It’s always darkest before the dawn. There’s a hum of truth in that well-worn saying. The times are darkening. When the count of modern day slaves is more than any time past, when the outbreak of disease ravages nations, when the Jesus followers take the enemy’s ultimate sting for their unfailing faith, when sin parades esteemed, and seemingly goes unchecked…there’s only one word that sums up the expression of all that evil…darkness.

There’s only one name that overcomes the darkness JESUS. The true light is already shining.

The pages of time are turning dark. The hostility grows deeper still. Hatred and hopeless sink into the souls of the lost. There are only ever two options…child of God or child of the devil, and the contrast grows striking the darker this terrain gets.

But understand this, that in the last days there will come times of difficulty. For people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, heartless, unappeasable, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not loving good, treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God…. 2 Timothy 3:1-3

There’s something worse than the EBOLA outbreak, something worse than a Christian taking a fatal blow for the Savior they love…. There’s something worse than all this...it’s the reason all of this is happening to begin with. What’s worse than all that? What possibly could be?

Indwelling sin.

It’s the reason bodies buckle under all manner of sickness. It’s the reason cancer thrives in the lives of those who long for eternity. It’s the reason people rage against God and His people. It’s the reason the Jesus lovers struggle to kill flesh so that we can think a selfless thought by the grace of God. It’s the reason denying the American dream is steeped in difficulty. The enemy wants us to believe we can have it both ways…we can please God and appease our flesh, but that has always been a lie.

THE LIE

We can please God and appease our flesh.

And to this we can whole-heartedly make Paul’s relieving confession: Wretched man that I am! Who will set me free from the body of this death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!

Jesus always our Hope, our singular salvation. The Light piercing darkness. The Sunrise from on High dawning in dead hearts waking us alive. There’s relief from all this mounting darkness and it’s the freeing Gospel of Christ. Our all is caught up in Him and without Him the Day is not coming, but the Day is coming because He is the Sunrise from on High.

Jesus is coming, even now His course is set toward us, His prized possession. He is coming soon to set us free from chains of sin and death, to liberate the creation and the called into the glorious freedom of the children of God. Hide in Him. Make the Most High your Dwelling Place. Make the Lord your refuge. You are a child of the day. Do not sleep as others do.

Rouse yourself awake, sound the alarm, read until your heaven-blind eyes see visions of who God really is IN HIS WORD.