When the Darkness Gets Comfortable

Several months ago, we took a day trip to the Linville Caverns with the boys. They're only minutes from home, but it was my first time going. The boys were excited of course and it was interesting...until the cavern walls started to close in on me, so I tried my best to stay in the larger open areas so that I didn't have a full fledged panic attack right there in the middle of the guided tour. But there is a part of the tour that you can't fully prepare yourself for...the part when they turn off the lanterns and the lighted path. They don't do it without warning. They give you a lovely, cheery {terrifying and horrific} story about two boys getting lost in the cavern long ago, but miraculously making it out alive two days later...and then they plunge you into complete and utter darkness. This is not a darkness that can ever be experienced above ground, it's not the dark of your bedroom in the middle of the night, or a dark basement with only a match for a light...it is the blackest dark, so dark your mind almost can't comprehend it, so dark that you almost forget how to breathe, so dark your eyes will never adjust.

As I stood there struggling to breathe, reaching out blindly trying to grasp ahold of my boys and Brandon and the baby (who slept soundly in the carrier against my chest the whole time), I began to cry. Brandon knew I was panicking and squeezed my shoulders tight, letting me know he was there and I was going to be just fine. But experiencing that darkness was the most terrified that I have ever been in my whole life. It felt as though I had been cast out by the Lord, that hell had swallowed me up. My heart and mind were screaming that I was a child of the light, that I didn't belong there in the darkness! 

I don't think the tour guide had the lights off for more than a minute, just 60 short seconds, but they might as well have been years. I was so relieved to be able to see again, to look on the faces of my children and my husband, to see the path out of the cavern, narrow as it was. We hightailed it out of the caverns after that but that feeling of fear is one that I'll never fully forget and never want to relive again. 

It's that same darkness that Satan seeks to devour us with.

I have written about our struggles with the darkest time in our lives many times. Burying a child is undeniably the most difficult and darkest season in a parent's life, one that scars and aches for a lifetime. 

But what struck me this morning as I was studying in 1 John 1:1-10, was that Brandon and I had been in the dark long before the death of our son.

I can't put my finger on it exactly. I can't tell you specifically when it happened. I don't have a location. But at some point in my life, I gave up my struggle with the darkness. I stepped off the solid foundation that I had built upon the Lord, began my descent into the caverns, and let the darkness swallow me up. I stopped fighting the temptation, I gave into the struggle, and suddenly my life had done a 180 degree turn and it was nearly unrecognizable. Suddenly I was doing things that, as a young woman raised in church my whole life, I unequivocally knew were wrong, were sinful...but I pushed the shame down deep until I couldn't feel it anymore, and I let the feelings of popularity and being a part of the "in" crowd soothe those feelings of guilt and regret. 

Mercifully though, the Lord eventually steered me in Brandon's direction and though the first years of our relationship can only be termed "riotous living," God saw fit to bring us together so that we might one day be where we are right now. 

There was a purpose even in the darkness. A lesson to be learned, one that I can look back upon now and be thankful for. The struggle with the darkness and the temptation to sin, those are not sin - it's the giving over of one's self to the darkness that is sin. 

As a Christian, I will always struggle with sin. John tells us in his letters that to deny that we have sin in our lives is to deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us, to say that we have not sinned is to make Him a liar, and His Word is not in us. BUT if we confess our sins, He is just and faithful to forgive our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. 

I have to continue to fight against the darkness every day and walk in the light...for myself, for my children, for my marriage, for my Lord...because the moment I stop fighting against the darkness and evil of this world is the moment that comfortable feeling will begin to set in and I'll be descending into the darkness of those caverns once again.

Sticks and Stones...

Sticks and stones may break my bones...but words can never hurt me. I think that anyone in the center of the gossip mill or entangled in a rumor (true or false) would beg to differ here. We have all, at some point in our lives, been hurt by someone's words, or have hurt someone with our words. Hurting someone can be as easy as throwing a stone in the sea. But do we have any idea how deep that stone can go?

James likens it a wildfire, saying the tongue is like a fire, setting the woods ablaze with just a small spark. 

Jesus tells us in Matthew, "That every idle word that men shall speak, they shall give account thereof in the day of judgment. For by thy words thou shalt be justified, and by thy words thou shalt be condemned." 

Our words, plainly and clearly, have a cause and effect relationship when we speak them. The words the cause, and the effect never fully known by us. We simply can't know how deeply our words affect others, for better or for worse, when we speak. Our words can be the most dangerous weapon in our arsenal or the most healing in our medicine cabinets, they can be the most destructive or constructive tool in our tool belts, tearing down or building up. 

Christians, we have a choice, each and every day, in how to use our words. Do we bless God with our tongues, then turn and curse our brethren? James says that fountain cannot send forth both sweet water and bitter, both salt and fresh, neither can the fig tree bear olive berries or the vine, figs. 

The most important part of my study this morning in James 3:1-12, was that the tongue cannot be tamed by man alone, yet if I ask God for wisdom, James 1:5 says that God will give it liberally. He will help me to think before I speak, be slow to anger, and sin not in my wrath. As I said yesterday, there are no coincidences with the Lord. This study came on the heels of some upsetting news. News that made me want to pick up the phone and set some things and some people straight. But God intervened. He made me step back and I was immediately thankful for His intervention. I could have made a bad situation worse. I could have pushed lost people further from the Lord, and in turned tarnished my own testimony. 

Instead He showed me that in trusting in Him and His will, even when I don't understand it, I protected my children from someone else's wildfire. 

Faith Made Complete & The Nashville Statement

This morning as I was studying in James, the thought occurred to me that there are no coincidences in studying the Bible. What I study has a direct impact on my life and my spiritual life. The scripture today was James 2:14-26 and what leapt out at me as I studied was from verses 15-17, "If a brother or sister be naked, and destitute of daily food, And one of you say unto them, Depart in peace, be [ye] warmed and filled; notwithstanding ye give them not those things which are needful to the body; what [doth it] profit? Even so faith, if it hath not works, is dead, being alone." 

In my Bible the subtitle for this section of scripture reads Faith Is Shown by Deeds. I know there are many who believe that this portion of James is confusing and contradicts other portions of scripture. But it's really quite simple. Our God is one who requires action by His children. When we accept salvation, we accept it freely, knowing that our sins are washed clean, that when The Father looks upon us He sees The Son and nothing else. Yet when we accept salvation, we also accept the command to go out into the world and spread The Gospel of Jesus Christ. The age old adage, "actions speak louder than words," rings quite true when it comes to Christians living out their faith by good works and deeds. 

Take the Hall of Faith in Hebrews chapter 11 for example...
By faith Abel offered
By faith Noah prepared 
By faith Abraham obeyed
By faith Enoch, Sara, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, Rahab...
Each one accomplishing great and mighty works that glorified God in the name of and by their faith. 

We are not called to sit idle on a pew...yet that is exactly what we are guilty of doing. Sitting idle, preaching the syrupy sweet "gospel" of loving and acceptance. Y'all, we're doing exactly what James is speaking of. We are looking on our destitute brothers and sister, naked in their sins and transgressions, and rather than giving them what is so needful for their bodies, spirits, and minds, we're saying "Jesus loves you just the way you are" and we're sending them on their happy, merry, blinded way. What does that profit? Absolutely nothing. It makes us feel good. It makes us look good. We're progressive and accepting, tolerant and all-loving, to the world...but what are we to the Savior? We're dead in our faith. And we are all smiles and hugs as we pat our neighbors on the backs and usher them through the gates of hell. Where are our backbones, Christians? Where is our salt? Where are our good works and deeds? Our actions?

The Nashville Statement  was released this week. It is a declaration on where Bible-believing Christians stand on topics like homosexuality, same-sex marriage, and transgenderism. That it was even needful for Christians to be reminded of where the Bible stands on sexual immorality, is truly pitiful and a sign of the times, a sign of the falling away of the Church. 

Article 10 reads like this: 
WE AFFIRM that it is sinful to approve of homosexual immorality or transgenderism and that such approval constitutes an essential departure from Christian faithfulness and witness.
WE DENY that the approval of homosexual immorality or transgenderism is a matter of moral indifference about which otherwise faithful Christians should agree to disagree.

In today's political climate, a bold, Biblical statement such as this, is likely to have you stoned on social media, or at the very least, cause you to become a social outcast. But standing firm on the Word of God has never gone unnoticed by the Lord and Savior which we serve. Yet how many of us are unafraid to let our peers know where we stand on such political issues? How many of us are guilty of "agreeing to disagree"? 

And this post isn't specifically about sexual immorality, though it was a prime example. The scripture in James is applicable to all sin. When we witness those we know, most often those we love, living in habitual sin, and we pat them on their back and give them a smile without an inkling of reservation, we are condoning and accepting their sin, and that is a dangerous game to play with an unsaved loved one. 

So what can we do? If we point out their sin, we will likely be accused of bigotry, hate, hypocrisy, among a number of things. So we must immerse ourselves in the Word of God, cover ourselves in prayer, and build up a hedge about ourselves, standing firm on the Word of God, without wavering. Let it be known that you will not compromise your belief in the Bible just to assuage someone else's feelings. And when given an opportunity to help a naked brother or sister, given them a fine meal, a change of clothes, and the Gospel, before sending them on their way.