VARYING DEGREES OF LIGHT

The struggle to walk in the Light of Christ in this wicked world is at times; like a ship in a storm at sea!  It's a matter of holding on and crying out to God; because there is nothing to fight against the pounding waves and the power of the winds ripping your sails apart!  How often we Christians feel defeated, or tired of trying when everyone around us doesn't seem to be?  How often we stifle that hurt feeling, or suppress the anger seething inside, only to find we are depressed; because we have not dealt with it?  Well we are to obey Christ and walk and talk and think and love as HE does aren't we? Sooo we cannot say what is truly on our minds, are conscious of how it will be received or damage it can do, and submissively seek to forgive the hurt...stifling isn't the answer!  It will just build up like a volcano (perhaps that is what we can learn from them).  There is always an undercurrent that will either "move" things (us from holiness) or "explode" (our old man returns full of self)!

So how do we deal with such?  I have been reading about living in 'absolute surrender'....and singing the song by "The Newsboys"...."I wanna live with abandon"!  However my life is far from it!!  Why do I walk so well in His Light for a time, only to fall back into the world, and the 'old nature' appears as if it had never left?  My soul hungers for the days when I felt His Presence, I heard His Voice, and saw His Work in my life and in answers to prayers!! That joy that sparked my day with Light, used to permeate everything I thought, said and did! I want that and to KEEP IT!!

I look at the Lights in the world...the Sun, is ever faithful like God is.  The Moon has varying phases.  We are to reflect Christ into this dark world...like the Moon.  Sometimes we are a 'hairline" barely visible, or a quarter, half or full moon of Light, or obscured by clouds of worry, fear, sorrow, anger and hurts...or we are a BIG BOLD HARVEST MOON!  Like God, the Sun is ever-present...though we cannot see it when it is nighttime...it isn't gone, we are just moved away for a bit!  So is the Moon.  We may not always be in the fullest of illumination...but we are still here! Our nearness to either Light is based on the movement of the earth.  While we cannot control the rotation of the earth or its orbit and axis...we can control our nearness to God!  We need to remember, that if it feels like nighttime-- dark, lonely and quiet---He is still there--I need to be trusting, obedient, believing, and focused on being filled with Light; not on the problems and people of my daily life who "darken" my path.  If I continually surrender self to Him...not stifle myself to Him...emptying my "self" tendencies...out of the vessel of my soul and filling it up with Him...what Light there will be!!!