Children of Light

For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Walk as children of light (for the fruit of the Spirit is in all goodness, righteousness, and truth), finding out what is acceptable to the Lord. And have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather expose them. Ephesians 5:8:11

In this letter to the Ephesians Paul uses a contrast to speak to the lifestyle that some of the believers were keeping. He was not speaking to those outside the body of Christ but to those within.
The first part of the contrast was who they WERE. “You were darkness ….”, he said, and this described the life as well as the character we had before we were saved from it. In this statement Paul uses a contrast of light and dark, to opposites, to describe who we now are and who we used to be.
Because of that he exhorts us to “walk” (live out life) as children of light. In verse 9 he reminds them that the fruit (the outcome of having the Spirit in our lives) is all goodness, righteousness, and truth and what is acceptable to the Lord. He again uses a contrast of the fruit of the Spirit verses the unfruitful works of darkness. We are not to have to fellowship (to become a partaker of) with the unfruitful works of darkness but rather expose them. Having no fellowship means to have no share or participation in the darkened life-style. Instead he says to expose them? What does that mean? To say exactly what they are. But it is not as much of a verbal exposure as it is a life style exposure. That’s where it gets tough unless we are sold out to Jesus. It is tough because if we tell the truth of things then we can make ourselves pretty unpopular with people who continue to partake in them whether they are unbelievers or believers who want to continue to dabble in the flesh. If we live our lives free from the darkness it becomes very obvious and we are saying with out actions that we think the darkness is wrong. The other situation is that we ourselves can no longer partake of those things and so we must choose to say no to our flesh when it cries out like a spoiled child.
But we have such a hard time to tell the truth about things if we are not living a life that validates our words. We go see “Adult movies” and we watch TV programs with “adult themes.” We also visit “adult” websites and we refuse to acknowledge that what that means is that it is going to be sexually explicit in either what we see or what we hear or both. We partake in “adult beverages” and play “adult games” in the casinos. BUT WE ARE CHILDREN! Or at least we are supposed to be. How much goodness, righteousness, and truth and what is acceptable to the Lord is involved in “adult activities”?
When we received Jesus Christ as our savior we are given the right to become the children of God. (John 1:12). Earlier in this same letter Paul calls believers to be “imitators of God as dear children”. (Ephesians 5:1) Why is it that we think that there is a difference in sin because we are adults? Are we teaching our children that it is okay to have a double standard because we are adults? As they grow up they will look forward to a time when they can partake in “adult” activities. Unfortunately they generally want to try this while they are still very young.
Jesus saved us from our sins. He did not do this that we can continue in them, no matter what our age. He saved us from our sins so we can live in true freedom, freedom not to sin and to walk in the light with absolute freedom and confidence. And….we will be easily identified as His kids.

By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and keep His commandments. 1John 5:2

Broken Ornaments

Someone said to me today, "Friendship is like a glass ornament, once it is broken it can rarely be put back together exactly the same way". They didn’t know who said it but it surely seems to be true. But I wonder if they are supposed to be back together exactly the same way. It seems that there was something wrong if it got broken in the first place even if it was accidental. But once broken it will never be the same. That is not to say this is not good, sometimes it be even better. It just will not be the same. Often there are pieces missing, even if they are small and so it can never be the same.
But it can be put back together with the help and the power of God and His love and the willingness of friends to extend grace as well as to seek and to give forgiveness. Often this is hard because there is a lot of self and flesh that can be involved in one or both parties in the relationship. In some cases forgiveness can only be sought when a hurt has been identified. It also takes acknowledgment that a hurt has been done. It also takes extending grace, not just the grace we would want from others but the grace we have already received from God. We may not want grace from others but we know that everything we receive from God is by grace. We deserve nothing by our own virtue and what we do deserve, by His mercy we are spared.
Going back to the subject of a restored but fractured friendship. It can be put back together by the glue of God’s love and can actually be a thing of beauty because, even though it has been rebuilt or repaired, it is still His handiwork. It reminds me of a time when Lynda and had broken a vase or something and was just going to throw it away, our daughter asked her not to and said, “Mom, I want those things that you have broken and put back together because the fact that you put them back together meant that they were important to you.”
I guess our willingness to restore a friendship, even when we know it will never be the same depends on how important the friendship was to us to begin with. Too often we throw things away without even trying to fix them or they have been broken a few times before and we don’t think they are worth it any more and we actually throw away a great treasure. When my children were small and they would break things, they would bring them to me to fix it. It may have only looked like a trinket to others but to them it was a treasure. Sometimes they had tried themselves and made a mess of things but with confidence in my abilities they would say, “Daddy, will you please fix this?” Perhaps many more friendships would be salvaged if we would go to God and ask, “Abba, Father, will you fix this please?

Appearance of Evil

1 Thes. 5:22 (NKJV) Abstain from every form of evil.
The word abstain means to hold oneself off or to refrain from something and the word form means a view (or the way things look) or form (literal or figurative) :- appearance, fashion, shape, sight.
We need to look closely at what this exhortation says. It does not say to just abstain from evil, but to abstain from the very appearance of evil. It also indicates that we should avoid every kind of evil no matter how good or how harmless it might look.
It means that if something even appears evil, we should get away from it. It means that if there is any chance whatsoever that it could be wrong, then we should leave it alone. All too often we think we can handle it but it provides the leaven that grows into full blown problems. It means that if there is even a suggestion that it could be wrong, RUN! A believer must have nothing, absolutely nothing, to do with evil-not even the appearance of it.
Many times we think that just because we are not actually doing something that is “forbidden” by the letter of the law that we are okay. But while the actual act may not be forbidden there is the “appearance” of evil. We need to be careful that things don’t look wrong. There are those times when things just look wrong and they are not. Someone just told me about recently buying a large bottle of IBC Cream Soda. When he walked out with it there were some people who thought he had just walked out with a 44oz. bottle of beer. Those things happen. But to place yourself in a constant situation that resembles evil causes a stumbling of both the world and Christians alike that know you are a follower of Jesus yet you seem be habitually doing something wrong.
David wrote, "Depart from evil, and do good; seek peace, and pursue it" (Psalm 34:14). Sometime we think that peace should automatically find us and we cannot understand the continuing turmoil in our lives. Quite often the reason for the turmoil is because we fail to completely depart from evil. Oh, we depart from the really evil stuff but we allow “little stuff” to remain. Proverbs 14:16 says that, "A wise man fears, and departs from evil: but the fool rages, and is confident.” The fool, simply put, continues in his rebellion and confidence in his own decisions, usually to his destruction.
Paul wrote in his second letter to the Corinthians, “We give no offense in anything, that our ministry may not be blamed. 2 Cor. 6:3 (NKJV). Paul's first consideration in his life, words and actions was what and how they communicated about Jesus Christ. Non- believers are watching us all the time. New believers are listening and learning. We need to be careful that our own selfish or undisciplined actions do not become another person’s excuse for rejecting Jesus or for sinning themselves. Jesus also warned against stumbling “little ones” (children or children in the Lord) in Matthew 18:6-10.
Paul indicates that we should be ready to give up our rights and our freedom (things we deem “okay” to do) to keep from the appearance of evil or from causing someone to stumble, “ It is good neither to eat meat nor drink wine nor do anything by which your brother stumbles or is offended or is made weak. Romans 14:21 (NKJV)
But avoiding evil and the appearance of it is not always easy. It takes surrender on our part into the hand and the will of God and a ever deepening desire to please Him before ourselves.

Will you give God a fresh surrender of your life and find victory, even over the appearance of evil?