Living in the Light: Follow Your Inner Guidance to Create a New Life and a New World

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And so he says, “The prophet says, ‘Awake thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light.’” He puts Christ in Isaiah’s words, because Christ is the fulfillment. May I add this? Most Bible commentators believe that this is a line from an Easter hymn sung by the early church – a line from an Easter hymn. It’s an invitation. Somebody may be sitting in our congregation right now and saying, “Well, I guess I’m in the darkness. I look at my life and I don’t see goodness and righteousness and truth. I don’t see Jesus Christ alive in my life. I’ve never known God. I’m in the dark intellectually, and I see moral evil on every hand.” Royal Yoga is the highest and most important of the yoga traditions—an all-embrracing path to personal transformation that reaches beyond any approach to wellness and healing that exists today. Whatever you are doing to enhance your life, Royal Yoga can bring you more of everything you want; it brings every experience, no matter how small, into the light. By learning to live in the light, you deliberately and consciously accept your true self as a being of infinite possibilities, unfettered by worry or self-doubt. For you have spent enough time in the past doing what pagans choose to do—living in debauchery, lust, drunkenness, orgies, carousing and detestable idolatry. They think it strange that you do not plunge with them into the same flood of dissipation, and they heap abuse on you.

Now what does light mean? What are we talking about? Very important, if we are to live in light we have to know what light is. Now, let me tell you very simply, light is a symbol in the Bible, and it is a symbol for two things, two aspects. First of all, it is used from the intellectual side, and secondly, it is used from the moral side. Intellectually, light refers to truth. Light refers to truth, intellectually. Morally, light refers to holiness. So it is the intake and the output. It is the truth and the life. Living in light, then, means living in truth and living in holiness. Receiving the truth and living a holy life. Take your Bible with me, would you, and turn to Ephesians, chapter 5, and we’d like to look at verses 8 to 14, this morning – Ephesians5, verses 8 through 14. Let me read this text so that you’ll have the setting, and then let the Spirit of God speak to you as we share thoughts from it. This is a brilliant book. John radically re-thinks the dangers of money, sex and power and explains why our culture is enslaved to them—but he also shows that God had good purposes in mind when creating these gifts and they become more satisfying in themselves when we realize that He is more desirable than all of them.Stott, J. R. W. (1979). God’s new society: the message of Ephesians (p. 200). Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press. Philippians 2:13 says he works in us “to will and to do according to his good pleasure.” This means that God is always working in our hearts to help us discern and do his will. Psalm 37:4 says, “Delight yourself in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart.” When I am walking with God—abiding in his Word, prayer, and the fellowship of the saints—many times the desires in my heart are of the Lord. In discerning what is pleasing to God, we must discern what God is doing in our hearts. And do this, understanding the present time. The hour has come for you to wake up from your slumber, because our salvation is nearer now than when we first believed. The night is nearly over; the day is almost here. So let us put aside the deeds of darkness and put on the armor of light. Let us behave decently, as in the daytime, not in orgies and drunkenness, not in sexual immorality and debauchery, not in dissension and jealousy.

This book is searching in its analysis, searing in its challenge, and yet wonderfully invigorating in its encouragement. When the glory of God is at the center, money, sex and power can be instruments for Christ's name and our good. This book is urgently needed. I’ve told you before, you’ve got to make people feel rotten first; then make them feel good. They’ve got to feel bad, and then they know they need to feel good. We’re not only not to fellowship, we’re to expose it. Now listen, people: you know what’s wrong with us in most cases? As Christians, you know, we don’t see this contrast as dramatically as God sees it, just light and darkness. I mean we are just out of that system altogether. But here we are, we’re piddling around, playing around with the deeds of darkness, miles from being a spiritual CIA, from really going after and uncovering evil. You know, we should be so mature, and so far along, that we can expose evil, that we can search it out, and expose it, and offer the diagnosis and the cure.

To Live in the Light, Believers Must Produce the Fruit of Light

In John, chapter 12, verse 35, our Lord had just presented Himself as the light, and He said, “You’d better respond to the light while you have the light, because a little while you won’t have the light and darkness will come upon you and you won’t know where to go. While you have the light,” He says in verse 36 of John12, “Believe in the light that you may be the sons of light.” He gave them a message. But they didn’t believe. It says in the next verse “they believed not.” And then He said, “Well, then this is what Isaiah says; ‘He’s blinded their eyes, hardened their heart, they should not see with their eyes or understand with their heart, be converted and I should heal them.’” In other words, where you say to yourself, “I will not believe,” God then says judicially, “You cannot believe.”You come under divine judgment.

Application Questions: In what ways are you tempted to hide your light? In what ways do you believe God is calling you to place your light in the most effective location? To Live in the Light, Believers Must Produce the Fruit of Light Our exposure of darkness is not just indirect; it is also direct. We must call lying “sin,” cheating “sin,” adultery “sin,” and fornication and homosexuality “sin”— again, often incurring the wrath of the world for doing so. Romans 1:21-23 describes the world as intellectually darkened in reference to knowing God the Creator. It says,The next thing believers must do to live in the light is to not partake in darkness, but to expose it instead. “The verb translated here as “expose” (from elegchō) can also carry the idea of reproof, correction, punishment, or discipline.” 8 You are the light of the world. A city on a hill cannot be hidden. Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before men, that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven.” Agathos - you know what it means? It means overall, moral excellence, and one lexicon says especially active in behalf of others. It isn’t just free from defects, it isn’t just useful for certain things, it’s just good, and it touches everybody in that same way, with a very positive, moral, excellent effect. And that’s the word he uses here. This is what Paul meant in 1 Thessalonians5:15, when he said, “Just do good to everybody.” And I think this is the first element of the fruit of light, and that is that it touches other people with goodness. Look at yourself. If you’re a child of light you’re going to walk in light, and you’re going to walk as a child of light, then the first thing should be goodness in terms of others.