Let there be Light

Let There Be Light

This was one of the most basic acts of creation. Genesis 1:3-5 “ Then God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light.  And God saw the light, that it was good; and God divided the light from the darkness.  God called the light Day, and the darkness He called Night. So the evening and the morning were the first day.” God spoke. It happened. Simple wasn’t it?

To me, this happens many times every day. It happens every time a sinner repents and gives his or her life to the Lord. The penitent sinner, perhaps for the first time ever, sees the light. He steps into the light of God’s love. Where before he wandered around in the dark, presumably quite happily but bemusedly, he now turns to God and hey presto – “Let there be light.”

Reinhard Bonnke tells the simplest salvation story where he recounts meeting a woman who complained of “feeling as if permanently in the dark”. The evangelist stood her in a dark corner and turned a light on behind her. He explained that staying in this position she would be permanently in the dark – being in her own shadow. However, if she turned around, then she would be facing the light and no longer in the dark. This, he said, was what she needed to do with God. Facing away from Him, she was almost permanently in the dark. However, when she turned herself around to face Him, she would be in His light and able to see clearly.

This is so simple. It is the action of someone accepting Jesus with a very simple faith. What could be more simple than turning around to both see the light and to stand in it too. Do we over-complicate the Gospel to the extent that we miss the simplest of options? When someone is saved, they simply turn to the light. Exactly the same as when God spoke the words at creation, so He is saying the same things again but this time to one person at a time. “Let there be light.”, He says, and the light of understanding floods their life as, for the first time, they see Jesus for who He really is.

Isn’t that just so simple?