From the Darkness

“Behold, the wicked are bending a bow!  They have fitted their arrow

to the string to shoot from darkness at the upright in heart!”

Psalm 11:2

“He who follows me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life.”

John 8:12b

Faithful children of God are open and sincere because they love righteousness and desire fellowship with others in the kingdom of God. They know that “if we walk in the light as He is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanses us from all sin” (1Jn. 1:7). This is the kind of life to which God calls all His children.  Even in the Old Testament, the prophets called upon the Israelites to live this way.  Isaiah cried out, “O house of Jacob!  Come, and let us walk in the light of the Lord!”  

Unfaithful children of God, however, drift toward secretiveness, and if they do not return to openness and sincerity, in time, they will be shooting barbed words from the darkness at those who are upright.  And because they are in spiritual darkness, they do not realize the spiritual condition into which they have fallen.  David said that “the wicked do not know; neither do they understand; they walk about in darkness” (Ps. 82:4–5).  And Solomon explained that “the way of the wicked is like darkness; they do not know at what they stumble” (Prov. 4:19).

This is a very valuable lesson to learn because if we learn it, we might catch ourselves if we ever wander off the right path, and repent.  Preacher Clark did that.  When he was young in the Lord, he met a brother one day that he had gossiped about, and he felt ashamed.  He could hardly look him in the eye.  And he made up his mind from that moment on, he would never say anything to anyone about another child of God that he would not say in his presence.  In other words, he would never again shoot from the darkness at anyone.