When I was a kid I used to be scared of the dark. I would cry and yell for my mom or dad. Of course they would come in my room and check on me. My mom would stay with me and rub my back till I fell asleep and my dad would pull the “monsters” from under the bed or closet or where ever I told him they were and he would go “kill” them. The monsters always looked like some shark creature from Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Mans Chest. As I grew older though being scared of the dark completely changed. Yes after I watch a scary movie I’m scared of the dark literally.
Side note, after I watched the movie IT I slept with my lights on in my room for a week straight. No joke.
Ok, back to it. Darkness now is so much more to me than a silly monster under the bed. See I have nightmares, scary nightmares, those don’t let me sleep for a week either. I don’t have them all of the time but when I do I can’t seem to shake the thought of having more. I think about them all the time till the point I’m shaking. One nightmare I remember being chased around a house by the enemy. I remember screaming “You can’t touch me. I have God on my side”, I screamed that over and over again. I screamed that until finally the enemy disappeared and a peace came that I had never felt before and the most beautiful sunset I have ever seen came. This was my actual dream, I’m not making this up.
John writes about darkness perfectly in 1st John, “God is light, and there is no darkness in him at all. So we are lying if we say we have fellowship in God but go on living in spiritual darkness” 1 John 1:5. As I got older I became more scared of spiritual darkness than anything. Because hiding in my spiritual darkness are my personal monsters: anxiety, fear, self-doubt, low self-esteem, social anxiety. All my ugly things thrived in the darkness. I was so scared to be in that darkness that I wasn’t even doing anything to get out of it. So I let the darkness spread through me like an infection. It got so bad that I couldn’t even see the light God was trying to show me. Until one day I was so fed up with the darkness I took off the veil that had taken away my ability to see God’s light and said, “You can’t touch me because I have God on my side”.
See another thing my mom told me when I would ask for her comfort in the darkness was to just say Jesus’ name and he would come and take the darkness away. It worked EVERY time!!!! It worked because Jesus is the light, anywhere he goes there can’t be darkness because he has defeated darkness. I just recently figured out why I was so comfortable with being in my spiritual darkness. It’s because I was ashamed to bring light to what was hiding in the dark. I was ashamed to tell God about them. But as soon as I said “Jesus, I need help” the darkness went away, I was made new in His name. The enemy thrives in the darkness because that’s the only place he can hide. He may be chasing you and he may be telling you all of these lies because he’s scared of what you can do for the Kingdom of Heaven. Call out for Jesus, say his name, ask for help, and tell the enemy he CAN NOT touch you. There is a peace that follows that really is like none other.
We hide our of out stuff in the darkness because we think we only need to bring our best selves to God or to the world. But we need to change that thinking because when Jesus was here he didn’t want the righteous or the wealthy. He wanted the tax collectors, the prostitutes, and the sick, because only the sick need the doctor, not the healthy. So I sit here in the middle of a thunderstorm, with no power. In total darkness except for a single flashlight. So as you sit in your spiritual darkness I hope you find your flashlight, which is Jesus. I hope you Be Bold and call out his name when you are sitting in the darkness.
P.S. the song “Tremble” by Mosaic MSC will help you when you are struggling with this.