Shine Your Light, O Lord!

Daily Reading: Proverbs 20

Scripture Focus:  The spirit of man is the lamp of the Lord, searching all his innermost parts. (Proverbs 20.27)

Devotional Thought:  One day when Jesus was talking with his disciples, he said, “Your eye is the lamp of your body. When your eye is healthy, your whole body is full of light, but when it is bad, your body is full of darkness” (Luke 11.34).  This is what the writer of Proverbs was referring to when he had written centuries before: “The spirit of man is the lamp of the Lord, searching all his innermost parts” (Proverbs 20.27).  God speaks to us through the spirit within us - our consciences.  Aren’t you grateful for our consciences!  God has given each one of us this inner light to reveal what is right and wrong.  He searches our hearts and reveals to us our spiritual needs. 

But, we can dim our consciences – even snuff out the lamp of the Lord within us:

• If we willingly disobey the Lord, Jesus warns us, our "body is full of darkness.” 

• Rejecting truth also brings darkness: “Because they refused to love the truth... Therefore God sends them a strong delusion, so that they may believe what is false, in order that all may be condemned who did not believe the truth but had pleasure in unrighteousness” (2 Thessalonians 2.10-12).  Loving the wrong thing can snuff out the light within us! 

• John wrote that a lack of love will also cause spiritual darkness: “Whoever hates his brother is in the darkness and walks in the darkness, and does not know where he is going, because the darkness has blinded his eyes” (1 John 2.11).

God’s Word is “a lamp to my feet and a light to my path” (Psalm 119.105).  Praise the Lord!  He is faithful to shine his truth into our lives!  Are you letting it get through?

Prayer: Thank you, Lord, for shining the light of your Word and your Spirit into my spirit.  Search my innermost parts, O God, and give me strength to follow you out of the darkness into your marvelous light.  Amen.

Psalm of the Day: Psalm 11.1-7

1 In the LORD I take refuge; how can you say to my soul, "Flee like a bird to your mountain,

2 for behold, the wicked bend the bow; they have fitted their arrow to the string to shoot in the dark at the upright in heart;

3 if the foundations are destroyed, what can the righteous do?"

4 The LORD is in his holy temple; the LORD's throne is in heaven; his eyes see, his eyelids test the children of man.

5 The LORD tests the righteous, but his soul hates the wicked and the one who loves violence.

6 Let him rain coals on the wicked; fire and sulfur and a scorching wind shall be the portion of their cup.

7 For the LORD is righteous; he loves righteous deeds; the upright shall behold his face.