{"id":171,"date":"2014-03-12T11:30:02","date_gmt":"2014-03-12T11:30:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/parkwood.org\/blog\/?p=171"},"modified":"2015-03-03T18:45:59","modified_gmt":"2015-03-03T18:45:59","slug":"an-inconvenient-faith-7","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/parkwood.dreamhosters.com\/blog\/an-inconvenient-faith-7\/","title":{"rendered":"An Inconvenient Faith (7)"},"content":{"rendered":"

“And God said, “Let there be light, and there was light.”<\/em> (Genesis 1:3)<\/p>\n

“The people walking in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of the shadow of death a light has dawned.”<\/em> (Isaiah 9:2)<\/p>\n

“For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life.\u00a0 For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through Him.\u00a0 Whoever believes in Him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because he has not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son.\u00a0 This is the verdict:\u00a0 Light has come into the world, but men loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil.”<\/em> (John 3:19)<\/p>\n

God is light.\u00a0 His\u00a0 very presence brings light.\u00a0 The very first words recorded from the mouth of God are “Let there be Light!”\u00a0 The Scripture describes a world without God as a world of darkness.\u00a0 Our sinful condition has brought darkness into this world and, the prophet Isaiah says, we are “walking in darkness” living in the “shadow of death”.<\/p>\n

But God has, once again, brought light to us.\u00a0 He was not satisfied to let the world He created stay forever in the dark.\u00a0 We were helpless.\u00a0 We were lost.\u00a0 We could not save ourselves.\u00a0 But, because of His great love toward us, He pierced the darkness of this fallen world by sending His one and only Son.\u00a0 Once again He has spoken…”Let there be Light!”<\/p>\n

“But God demonstrates His own love for us in this: while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”<\/em> (Romans 5:8)<\/p>\n

Do you get this?\u00a0 We were not pursuing God.\u00a0 He came after us!\u00a0 He is the One who brings light into our darkness.\u00a0 What is even more unbelievable is that when God showed up to rescue us we still rejected Him.\u00a0 In fact, we did more than reject Him…we crucified Him.\u00a0 Jesus says in the verses above that we preferred darkness.\u00a0 We are not comfortable in the light.\u00a0 It reveals our weaknesses.\u00a0 It exposes our selfish lifestyles and we do not like that.\u00a0 We would rather stay in bondage than be set free.<\/p>\n

“The light is so bright.\u00a0 It hurts my eyes.\u00a0 There must be a catch.\u00a0 I can’t trust…I can’t take the risk.\u00a0\u00a0 Please, just turn the light off and leave me alone.”<\/p>\n

All of us are resistant on some level to the light of Jesus.\u00a0 He calls us out of our comfort zone and into the light.\u00a0 Today, as you meditate on what God has done for you, allow Him to bring light into your life.\u00a0 Confess your sins to Him.\u00a0 Come out of the darkness and…Let there be Light!<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“And God said, “Let there be light, and there was light.” (Genesis 1:3) “The people walking in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of the shadow of death a light has dawned.” (Isaiah 9:2) … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[8,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-171","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-an-inconvenient-faith-2014-lenten-blog","category-all_posts"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/parkwood.dreamhosters.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/171","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/parkwood.dreamhosters.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/parkwood.dreamhosters.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/parkwood.dreamhosters.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/parkwood.dreamhosters.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=171"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/parkwood.dreamhosters.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/171\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":179,"href":"http:\/\/parkwood.dreamhosters.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/171\/revisions\/179"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/parkwood.dreamhosters.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=171"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/parkwood.dreamhosters.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=171"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/parkwood.dreamhosters.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=171"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}