaving behind the "perks of our sin" in exchange for stepping into the light. When we think about our time in sin, we usually don't think about the hardships it caused us-- we focus on the perks. Why? Because that is what makes us feel good, and we are comfortable with keeping the rest of it pushed into the dark corners. We hide it, even from ourselves. So what is is that we are hiding? The rest of the chapter goes on to say this: "Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that his deeds will be exposed. But whoever lives by truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what he has done has been done through God." We talked last night about some practical ways that we can begin to step into the light but since I am now running late for my meeting, I will leave you with this: Figure out what it is that you're hiding in the dark that God is calling you to reveal to him in the light and do just that-- Let the Lord know. (It's not like He doesn't already anyway, right?) Pray through it. Find someone to pray through it with. It's the first practical step towards beginning to walk in Freedom in Christ.

Marinate in that thought for a little while... I know I am. My love to you, friends. I'm off to work again.