Reliable Illumination

 

“Your word is a lamp for my feet, a light on my path.”

—Psalm 119:105

When someone needs a source of light to find his or her way through a dark place, that source of light needs to remain powerful and steady. Right? Of course, right!

How many times have you read a mystery novel when at an important moment the flashlight carried by the protagonist goes out? Usually this takes place right before some critical incident occurs in the storyline of the novel.

Ted crawled through the dark space underneath the cabin. Above he could hear the voices growing louder with each moment. They were arguing. Ted could hear a deep, angry voice and a shrill, frightened voice. He thought he recognized the shrill voice. It sounded like Mary.

With a thud, dust from the rafters settled on his face. Someone had tipped over a chair. The shrill voice screamed. Ted wiggled further along the damp earth of the crawl space. He inched closer to the electric disconnect. If only he could turn off the power. Maybe James and Ed could storm the cabin and rescue Mary.

He was just a few feet away when—darkness. His flashlight gave out. It was so dark under the floorboards above that he couldn’t see the handle on the power switch. What was he going to do?

Well, you get the idea. Why in the world didn’t Ted put fresh batteries in the flashlight? I don’t know why, but the protagonist always seems to forget some critical detail that puts him and the object of his love in peril.

“When searching for a source of light to illuminate the pathway of their lives, wise believers seek a source of light that will remain steady and dependable.” That’s my key sentence for this blog post. Want to read it again? Okay. “When searching for a source of light to illuminate the pathway of their lives, wise believers seek a source of light that will remain steady and dependable.”

So, where do we find such a dependable source of light? We find it in the same place that the Psalmist found it when he wrote these words in Psalm 119:105:

Your word is a lamp for my feet, a light on my path.

God’s Word—given to us in the Living Word, the Lord Jesus Christ, and the written Word, the Bible—provides a constant, dependable, and powerful source of illumination. We can always find our way if we seek to stay on the pathway that God lays out before us. When “darkness” surrounds us, switch on that reliable source of light.

One of the reasons that devoted disciples of the Lord Jesus need to read His written Word each day is to become so familiar with what God wants us to know about Himself and His way that we will instantly draw on the knowledge when we encounter a dark place along the pathway of our lives. That means we need to purposefully take advantage of God’s provision. We need to begin this new day, and every new day, by spending time reading the Bible and talking to God in prayer.

Those two seem like such simple disciplines. Yet the vast majority of Christians continue to ignore the great power available to them by exercising those simple activities. Let’s not be one of the majority. Okay?

 

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