By Douglas Hatten
Consider the following when dealing with any kind of darkness in your life: When you enter a dark room, you do not "turn off the dark" in order to
dispel it. Instead you "turn on the light." Light and dark cannot occupy the same space at the same time. Every time light and dark meet, the
darkness must flee. The reason for this is that darkness is nothing more than a lack of light.
Sin is a darkness in the soul of man. Soon after giving my life to Christ, I was in the midst of an enormous struggle to over-come a number of sins my life,
and it felt like for every step I gained, I might fall one or more steps backwards again. I tried hard to not do certain things, and to not think certain
thoughts, etc. But always it seemed to be an up-hill battle, and a losing one. And then one night as I lay in bed praying about this very thing, I had a
vision.
I saw a half-empty glass of water. And I watched as hundreds of little dust particles floated down through the air and into the water, fouling it. And then a
finger on a hand stretched forth and tried to scoop out some of the dust particles, one at a time. It was a losing battle. For every particle that the finger
was able to get out of the glass, twenty more fell in. I heard the Lord say to me, "This is how you are dealing with your sin."
Then the Lord said, "This is how I would do it." I then saw the water in the glass expand and fill up the glass until it over-flowed. All the
contaminants were pushed out, and no particle had a chance to get into the glass as the water continued to gush up and flow out.
At this point, it was clear in my mind that the glass represented me, or my life. I was the vessel, and the water was God, or His Spirit… and the particles
were sin. Simply trying to remove a sin, or quit sinning, in order to be pure isn't a very effectively way of dealing with it. We must fill ourselves, our
lives, with God… so that He fills up every available space within us, pushing out sin and the cares of the world. He is the light that dispels the darkness!
