The Darkness and Light Are the Same to Him

(Ps. 139:11 & 12)

The entire Psalm referenced is wonderful.  The Lord’s eye is on us from the “darkness” of the womb until our final earthly breath.  Will we acknowledge His love and care and stop trying to fix our lives?  Will we live in fear or allow the perfect love of a heavenly Father to embrace us?  We must be knowing Him closely as our heavenly Father.  The prayer Jesus taught the disciples begins “our Father”.  I think it should be called the “Disciple’s Prayer.”  The title “The Lord’s Prayer” should be applied to John 17.  Just a perspective to consider.

Are you afraid of the dark?  Spiritual darkness is real and can be intimidating and foreboding.  Think of Israel and Goliath.  As we grow in our relationship with our Father, as David did, we find we are encouraged to defeat enemies.  In David’s mind the outcome with Goliath was certain.  This was not because David was strong in His own strength, or being the tough guy.  No, it was because David had the learned the Lord’s strength in himself when he saved his father’s sheep from a bear and a lion.  He knew that the arrogant, defiant spirit manifesting through this enemy of God’s people could not survive.  And the Lord showed His people, His nation, that His deliverance comes from an unexpected source.  He chooses the weak things to confound the wise.  The Lord had chosen David for that hour.

I know of believers who have faced overt manifestations of darkness.  Some of this seems strange and weird to the Western, sophisticated mind.  Demons, principalities, and powers, are real.  See Ephesians 6:10-20.  While many enter into spiritual warfare, do we really know what are weapons are?  We may understand the armor but the actual waging of war is summarized in verses 18-20.  Praying in the Spirit for all the saints (believers) and for utterance to be given to ambassadors of the mystery of the gospel to speak boldly.  I have prayed loudly, and quietly, but if we are not praying according to the will of God as being revealed by the Spirit, it is empty noise.  Don’t be discouraged by those words.  All of us can learn to pray.  It does take time; time in His presence, learning to be aligned with His Spirit.

Some of us have grown up in more evidently dark, spiritual atmospheres.  Witchcraft takes different forms in different earthly cultures but the results are the same.  In the West, the darkness has come via a denial of spiritual reality.  The gospel of Jesus Christ and the kingdom of God has been has been diluted, corrupted resisted, and ignored.  And the patience of God has waited (1 Peter 3:20).  What time is it on the Lord’s clock, we might say?  As it was in the days of Noah, Jesus said.  A day will come when all will be exposed, the good, the bad, and the ugly.  And all the dark will be blown away forever.  I do hope for and look for that.

As we do look toward His coming, we resist darkness now.  Do not be afraid to be sent into dark places.  If He sends you, He will go before and behind you.  David was prepared in an obscure place.  Moses had his 40 years in the desert.  Israel had 40 years in the wilderness to lose its unbelief.  They (the young ones) learned to know the Lord as their source, their strength, their provision.  They learned they could trust Him and were led by His voice.  And His glorious Son, Jesus, was prepared for 30 years as part of a family.  He knew His Father from the womb.  If anyone knew what it was to be sent from the light of the presence of God into darkness, Jesus Christ knew that.  He came to a world lost in darkness.  The Greeks had been overcome by the Romans and their Republic was slipping into deep darkness, licentiousness, and depravity.  Yet the Lord sent His Son in divine wisdom and strength to destroy the works of the adversary, the kingdom of darkness.  He destroyed him who had the power of death, even the devil.  Do not fear the valley of the shadow of death, that dark place, for He is there with you.  The darkness and light are the same for Him.  He is light and the darkness cannot stand against it.