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Glory Seed Devotional’s, 2017: Anticipating and Experiencing Jehovah-Jireh...
Come Holy Spirit, Come...
Shalom!
Have you ever been afraid of the dark? Have you ever been terrified of the dark? I know some will tell you there’s really no difference between being afraid and feeling terrified but you’ll never convince me they’re one and the same. For a long time I’ve thought myself afraid of the dark, but for some reason recently the subject has resurfaced and my fear of the dark has over the years gone from being afraid to being terrified. Here’s how I understand the relationship between being afraid, and being terrified of the dark. I understand fear as an emotion while in some instances it is good in its respect mode (fear of fire) yet at the same time fear is bad when it goes into an “imagined danger mode” causing me react at a deeper level where I convince myself the threat of danger is real and terror grips me tighter and tighter. (Someone who has never had a real fear of the dark won’t know what I’m talking about but those who have will know.)
Let me give you an example many years ago (maybe in my early forty’s) while working the afternoon shift at my work place it was dark when I got home. I parker my car about 20 feet from the front door. It was dark, the minute the car lights went off my fear of the dark would begin and I would become afraid and would walk a little faster, then suddenly my imagined source of danger would become real and by the time I reached the front door I was on a dead run terrified something was going to get me. Of course this all happened in matter of seconds. So that’s how I understand the power a fear of the dark can be. But before I go on with my story I need to tell you locked deep in me somewhere those things that struck fear, being afraid, and being terrified are still there yet they have no powerful over me. There are however rare occasions when those feelings try to resurface and I can feel the terror trying to regain a hold on me.
The reason I am telling you my story with fear of the dark is because there is a fear of dark more dangerous then being afraid of some unreal “monster” it’s called spiritual darkness and somehow it has gained significant ground in our world. The other day while reading a book by Author Richard Pritchard I (by divine design) happened on the following quote that will help us dispel the threat of the terror of spiritual darkness. “We may be encouraged that God’s Holy Spirit still hovers over the darkness today. Though we may not see Him or feel Him or reach out and touch him, yet He is there. He still moves through the emptiness of life, preparing the way for God to bring us out of the darkness and into the light once again.” (Pritchard, R. 1995. Names of the Holy Spirit, page 11. Chicago: Moody Press)
I’ll save the rest of my story for another day on how I went as a teenager of sleeping with a toy gun under my pillow for protection at night when it was dark in my room to depending on the Light of the Spirit to protect me from when there was and is no light and from spiritual darkness. Suffice it to quote Jesus talking about believing in Him, “I have told you all this so that you may have peace in me. Here on earth you will have many trials and sorrows. But take heart, because I have overcome the world.”” (John 16:33, NLT)
Grace and PEACE,
Gary
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“Scripture quotations marked NLT are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Wheaton, Illinois 60189. All rights reserved.”
**Hebrews 4:16, NLT
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