Ella struggled for years with addiction, and both her and her brother would binge together. With an abusive father and an addicted mother, drugs and dealers were always around their home. She started taking them at a very young age, but as hazed as she’d be some mornings, Ella never missed a day of school. Despite their drug use, her parents were very accomplished, and Ella was quick-witted, smart as a whip, and motivated to learn. Her teachers did everything they possibly could to encourage and help her. She was accepted to several universities, with scholarships and opportunities that most of us would envy, but Ella couldn’t handle the pressure and her addiction got worse. For the last twelve years, she and her brother have lived with their mother who’s struggling with sobriety herself. Ella is full of regrets and wants desperately to change her life.
Never holding down a job for any length of time, being in an abusive and addictive household all her life, and being addicted herself, most of us would look at Ella’s situation with little hope for her. The obstacles in the way of her getting from point A to point B seem insurmountable, and she is well aware of this. She was depressed and contemplated doing herself harm, but she met a man, a Christian man. He is saying words, speaking sentences, and giving off a light she has never encountered in her life.
“Are you kidding me!!!” is a statement she frequently makes in his company. In her mind, she thinks, “this dude can’t be real.” She wonders why he keeps asking her out for coffee and calling her for long conversations. He’s kind, but kinda corny, she thinks. He’s always asking her about her day, and it irks her, because to her, for the last several years, every day is basically the same. It’s the same grind of figuring out how to be high. In her mind, the man, Franklin, came out of nowhere, and because he seems so foreign to her way of living life, she thinks he doesn’t have a clue, but indeed he does.
Ephesians 1:4-5(NLT) tells us, “4 Even before he made the world, God loved us and chose us in Christ to be holy and without fault in his eyes. 5 God decided in advance to adopt us into his own family by bringing us to himself through Jesus Christ.” It’s no secret that we can make a mess of our lives and do so to the point that they are unrecognizable to God’s call and purpose, but His call and purpose will still always win. We don’t choose God first, He chose us first. Even before He said, “Let there be light”, He knew that we would give our lives to Him. Before we entered our mother’s wombs, God chose us to be His very own.
God works through people. His love and light shines before us through the lives of those that have accepted His call. He sends them to help us, to show us the way through Jesus Christ and come to Him. Then we, too, will one day have the great privilege to do for someone else what has been done for us.
Nothing in life matters more than being a child of God and getting to know Him as our Heavenly Father for ourselves. Our purpose is to be and share His love and light. 1Thessalonians 5:5(NLT) tells us, “For you are all children of the light and of the day; we don’t belong to darkness and night.” The darkness of the night is where we lived before we accepted Jesus Christ as our personal Lord and Savior. That darkness took many forms. For some it is abuse, addiction, and hard partying. For others it’s arrogance, pride, selfishness, obsession, idolatry and people worship. Humans are very crafty with designing ways to neglect their identity in Christ and to reject God’s love and light. We do this because we’re walking around asleep. 2Corinthians 4:4 tells us that one of satan’s tricks is to keep our minds blinded so that we don’t see the truth, and like Ella, many of us make ourselves comfortable in that darkness.
Jesus Christ said in John 3:16-17(NLT), “16 For God loved the world so much that he gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life. 17 God sent his Son into the world not to judge the world, but to save the world through him.” God wants to save us so that we can live in Him and He can live in us. He wants us to know the depth of His love, the brightness of His light, and the strength of His unlimited, incomparable power. He wants us to lean on Him with all that we are because He created us to be His family and to live through Him. He wants what is best for all of us.
2Corinthians 5:17(NLT) says, “This means that anyone who belongs to Christ has become a new person. The old life is gone; a new life has begun!” When we’ve lived in the darkness, and we’re suddenly introduced to the light, it can be jarring. The light is exposing things we want hidden. It’s putting the darkness on blast, and that’s uncomfortable, but it’s our destiny! We need to have faith in God and trust that He will transform us into what He created us to be. When it feels that life is stacked against us, its overwhelming, and we might feel hopeless. This is where Ella had been for most of her life, but God has a plan for her and for our lives as well. When we surrender to His love and care, He will flood our hearts with His light so that we understand His power. We must trust that He will do for us what we cannot do for ourselves. If we learn about Christ and pray often, we will grow in his love, and like Franklin, we will want to share his light with others.■
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.
“Introduced to the Light”, written for Springfield Fellowship © 2023. All rights reserved. All praise and honor to God through Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior.