I am Robert Hotchkin, founder of Men On The Frontlines, and this is God Today. What I want to share with you today is the key to overcoming darkness. We all need to know how to do it right now. Not just for ourselves, but one of the areas I want to see you really empowered to overcome darkness is for your family.
God starts off the entire Bible by overcoming darkness. And the way He does it, we don’t overcome darkness with more darkness, He overcame darkness with light. We need to be mindful of that right now when there is so much darkness on the earth. We don’t overcome darkness with or darkness, we overcome it with light. God models this for us in Genesis 1:3. Here is the other thing. When we are aware of this, all of a sudden dark times are not debilitating. They don’t fill us with fear or dread. We realize there is an incredible opportunity.
Think of Isaiah 60:1-3. It says, “When there is darkness on the earth and deep darkness on the people, that is when the Kingdom of God will arise in us, and the glory of the Lord will appear upon us. Things will shift.
But it starts by telling us that we have to arise and shine. So, this is God saying, “You want to shine? Here is how you shine. First, you arise. You come up above the tenor and tone of the times. You don’t enter into the darkness to fight the darkness. You rise above it.”
What does that mean for you and your family today? There are all sorts of messages of fear and hopelessness, and violence and chaos out there We need to rise above it. There are all sorts of division, all sorts of rancor, all sorts of discord, all sorts of name-calling. We need to rise above it. We need to arise above the tenor and tone of the world right now. We need to arise up into the heart of God filled with hope, filled with joy, filled with expectation. We need to be there. I need to be there. You need to be there for our families right now. As they are hearing all these reports of the world, or reports of their workplace, or the reports of their schools, when they come home to us, when we get to interact with them, we need to rise above that tenor and tone. We need to rise above the darkness.
Not give place to it, not enter into, but arise and shine and speak words of hope. Speak words of truth, speak words of encouragement. That is who we are for our families. We get to put the truth of God on display. And we get to operate His hope, His joy, His peace. We don’t overcome darkness with more darkness. We overcome darkness with light. And one of the most powerful ways we can do it is to speak light.
Let’s watch over our words right now especially with our families. And make sure we are speaking words of hope, words of encouragement, words of enlightenment, words of truth. We don’t have to yell back at the negative reports or the fear reports. We simply need to speak truth and hope, and light. We need to arise and shine and we will overcome darkness. I am Robert Hotchkin and this is God Today.