Why followers of Jesus should stay at Motel 6

They leave the light on...

In 1 John 1:5-10, God declares, through his Spirit and through his servants, that he is light, and in him is no darkness at all.

God speaks truth about himself and about us, but we attempt to talk over him, to speak our own version of truth. Three times John describes the claims of darkness -- our speaking over what God has spoken: "if we say" we walk with God but walk in darkness; "if we say" we have no sin; "if we say" we have not sinned.

The one who follows God by walking in light, faithfully reflecting the glory of God -- 'glowing' with his glory -- will, first, declare God's character as light; second, reject the claims of darkness; and third, revel in exposure to God's light, confessing sin so that we are 'lit up' and rid of darkness. In other words, we speak not what we want to say, but what God has spoken about himself and about us.

As we flee darkness to dwell with God in light, he forgives, cleanses, and washes us in the blood of Jesus Christ.

Audio here.

THINKING "OUTSIDE THE BOX"

The expression may, by now, be a bit passe, but one hears occasionally within church culture references to thinking and acting "outside the box." Unfortunately, many are willing, even anxious, to join the hordes of those who "think outside the box" (but who are most definitely, by now, calling it something else entirely), even when such thinking puts us squarely outside the confining walls of Scripture. Indeed, the "walls" of Scripture liberate, rather than confine.

The common refrain among these free spirits is that those of us who insist on permitting Scripture to limit our sin-prone mental wanderings are "putting God in a box." Yet if true this proposition would leave us in the position of asserting that God created a box that he does not inhabit and necessarily ignores.