The Armor

Eph 6:13  Wherefore take unto you the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand.

Continuing our study of the WHOLE armor of GOD it is worth noting that this is the second time we are told to TAKE THE WHOLE ARMOR OF GOD. Why is it worth noting? Because obviously if we are being told something more than once it MUST be important. The WHOLE armor of GOD and our TAKING it is extremely important and yet this is something not very many in the grand scheme of things seem to think worth bothering about.

The spiritual realm.

I hope you believe it is a reality and as such that it is working around us all the time day and night affecting us constantly for good and bad.

Here in this verse it is mentioned that the reason for taking this WHOLE armor of GOD is so that we will be able to withstand in the EVIL DAY- having done ALL to stand.

The EVIL DAY.

What would you think if I told you this--  "Take your umbrella to protect you in the rainy day."

You'd most likely think that I want you to be prepared for a rainy day- any rainy day, right? This EVIL DAY spoken of is any day that is EVIL.  We don't know when we will be attacked spiritually. We could be attacked daily, hourly, minutely, or maybe weekly, monthly, yearly. We just don't know when or where an attack will come from. Not only don't we know when or where, we don't know what sort of attack it will be- some are much more blatant than others. One thing we can know is when we are struggling with ANYTHING, we can be sure that there is an unseen battle going on around us.

No, I’m not using this as an excuse, no one can use it as an excuse because WE ultimately make the choices of how we handle the attacks. We can succumb to them and let them destroy us- many, many people do. We can overcome them but ONLY by the power of our SAVIOR, any other any sort of overcoming is false and oh so very deceptive.

There isn't a single struggle, not a single bit of strife that isn't egged on by the unseen spirits.  We can ignore the unseen spirits working around us and most people do, but we aren't told to ignore them, are we? We are told to put on armor - in fact the WHOLE armor of GOD so that we can stand.

Now let me ask you a question, if we are told to put on armor so we can stand do you suppose it's to simple stand still, to be like one of those empty statue suits of armors that never, ever move?  Is this armor a reality? Is it useful armor in being more than protective - which is a GREAT THING don't get me wrong.  What exactly is this armor of God's we are to wear so that we are doing EVERYTHING within our own power to stand.  I say our power because of this one action- CHOOSING to put on the armor- that's totally ON US, our CHOICE, all the rest of the power is in GOD'S armor and it is by HIS power alone the armor exists and works in our favor.

The ARMOR-

Eph 6:14  Stand therefore, having your loins girt about with truth, and having on the breastplate of righteousness

Girt loins.
Breastplate.

Grecian armor-

'The Girdle; this went about the loins, and served to brace the armor tight to the body, and to support daggers, short swords, and such like weapons, which were frequently stuck in it. This kind of girdle is in general use among the Asiatic nations to the present day.' -- Clarke

'The Breast-Plate; this consisted of two parts, called pte???e? or wings: one covered the whole region of the thorax or breast, in which the principal viscera of life are contained; and the other covered the back, as far down as the front part extended.' -- Clarke

Eph 6:15  And your feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace

Footwear.

'Greaves or brazen boots, which covered the shin or front of the leg; a kind of solea was often used, which covered the sole, and laced about the instep, and prevented the foot from being wounded by rugged ways, thorns, stones, etc.' -- Clarke

Eph 6:16  Above all, taking the shield of faith, wherewith ye shall be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked.

Shield.

'The clypeus or Shield; it was perfectly round, and sometimes made of wood, covered with bullocks’ hides; but often made of metal. The aspis or shield of Achilles, made by Vulcan, was composed of five plates, two of brass, two of tin, and one of gold; so Homer, Il. U. v. 270:' -- Clarke

'Of shields there were several sorts:
Ge????? or ?e??a, the gerron; a small square shield, used first by the Persians.
?a?s?????, Laiseion; a sort of oblong shield, covered with rough hides, or skins with the hair on.
?e?t?, the Pelta; a small light shield, nearly in the form of a demicrescent, with a small ornament, similar to the recurved leaves of a flower de luce, on the center of a diagonal edge or straight line; this was the Amazonian shield.
T??e??, the scutum or Oblong Shield; this was always made of wood, and covered with hides. It was exactly in the shape of the laiseion, but differed in size, being much larger, and being covered with hides from which the hair had been taken off. It was called ???e?? from ???a, a door, which it resembled in its oblong shape; but it was made curved, so as to embrace the whole forepart of the body. The aspis and the thureos were the shields principally in use; the former for light, the latter for heavy armed troops.' -- Clarke

Eph 6:17  And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God

Helmet.
Sword.

'The Helmet; this was the armor for the head, and was of various forms, and embossed with a great variety of figures. Connected with the helmet was the crest or ridge on the top of the helmet, adorned with several emblematic figures; some for ornament, some to strike terror. For crests on ancient helmets we often see the winged lion, the griffin, chimera, etc. St. Paul seems to refer to one which had an emblematical representation of hope.' -- Clarke

'The Sword; these were of various sizes, and in the beginning all of brass. The swords of Homer’s heroes are all of this metal.' --Clarke

Girt Loins.
Breastplate.
Footwear.
Shield.
Helmet.
Sword.

And Clarke also had this note-

'1.    That the ancient Greeks and Romans went constantly armed;
2.    That before they engaged they always ate together; and
3.    That they commenced every attack with prayer to the gods for success.'

--Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible

By the GRACE of our LORD-- more on this tomorrow!  All in HIS LOVE.

We have to believe, we have to choose!

Flesh, Blood, & Spirit

Eph 6:12  For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.

We WRESTLE.

We all know what it means to wrestle with someone or something don't we?

I say someone or something because we can wrestle with problems that aren't physical in nature. We wrestle with ideas, we wrestle with decisions, we wrestle with a lot of things. If people can understand the concept of wrestling with an idea they surely should be able to understand the concept of fighting against things that are NOT flesh and blood.

It sounds strange, doesn't it?

I'm not asking anyone to believe in ghosts as in dead human spirit beings, but I am asking everyone to believe in spirit beings that were created to be spirit beings- angels.

And I'm not just asking everyone to believe in spirit angel beings, but I'm asking everyone to believe in spirit angel beings that are evil,  as well as those that are not evil.

These beings can be around us at all times and because they are REAL they have influence upon us.  It doesn't matter if you believe in them or not for them to be real, they're real even if you don't want them to be. You can say till you're blue in the face that spirit beings do not exist but that would be like saying the very air we breathe isn't real.

The evil spirit beings are real and they are NOT flesh and blood in any real form, though they might choose to appear as a human being.  These beings are principalities, these beings are powers, these beings are rulers of darkness, these beings are wicked- and we wrestle with them.

Wouldn't it be something if we were all allowed to get a glimpse of a spirit being? It'd be awful frightening too.  Some people do see them, some people search for them and some invite them into their lives. The problem with toying with the spirit world is that we cannot truly begin to comprehend the power behind that world.

The Bible tells us that evil spirits can POSSESS a human being.
The Bible tells us that evil spirits  can live inside a human being.

This means that the evil spirit can live inside us who are flesh, blood, and spirit. 

We truly have a spirit within us, our spirit being, and it's this part of us that we have in common with our Spiritual Father, our Spiritual Holy Spirit, and our Spiritual-Flesh-Blood Savior as well as the spirits that are angels- those who are God's angels and those who follow the fallen angel  Lucifer.

We can comprehend the spirit world when we comprehend  we are part spirit, can't we?

Spirit beings incased in flesh and blood- made by God this way.  We are NEVER meant to become just spirit without flesh and blood, yet we ARE meant to become spirit with UNCORRUPTED flesh and blood.

1Co 15:50  Now this I say, brethren, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God; neither doth corruption inherit incorruption.

We cannot inherit the kingdom of heaven in the degraded flesh and blood we've become since sin changed us and stripped from us the covering of our God's righteousness. When Eve and Adam sinned they were instantly notably naked in a way they'd never been before- they'd LOST the covering of the LIGHT of GOD's RIGHTEOUSNESS, it was instantaneously GONE!

What was left was a sinful, naked, vulnerable flesh, blood, and spirit being.  Our very flesh began to degrade from that moment. We were corrupted in that moment, our flesh, our blood corrupted by sin. We were NO longer the beings that God first created, we were NO longer the beings we were MEANT to be! 

And this corrupted FLESH, this corrupted BLOOD, our corrupted beings will NEVER inherit heaven.

We will be CHANGED- our flesh and blood will be changed just as our SAVIOR'S flesh and blood was changed when He was raised from the dead and ascended to His Father.

So, no, our corrupted flesh and blood will NOT inherit heaven, but our CHANGED flesh and blood WILL inherit the kingdom of heaven!

1Co 15:51  Behold, I shew you a mystery; We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed,
1Co 15:52  In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed.
1Co 15:53  For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality.
1Co 15:54  So when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal shall have put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, Death is swallowed up in victory.
1Co 15:55  O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?
1Co 15:56  The sting of death is sin; and the strength of sin is the law.
1Co 15:57  But thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.
1Co 15:58  Therefore, my beloved brethren, be ye stedfast, unmoveable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, forasmuch as ye know that your labour is not in vain in the Lord.

We will NEVER become simply SPIRIT, never.  To become simply a spirit being would make us like the angels and we are NOT going to become angel beings. Our SAVIOR took on our FLESH and BLOOD, not so He could turn us into angels, but to SAVE us as HUMAN BEINGS!

The Spirit world exists and I know I keep going on and on about it, but I have to, because WE ARE wrestling with evil spirits in the world whether we like it or not.  You don't have to admit it, the evil spirits love it when we don't admit to their reality. 

We wrestle against evil spirits and the ONLY way we can defeat them is through CHRIST, and CHRIST providing us with the WHOLE ARMOR of GOD.

Yes, it's true people go about without concerning themselves about Jesus all the time. And it's equally true that all those people are vulnerable to the evil spirits in the world. Does this mean that they are all demon possessed and lunatic? Not at all. The most deceptive evil spirits are those who appear to be good even though they are evil through and through. 

We NEED the armor of God, the WHOLE armor of God or we will be unprotected and very vulnerable to the evil all around us. 

More tomorrow all by the GRACE of our LORD JESUS CHRIST!

Spiritual Battlefield

Told to be STRONG in the POWER of HIS might, we are told to put on HIS ARMOR!

Eph 6:10  Finally, my brethren, be strong in the Lord, and in the power of his might.
Eph 6:11  Put on the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil.


The WHOLE ARMOR of GOD.

Whose armor?

GOD'S!

How much of the armor?

The WHOLE armor!

We are NOT told to put on our own armor. We are not told to put on some of the armor. We haven't been instructed to take just the boots and put them on, and we haven't been told to just pick up the shield, and maybe grab the helmet.  We are told quite plainly to put on the WHOLE ARMOR OF GOD.

This isn't just any ol' armor. This isn't armor we can manufacture all by ourselves and yet we really do believe that we can fight protected by ourselves. We do! Don't deny it! We believe we can fight the battle ourselves, off our own accord. We believe we have to fight all by ourselves and yet we are NEVER told to do that, not once!

When a person fights physically they have to use their own strength, their own cunning, their own smarts. A person who is jumped from behind is at a disadvantage and yet we have self-defense classes that can teach someone how to fight, even when they are jumped from behind. Some people train a lot to become great fighters. We can watch many television movies depicting great fighters, some unbelievably so. These fighters seem to be able to defeat enemy after enemy, taking a few licks here and there but overall they are victorious. Yet you have to ask yourself this one question- would they be any good at fighting had they not trained their bodies and minds to fight? How many people are just naturally amazing at fighting? Not too many. You might get the huge guy who knows how to swing his might into knocking out someone in one punch, but even he would fall victim to the trained fighter, right?

We can agree that a really good fighter is one who is trained, yes? There isn't a whole lot to debate there. To say the trained fighter wouldn't be very good compared to the untrained would be kind of crazy.  So if we can agree that someone who fights physical battles needs to be trained, why can't we agree that someone who fights spiritual battles needs to be trained?  Seriously. Spiritually trained for the spiritual battle.

The thing about physical fighting is that the majority of people I know do not have to EVER engage in that sort of fighting, not ever.

However, every single person I know HAS to engage in the Spiritual warfare taking place all around them.

The thing is- with spiritual warfare- often the ones who are losing this battle don't appear to even be the least bit injured and that's because it's a spiritual injury unseen, just as those we are battle with are unseen--

Eph 6:12  For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.

Not flesh and blood. We aren't out there with our fists facing a flesh and blood enemy. Some of the deepest spiritual cuts will leave a person spiritually dead but thriving physically.  We can't tell when someone has been killed spiritually, we often don't have a single clue when a person has been spiritually wounded and is near spiritual death.

While we fight in this battle of the Spiritual kind, we are not allowed to see the spiritual bruises upon each other. Those living in the spiritual realm- God, His Son, the Holy Spirit, and the angels- good and evil- they see, they know, they can spiritually discern our spiritual state of being.

We are unique beings truly unique- flesh/blood/spirit beings.  Not a single angel will ever have true flesh and blood, they may take on the appearance of such, but they will never be real flesh and blood. God the Father has never taken on flesh and blood, but through His Son He knows, truly knows all it means to be flesh and blood. God the Son took on human flesh and blood, becoming flesh, blood, and spirit like we are.

We have to truly realize the spiritual aspect to our lives. Satan would have us ignore it completely as if it doesn't exist at all, but God tells us differently.

We are even told we will fight against those in the spiritual realm, those who have gone bad and desire to destroy our spiritual life.

So while we cannot see these spiritual foes, we can know they exist.  Is it an unfair fight because we cannot see our enemy? No. It's not unfair because we equally cannot see our ADVOCATES, our champions, our helpers.

We are told we must align with the ADVOCATE, the ONE who secured our victory.

We will be beaten and bruised but we can never lose the spiritual war not if we are aligned with our CHAMPION.  Yes, we will be called to fight against the spiritual evil that would tear us away from our alignment with the Spiritual Champion. It is only by staying aligned that we have hope and the spiritual evil wants to sever that alignment.

You'd think it'd be a cinch, putting ourselves on the side of the winners, when the war has been won. But we are on the battleground and we are at risk of being taken away from the winning side.  Spiritually seduced away from that winning side and made to believe that the losing side is really the winning side. In fact many will tell you how it seems the evil cheaters, liars, corrupt people seem to have a lot more wealth and prosperity than those who are not corrupt, cheating liars.  Many will say that their lives seem to be much easier when they aren't fighting against evil, and it's true their lives may seem to be better, easier, less stressful, but that's an awful evil façade of the spiritual evil one.

We live upon a spiritual battlefield and we can't let the spiritual evil lull us into blinding ourselves to that TRUTH.

By the grace of our LORD and SAVIOR more on this tomorrow.

All in HIS AMAZING LOVE! By HIS GRACE and MERCY, HIS FORGIVENESS, HIS RIGHTEOUSNESS!!!!!!!

Spiritual Combat

The Whole Armor!

Eph 6:10  Finally, my brethren, be strong in the Lord, and in the power of his might.
Eph 6:11  Put on the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil.

The whole armor of GOD.

We are in a war.  The war between God and Satan. The war between love and evil. We LIVE in this war. We are born on this battlefield and we are raised on this battlefield. Yet how many of us truly understand the war we are all participants in? Did you grow up being told that you are fighting a war? Did you grow up understanding that there is an enemy and a Savior?  Some people have grown up this way, but it's safe to say the majority of people are not raised with the knowledge that they are personally participating in a war. 

We've regulated all of our war talk to the physical realm and have neglected the spiritual. There are physical wars right now taking place where men and women are physically dying as they fight their physical war.  We know the toll wars can take, we can read the numbers and comprehend the loss of life. Losing even ONE life is a tragedy even if it does not affect you personally, the loss of ANY life is tragic.

The spiritual war we are all in rages around us at a mostly unseen level until someone or something calls attention to it.

We would be looked upon as strange by the majority if we pointed out the spiritual combat in our lives and the lives of those around us.  Some would roll their eyes and gesture that we are off our rockers and ready to be put in psychiatric facility.

People don't want to chalk up their bad days where everything seemingly goes wrong to being fought against on a spiritual level.

You're asked by someone- 'How was your day today?'  And you reply, 'Awful, I was attacked so hard by evil angels it wasn't funny! Every time things seemed to settle down something would come up. Soandso told me my hair looked kind of funny and of course an evil angel was right there to encourage me to get instantly depressed about my hair and become overly self-conscious. Then at lunch time I reached for the last piece of pie when someone else did and they rolled their eyes and me and there another evil angel was all too eager to encourage me to think the other person thought I was too fat and didn't need the pie, even though they didn't say a word. Then when I was finished with my work my boss came over and dumped another pile of papers on my desk and told me they forgot but they needed to be filed before I could leave. So, yeah, you guessed it another evil angel was right there to help fuel my desire to curse my boss, even though I did it silently. So, yeah, a pretty rough day, how was your day?'

Some will read that and instantly think that the person is just blaming 'others' and not themselves for their actions, their thoughts, their feelings. What those people don't realize is that on the spiritual realm evil angels are constantly encouraging any and all evil within us, constantly. People would rather believe that the spiritual realm doesn't exist, but it does, and it was in that realm that sin first began. 

It's a REAL place, a REAL fact, not fiction. We are just too darn spiritually blinded to want to believe in it. As long as we don't believe in the spiritual realm as a real life interactive existence then we will never fully believe in our Savior- it's impossible because He believes in the spiritual realm as a reality, He is FROM the spiritual realm. 

Jesus went about casting out demons- SPIRITUAL entities!  Do you believe that? If you believe in Jesus you have to. So was Jesus crazy for living with the reality of the spiritual existence surrounding us? No. He was drawing our attention to it, pointing it out, wanting us to recognize it.

We are told to put on the WHOLE ARMOR of GOD to stand against -

- the wiles of the devil.

The wiles of who?

The DEVIL!

That SPIRITUAL being!

So do you suppose we are to put on physical armor to stand against this spiritual being? Do you imagine there is physical armor of God? This is SPIRITUAL!

We have to pay attention to our SPIRITUAL life!

The whole armor of a SPIRITUAL God is SPIRITUAL armor for a SPIRITUAL battle.

Ignore the spiritual in favor of believing in anything but the spiritual, that's your choice and only you can make it. Let yourself be deceived by the leader of spiritual evil, again it's your choice.  You not believing in no way negates its existence. Do you know we are told this about the spiritual evil beings…

Jas 2:19  Thou believest that there is one God; thou doest well: the devils also believe, and tremble.

Devils believe, of course they believe! They know! Do they have the advantage of spiritual sight unlike those of us who are flesh, blood, and spirit? Maybe, but, their advantage is also their greatest disadvantage, they gave up all hope when they chose spiritual evil over spiritual love, they will never have a Savior, only us flesh, blood, and spirit beings have a Savior.

The WHOLE ARMOR of GOD is at our disposal. We all have access to this armor.  We all NEED to wear this armor because not a single one of us will escape the wiles of the devil.

We have a Spiritual Leader, a Spiritual Savior, a Spiritual Helper- we have God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. We must commit ourselves to them- flesh, blood, and spirit all of it belongs to them who GAVE us our lives, our very existence.

Tomorrow we are going to talk more on the WHOLE ARMOR of GOD, all by the grace of God as HE wills!

We have to talk about it! We have to bring it to LIFE. To so many it's like the fairy tale Pinocchio- it's a wooden thing, not really alive. It's a part of us but not really recognized in it's fullest sense. We cannot afford to let our spiritual selves be made of wood, they have to be alive IN CHRIST!

All through HIS LOVE!

Strong in the power of HIS might

Eph 6:10  Finally, my brethren, be strong in the Lord, and in the power of his might.

We are to be strong IN THE LORD.
We ARE NOT to be strong in ourselves.

We feel weak, we recognize our weakness as we call upon our LORD to help us through our lives. We want strength and yet the world has deceived us into believing that we can gain that strength in ourselves when we can't.

 What does it mean to be strong in the LORD?

Are we left to guess at it?  Are we left to try our own things and figure it out? God seldom leaves us to wonder. God will NOT be accused of not letting us know what He desires of us.  We will NOT be able to say we were clueless, that's just not going to be possible. For everyone who cries out to God wanting to know what to do, how to handle living in this world, He has answered that cry, He has given a reply to them all.  It is up to US to listen.  We need to listen to God and before anyone tries to say that He doesn't talk, there are so many ways of communicating and if we limit them to hearing the voice of God as we hear one another then we are boxing God into corner, limiting Him, and HE WILL NOT be limited! Ever since man was created he had the attributes of communication that have gone beyond voice and ears.  People have believed that those who are deaf cannot communicate, but you ask the family of the deaf throughout history and they'd tell you a different story. Am I saying that we can know God even if we are deaf? Yes, I am. There is so much more to God than being able to hear His voice. The deaf can even read, yes? The blind can read, yes? The mute can read, right?  There are very few people that do not have the ability to learn to read in some form, even if it isn't the standard form.

God might not speak to us so that we hear Him giving us plain instructions such as my telling someone to do this, or that, but GOD does speak to us through His word.  His word is so incredible that it can be read over and over and over, endlessly speaking to us.

We are told this---

Eph 6:10  Finally, my brethren, be strong in the Lord, and in the power of his might.

We are to be STRONG in the LORD.
We are to be STRONG in the POWER of HIS MIGHT.

And then we are told THIS right after we are told to be strong in the LORD, strong in the power of HIS might.

Eph 6:11  Put on the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil.

Told to be STRONG in the POWER of HIS might, we are told to put on HIS ARMOR!

More on this tomorrow. It's something we've discussed many times, but it needs to be discussed over and over. This isn't a subject that can be exhausted, not at long as we are living here on this sinfilled earth.

All by the grace of our LORD, our SAVIOR, our GOD, our KING!

Truth comes to the LIGHT

Joh 3:21  But he that doeth truth cometh to the light, that his deeds may be made manifest, that they are wrought in God.

Doing truth.

Truth.

We've talked about truth a lot because it's incredibly important. There are truths and lies, nothing else. There is nothing in between those two though many will tell you there is a lot between truth and lies. I'm not saying life doesn't have a lot of gray areas, it does but those gray areas should never compromise the ultimate truth and lie of a situation. 

We cannot call lies - truth, and the opposite is true as well, we cannot call truth - lies. If we dare to subvert the truth then we will reap the punishment that results. 

Satan is the father of lies.
Satan is the opposite of truth.

Our Savior is truth.

Joh 14:6  Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.

Jesus is the truth.

If we do the truth we are doing what our Savior would do.

We come to the LIGHT and the LIGHT will reveal our deeds. 

We can hide NOTHING from God, not a single thing.  Everything is revealed to our God.

If we are a true child of God then we WANT all our deeds to be manifested, all of our deeds. We want the good deeds to be shown that we find our good IN HIM, through HIS GOODNESS. We want our evil deeds to be known so we can ask for forgiveness, so we can repent of them.

We can't HIDE from God so even bothering to try is completely pointless. Yet people do try to hide their deeds from God. When they believe in God and they believe that they will be judged by Him, they often do try to hide their evil, thinking that if they hide it then it won't matter as much. It matters, it matters a lot.  More often than not though, people who even believe in God and that they will be judged by Him, believe that He will forgive them everything no matter what it is and they don't even have to think about it much. They don't have to seek true repentance and forgiveness because they believe that God understands and won't fault them for their weakness, their sins.

We are told by Christ Himself to not sin, that sinning is wrong.  He says over and over-  'Go and sin no more.'   He does not say- 'Go and try to sin no more.'  He does not say- 'Go and don't worry about sinning.'  He does not say- 'I forgave you once so all is good, you're forgiven for anything you do in the future.'   He SAYS- 'GO AND SIN NO MORE.'

He is the LIGHT, He is the TRUTH and all our actions need to be revealed to Him, and we need to reveal them WILLINGLY.

Just as a parent who knows their child has done wrong hopes that child will confess that wrong to them rather than their having to confront them with it- God wants us to confess NOT to hide our evil deeds and YES our sins are evil, we CANNOT pretty them up, they are EVIL.

Joh 3:21  But he that doeth truth cometh to the light, that his deeds may be made manifest, that they are wrought in God.

If we do TRUTH - all that Jesus has told us we are to do in HIM- then we come to the LIGHT- we come to HIM- and our deeds are revealed and if we are doing those deeds in TRUTH it will be revealed that they are WROUGHT IN GOD.

We must do TRUTH.

3Jn_1:3  For I rejoiced greatly, when the brethren came and testified of the truth that is in thee, even as thou walkest in the truth.

2Jn_1:2  For the truth's sake, which dwelleth in us, and shall be with us for ever.

JESUS- we must live with JESUS in us, as a REAL part of our LIFE!

IN HIS LOVE!  ALWAYS IN HIS TRUTH!

Love the LIGHT, accept REPROOF

Joh 3:19  And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil.
Joh 3:20  For every one that doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved.

Light is come into the world.

Jesus.

Joh 8:12  Then spake Jesus again unto them, saying, I am the light of the world: he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life.

Joh 9:5  As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.

JESUS the LIGHT of the WORLD.

LIGHT (JESUS) came into the world and men loved darkness (evil) rather than LIGHT (JESUS).

Why?  Why do men love darkness (evil)?

Because he does NOT want to be reproved!

Why don't we want to be reproved? In general, why don't we like being reproved?  When a person is reproved they are being shown where they've erred. We don't like to be wrong. Our pride gets in the way of our acceptance of reproof.

Being wrong about something is admitting to IMPERFECTION, right? 

We can say we aren't perfect, and we KNOW we aren't perfect, but we sure don't like to be reminded of that by anyone else. We go through life doing the best we can and when we screw up we never feel good about it, and we shouldn't, should we? Our screw ups point out our tendency to do wrong. Feeling good about doing wrong isn't something we want, right? Feeling a sincere repentance when we do wrong is necessary to the comprehension of our existence with sin.

When we do something wrong accidentally we still feel bad about it, we don't like to mess up, but the sad fact is - accidentally or not - we will mess up.  We will go through life believing that we know what to do, how to exist in the world comfortably enough to get by.  But we can NEVER get to that place where we are depending upon OURSELVES for our own goodness, for our right doing. We can NEVER get to that place where we excuse our wrong offhandedly.

So all too often people will choose to embrace wrong, to love wrong, rather than strive against it.  They will love their evil deeds so much because to be reproved and told they are doing wrong is too appalling to them. Feeling the depths of their sin is something they abhor.  They want NO REPROOF! They do NOT want to be told they are WRONG. They do NOT want to deal with the fact they are a vile creature in need of a pure, holy Savior! They HATE the LIGHT!  The LIGHT shines upon their evil in all its forms and reveals it to them and they shun the LIGHT rather than let it expose their sin. They prefer the darkness and the evil it hides.   That darkness cocoons them in a state of selfish self love allowing them to revel in themselves, feeling no shame, no remorse, no repentance, no need of forgiveness, desiring no Light whatsoever.

Those who LOVE the LIGHT will feel REPROOF.  They will feel the harsh whip of chastising not just once but often, very, very often. While our bodies might not bear physical scars from this whip, our spiritual body will be covered in them. We NEED these scars! We NEED the painfulness of reproof to remind us always our need of a SAVIOR.  To remind us that we do understand as much as we are able to that we will never not need a SAVIOR. We need the CONSTANT reminders. We need to bask constantly in the LIGHT because to choose darkness is to choose death, not life.

Joh 3:19  And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil.
Joh 3:20  For every one that doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved.

Please LORD reprove our deeds! Please LORD help us to LOVE the LIGHT! Please LORD help us NOT to choose darkness over any light!

It is true the world is filled with haters of the LIGHT, help us NOT to be among them in any way! BY YOUR GRACE, YOUR LOVE ALWAYS in ALL WAYS!