Victory Over the Darkness

On Sunday, I went with Elena to Lamma Church, her home church in Lamma Island (Hong Kong). Elena grew up on Lamma Island (check out its website here) and it was on the island that I met her, while I was living there in the 1980s (the first time I saw her, she was playing the piano in the church service - a vision of beauty and talented too!). It was wonderful to see so many of my old friends at Lamma Church again, many of whom have been lifting me up in prayer consistently for the last few months.

I had an opportunity to share my testimony for five minutes. And so I shared briefly from John 1:5 (the preacher had mentioned that verse in his sermon earlier in the service). And so I want to share it also briefly with you too.

In the Amplified Bible, John 1:5 says:

"And the Light shines on in the darkness, for the darkness has never overpowered it..."

I was struck by the simple declaration that this verse makes. Jesus, who is described as being "the Light" (see John 1:4-9), entered the world to confront the powers of darkness (note 1 John 3:8; Acts 26:18; Ephesians 6:12; Colossians 1:13). And what struck me so powerfully about John 1:5 is this: Light, by its very nature, overcomes the darkness!

That may seem like a simple revelation, but it is both profound and attitude-transforming. We have this tendency to think of spiritual darkness as having an innate power to overcome spiritual light, but if the analogy with natural light and darkness holds true (which I believe it does), this is simply not the case. Darkness is the absence of light, nothing more, nothing less. In other words, to overcome darkness, you need to do nothing more than just introduce light!

Think of it this way. If you are in a lighted room in the middle of the night, and you open the curtains, darkness doesn't come flooding in. Rather, light floods into the outside world! Likewise, if you are in a dark room, the moment you flip on the light switch, the light immediately banishes the darkness. In fact, it doesn't even take a lot of light to do it. Have you ever been in a dark room and simply switched on the light of your cell phone's screen? That screen light is incredibly low power, yet it is enough to bring light into a dark room.

What encouraged me about this is that this describes the Christian experience. We have received spiritual light in the person of Jesus. And by its nature, that spiritual light overcomes the darkness. It is a very binary thing: Light off = darkness. Light on = darkness overcome.

For me, I'm not waiting for the victory. I already have the victory in the person of Jesus. It is a given. Victory is not a goal for me; my starting point in life is victory! All I am now called to do is walk in that victory, as 1 John 1:5-7 explains it:

"This is the message we have heard from him and declare to you: God is light; in him there is no darkness at all. If we claim to have fellowship with him yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live by the truth. But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin."

So what is my objective today? Simply to "walk in the light, as he is in the light". It's in the walk, not the talk, that we experience the victory.