Children of Light

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Greetings,

I hope you are all well today. This is Memorial Day and we are grateful for those who sacrificed their lives for the freedom of others. Blessings to all the families who have endured the pain of loss in war. I also speak a blessing to all who can or cannot come together today. It’s a little rainy here in Bellingham, but it will be a good day for the life of my yard to be encouraged to grow. New life will be happening all around us today in many ways.

Today I feel it necessary to give an encouragement to the body of Christ as we move forward in the path of destiny. God is doing good things and we must embrace His presence and His voice in moving forward in His-Story or we will end up being stuck in some cul-de-sac of history. The Old Covenant was a ‘remember when’ covenant. It was based upon remembering the experiences of God and man in the past. There were times when God manifested and demonstrated His miraculous power and lives of people were touched in some way. That experience became a memorial to remember God. I believe we have many experiences to remember God by. Sometimes our memory of the past becomes more valuable than our present seeking of God in the moment called today. The New Covenant is a covenant we can read, hear, and keep. It is based upon experiences with God on a daily basis. In this time, let’s embrace the now experience of God today that is a furtherance of what God did yesterday. It is not disconnected from the past, but it is a further flow of the river of God in the earth.

Today is a day to be the people of God. I am encouraged that we can experience God’s presence in our lives for greater days ahead of us. This is not a time to be distracted by the news of the world, but a time to be attracted to the presence of God and His purposes in the earth.

Romans 13:11 And do this, knowing the time, that now it is high time to awake out of sleep; for now our salvation is nearer than when we first believed. 12 The night is far spent, the day is at hand. Therefore let us cast off the works of darkness, and let us put on the armor of light. 13 Let us walk properly, as in the day, not in revelry and drunkenness, not in lewdness and lust, not in strife and envy. 14 But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to fulfill its lusts.

Paul wrote to the believes of his day that the night is far spent for those who believe. The night is something of the past! The day is at hand for those who believe. For those who believe, each day is a further measure into the light of Christ! The day at hand is not a time to see darkness, it is a time to see the increasing light of Christ. What has our attention? Is it darkness, or is it light? We must cast off the works of darkness. What are the works of darkness? The works of darkness are works based upon fear, doubt, unbelief, self-focus, worry, or some other attribute that depicts a hopeless measure of night. Our walk is to be a walk of people who live in the day. What does it mean to put on the armor of light? Is the armor of light a resistance to darkness, or a confident connection to the One who is light? Is it a matter of warfare against darkness, or is it a life-giving warfare of light? I propose that our path is a path of the liberty of God’s Spirit, not a fretful collision with some power of the flesh. We are to put on the Lord Jesus Christ! This is what prevents the flesh from consuming our thoughts in life. We are children of God who is Light! Our beliefs, actions, imaginations, and influences in life should be attributes of putting on Christ! It is not a matter of condemning those who have not put on Christ, but one of shining as the light of Christ to those who are bound to darkness.

Ephesians 5: 8 For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Walk as children of light 9 (for the fruit of the Spirit is in all goodness, righteousness, and truth), 10 finding out what is acceptable to the Lord. 11 And have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather expose them. 12 For it is shameful even to speak of those things which are done by them in secret. 13 But all things that are exposed are made manifest by the light, for whatever makes manifest is light. 14 Therefore He says: “Awake, you who sleep, arise from the dead, and Christ will give you light.”

The fruit of the Spirit will manifest when the true Light is in our hearts. When we walk with the Light, we will become the testimony of that Light. When these things don’t manifest there is something that is not good, not righteous, or not true in our lives. The world around us is not the source of our lack of the fruit of the Spirit. It is a matter of the focus of our lives. Are we looking to the kingdoms around us, or are we looking to the kingdom of God within us? Our thoughts, words and conversations might even sound scripturally true, but if the fruit of the Spirit is not there it is not the right spirit. The cure to being free from any darkness in our lives is to simply embrace fellowship with Light. That Light is the Light of Christ in us. This is the hope of glory in all things. The light transforms the darkness in us to light when we walk in the light.

Sometimes the lines between good and evil, righteous and unrighteous, true and false get blurred. A good indicator that we are walking in the path of life is the evidence of the fruit of life. We cannot do fruit; fruit is something that happens when we live in the place where fruit grows. Fruit is something that gives life-energy to someone else and releases seeds for a future generation of life. Fruit is not a self-gratifying thing; it is a life-giving thing to others beyond your own life. Children of light shine light to the world around them! They are givers of life, not those who simply complain about the darkness around them. We must be children of light!

Blessings,

Ted J. Hanson