My car door closed behind me and I found myself closed into an arena with fear. I quickly started the engine and turned on the headlights, hoping they would penetrate the darkness that threatened to creep into my spirit. Plugging my phone into the stereo I tried to drown out my thoughts.
The movie I had just watched was clean, but the entire two hours were incredibly suspenseful. The plot revolved around death, the entire show took place in darkness, and the actors played out fear and deception.
Now I faced the darkness in my tiny car, where the headlights couldn’t reach me and music couldn’t keep my mind from wandering back to the anxiety in the actor’s eyes.
I’m not an anxious person – I don’t often battle fear – but that night I did. I had exposed myself to darkness and left the door wide open for the enemy to come and work havoc in my mind.
I’m concerned that many young women are naively opening the door to darkness and falling prey to Satan and his devices. So many of us struggle with anxiety, worldliness, nightmares, and hopelessness, while we eagerly open our minds to darkness.
Called to be light
Jesus declared “I am the light of the world. He who follows Me shall not walk in darkness, but have the light of life” (John 8:12).
Darkness is anything that is contrary to the nature of Christ – the light of the world – including fear, death, doubt, immorality, and witchcraft. If we follow Christ, we cannot willingly participate in darkness. We are called to be a light to this world.
“For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Walk as children of light.” (Eph. 5:8)
As I said in my booklet, many girls want to be a light for Jesus Christ to their friends but feel like the darkness has crept into their own life and stolen their light.
Your desire to be a light for Jesus is something that He has put in your heart. But as long as we continue to watch the same movies, go to the same parties, read the same books, and listen to the same music as this dark world, we won’t have any light to shine.
The door to our mind
“The lamp of the body is the eye. Therefore, when your eye is good, your whole body also is full of light. But when your eye is bad, your body also is full of darkness. Therefore take heed that the light which is in you is not darkness. If then your whole body is full of light, having no part dark, the whole body will be full of light, as when the bright shining of a lamp gives you light.” (Luke 11:34-36, emphasis added)
Where I live, we get a lot of snow. This September over a foot of snow piled up on our driveway. One day we had a storm where the wind blew snow everywhere. I came home from work that day and slipped through our front door, closing it behind me as fast as I could so that the wind couldn’t blow the snow into the house with me.
I could have rebelled against the wind, left the door open and just turned up the heat. But the heater wouldn’t have been able to help keep me warm with my front door wide open to the blizzard. The wind was too strong and the snow too cold.
Our eyes are the door to our mind. When our eyes are fixed on darkness, watching movies that produce fear, reading books that celebrate death, and listening to music that glorifies evil, we open the door of our mind to darkness. Just as I wouldn’t have been able to keep my house warm by turning up the heart while my door was open to the blizzard, we can’t expect to keep our minds and hearts free from fear and anxiety when our eyes are open to darkness. As Leslie Ludy says “when we participate in things that glorify darkness, we are giving the prince of darkness access to our minds and subconscious.”
As we look at some of the most common ways I see darkness gaining access to our lives, I want to challenge you to carefully consider if you have left the door of your own mind open for darkness and fear to creep in.
Common doorways for darkness
1) Music
I scrolled through the new releases on iTunes the other day. Many of the album covers are so dark, so hopeless. If images of death, bondage, evil, and fear paint their covers, we can be sure the content isn’t any brighter.
When we play this music in both ears, we willingly give our enemy access to our minds.
2) Books
I’ve stopped browsing through the YA section of bookstores because the cover art on these books paints the same pictures of darkness as our music. The messages in these books are often even darker than the sleeves with immorality, violence, and witchcraft painted in beautiful colours. God hates this.
Are you filling your mind with characters and stories that glorify the prince of darkness?
3) Movies
Movies are possibly the most dangerous of all our entertainment. They literally, engage the lamp of our body (our eyes) in seeing either light or darkness. Both the vivid images and stirring sound often rings in our ears and minds for days later.
Are you putting darkness or light before your eyes?
Called to have no part in darkness
“The night is far spent, the day is at hand. Therefore let us cast off the works of darkness, and let us put on the armor of light.” (Rom 13:12)
The war for our hearts and minds is too real, too intense to take chances with darkness. The cost is too great to be casual in our entertainment. We must be willing to look the fool and turn off the movie or put down the book in order to stay strong for the spiritual battle God has called us to.
God has called us to come out of darkness and into His glorious light. In Him is light and no darkness at all. If you are willing to walk away from darkness God will fill you with His marvellous light, and you will find yourself able to shine the hope of Jesus Christ into the dark world around you.
This is a very good, and unfortunately relevant, point for even many in the church. It hurts me to look at girls around me who are so full of life, have so much potential, and even a blooming love to Christ, yet are so naive. Sometimes I just want to shake them and say “Look at what you’re getting into, you think it’s fun, but it robbing you.” But fortunately, our God is bigger than our naivety, and He gently picks us up out of the mess we’ve made and shows us a better way.
Yes, it is so sad to watch many girls blindly engaging in activities that rob them of the joy of Jesus Christ and the fruitful life He holds out to us. But I love what you said Courtney how God will pick us up and show us the better way to live! If we genuinely seek Him we will find Him!