Walk in Light

In the late 1920s my grandparents married and moved into Grandpa's old family home. It was a clapboard house with a hall down the middle. In the '30s they decided to tear down the old house and build another to be their home for the rest of their lives. Much to my grandmother's dismay, many of the materials of the old house were re-used in their new house. They used old facings and doors, and many other pieces of the finishing lumber. Everywhere my grandmother looked, she saw that old house—old doors that wouldn't shut properly, crown molding split and riddled with nail holes, unfinished window trimming. It was a source of grief to her. All her life she longed for a new house. When God brings us into the kingdom, the old way of living must be dismantled and discarded.

Source:

Len Sullivan, Tupelo, Mississippi

Christ’s reign & God’s judgment

Love -> Light ...Love as only intention...

1. Set the goal of doing what is pleasing to God

This isn’t a set it once and forget it.

But it does involve all of life. The Walk in wisdom will flesh this out further. (“Understand what the will of the Lord is...”)

Be careful you don’t set positive things that you aren’t willing to change. The positive ways we please God require wisdom not just obedience. But our goal is to please God.

Romans 12:1–2 ESV

1 I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. 2 Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.

Romans 14:17–19 ESV

17 For the kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking but of righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit. 18 Whoever thus serves Christ is acceptable to God and approved by men. 19 So then let us pursue what makes for peace and for mutual upbuilding.

The standard is not just “Where is the harm?” but “Where is the good?”

Where’s my heart at? Am I seeking to please Him or get what I want? Do I genuinely want to imitate God or am I following a rule not to get punished? Or justifying my actions?

Looking different at different stages of life...

Young people - learn truth and seek good friends

Young adults - seek to bless others and find good mentors

Parents - bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord but live that way consistently yourselves

Empty nesters and retirees - Seek to tell your stories of grace and maintain your relationships with joy

2. Don’t be partners with darkness instead expose shameful practices

Sexual immorality

Greed

Men do not differ much about what things they will call evils; they differ enormously about what evils they will call excusable. —G. K. Chesterton.

Where might you be partnering with those who practice sexual immorality or greed? From a positive standpoint, there is being loyal to Christ. From a negative standpoint, in a sense you will have pockets of this in your life at war within you.

1 Peter 1:18–19 ESV

18 knowing that you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your forefathers, not with perishable things such as silver or gold, 19 but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without blemish or spot.

A major problem the Israelites had was they had lived as slaves for 400 years, probably always wishing they had what their masters had. 400 years of training themselves in covetousness. God had to come free them not just from physical slavery but mental slavery as well. He instituted the Sabbath as a way of freeing them from it. So that they worked from their rest, from grace rather than out of their desire for more.

They also struggled with sexual immorality for some of the same reasons. Not “having fun” for 400 years.

Where are you hoarding rather than being generous? Where are you building your identity on what you own rather than on who owns you? Where are you willing to fudge the rules sexually if it gives you what you want? What are you watching, reading or maybe even practicing that doesn’t honor the One who redeemed you? There is so much material that is designed to draw out lust. Are you partnering with it?

Why put limits on love?.... If you have been hurt in a relationship, you know you immediately put up boundaries and limits. Everybody put limits on love in order to define what is good for them. Let’s not deceive ourselves here. God gives us light and truth and rules therefore out of a desire for us to know Him and for us to not hurt ourselves or others and yet have the freedom to do good to and with others.

Refusal to participate is exposure.

Pursuing what is good and righteous is exposure.

Explanation for why you refuse is exposing. But do this with wisdom. Be wise as serpents, innocent as doves

Confession becomes an integral part of the believer’s life as a child of light.

The world will hate you for the exposure. Walking in the flesh is traumatic.

Both the positive side of walking in light and the negative side of walking in light push us toward walking in wisdom as we seek to love God and others. But our hope is not merely in seeking in wisdom...

3. Our hope is in Christ’s light.

Whether for believers or unbeliever’s, Christ shining on us as the Dayspring from on high is what we want.

We have new life in Him. Our fundamental existence is now that we have risen from the dead. Our fundamental purpose is to imitate God and His love for others. When we realize that, we walk as children of light.

The old ways really do produce death and the new way of grace really does produce life.

Robert Bellah, a sociologist who teaches at the University of California at Berkeley, is very interested in the influence of religion on the community. In an interview in Psychology Today he said, "We should not underestimate the significance of the small group of people who have a new vision of a just and gentle world. The quality of a culture may be changed when 2 percent of its people have a new vision."

There are many more than 2 percent Christians in your country and mine. Then why aren't we having more effect? Why aren't we having more influence? I pray that God will call you to permeate non-Christian society for Christ, to take your stand there uncompromisingly with the value system and moral standards of Jesus.

Do you walk in the light or are you hiding?