Day: May 21, 2012

Our problem isn’t being near God. Our problem is found in what He sometimes chooses to illuminate in us as a result of that nearness. When we seek and find God in such a way as to truly become closer to Him we find that whatever He does make known about our hearts we can no longer deny. This can be a painful thing for the yet unperfected Christian, and that means all of us.

When you open the creaking door to an old shed or basement you might not like what the light makes visible. You may see scurrying or slithering things, cobwebs, grime and dirt that has accumulated over the years. You might even find the bones of creatures that long ago died in captivity in that dark place. You may be tempted to close that door and leave it that way.

I suspect this may be a good spiritual metaphor for what our Lord makes visible to us when we open up the deep recesses of our hearts to his light, a light that grows more brilliant as we voluntarily approach Him. We claim we want to bask in the light of God’s glory but will that desire continue if that light makes our remaining darkness visible? Are we ready to experience the pain that comes with a greater recognition of the sin that still dwells within us?

It is never easy to find out that we still have a seemingly endless way to go in ridding ourselves of all within us that isn’t fit for Heaven. This is especially true if we have spent years striving not only to do the right thing but also to be “the right thing”, to truly attain to personal holiness. It can be a shock to find that we have made less progress in that direction than we had hoped. Perhaps this is the real reason why so many of us do not really seek that closely after God. Being near Him makes it almost impossible not to at some point be confronted with our own continuing wickedness, at least in the sense of what dwells in our, hopefully dying, flesh.

This is, indeed, one of the risks we take in presuming to draw closer to our all-seeing God. We may experience “the mountaintop” in such close encounters, but soon after that we may also enter the valley of struggling with some newly known transgression in our lives. When this happens our temptation may be to deny what the light of God has made visible to us. We may not be willing to face our own scurrying and slithering sins. It may seem easier to draw away from that divine illumination and try to keep such things in the dark, even to deny that we ever saw them.

But maybe, just maybe, we will find ourselves not wanting to deny this new truth, no matter how painful it may be. Maybe we will instead find ourselves only wanting, desperately wanting, to give it to the One Person who can not only “make light of it” but remove it from us and remove it forever. That means keeping our sin before the piercing light of our Lord, asking in deep sincerity for Him to remove it and being willing to bear the discomfort of whatever spiritual cleansing may be required for that to happen. If we do these things then God’s unmasking of what dwells in our darkness by His brilliant light may be something we end up deeply thankful for. We may know the unfathomable blessing of being far more deeply transfigured into the image of Jesus Christ, and if this truly comes about we will never regret the pain that we felt when we first drew nearer to God. Knowing the furthering of our sanctification in real time will be more, much more, than worth it.

In the end we need not ever fear the light of God if we are willing to let it do its ultimate work in us.