The last aspect of walking in the light that I will mention here is being thankful. This will help with many areas of your life. Start by recognizing that God is the creator of all things. Look at all the trees, all the flowers, all the clouds, stars, sun, and moon. Thank God. Then thank God for all of your family. Thank Him for all wildlife: fish, animals, and birds.
“Give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus” (1 Thess. 5:18).
“Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus” (Phil. 4:6-7).
Giving thanks is God’s will for you. It results in peace that passes all comprehension.
“I have not stopped giving thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers” (Eph. 1:16).
“I thank my God every time I remember you. In all my prayers for all of you, I always pray with joy because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now, being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus” (Phil. 1:3-6).
Being thankful is an exercise of the will in obeying God’s command to be thankful in everything. The Scripture does not say, “Be thankful for everything.” Be thankful in everything. I am not thankful for being sick, but I can be thankful in being sick. When I am thankful in everything, then I can rejoice always. When I make my petitions to God with thankfulness, I end up with peace.
One of the signs of walking in the light is singing. This is not a way to walk in the light, but a result of it. When you walk in the light, you may end up singing to the Lord, even if you don’t know any great hymns.
I knew one young woman who had been “converted” several times and still wasn’t saved. She had read every book in the Christian bookstore and gone to every counselor in town. She went to multiple people for counseling, attended our school of practical Christianity, and read several books. I met with them both a couple times and with her more times. She knew all the answers but did not seem able to put them into effect in her life.
One day she showed up at our front door. Bessie met her and told her to go sit in one of the chairs under the apple tree in the backyard while she went to find me.
At that moment, I was reading a book by Watchman Nee, and I had just read a paragraph where Nee said (to paraphrase), “Two men can hear the same text preached at the same time. ‘I am the way the truth and the life, no man cometh to the Father but by me.’ One person will hear that text and say, ‘Oh, that’s wonderful!’ and will come to the Father through Jesus Christ. Another person will say, ‘Oh, what a wonderful doctrine!’ and come to the doctrine.”
Having just read that paragraph, I quoted it to the young woman under the apple tree. She asked me, “What is the difference between the two?”
I said, “The first has love, joy, and peace, and the other has a plaque on the wall.”
The next day she called to tell me that she was not a Christian. I replied that I did not think she was, either. She got upset with me because I agreed with her.
I told her that I would not tell her how to become a Christian. Her head was filled with the gospel already. If I told her, she would go through the motions and not be any more saved afterwards. I said, “I’m not going to tell you how to become a Christian, because you are a doer, and you’d just go plug the formula. You’ve plugged it several times already, and nothing’s happened. If I tell you how to come to the Father, you won’t understand it. Grace, love, faith: all these terms you know by heart are empty words to you. There are certain things you need to find out for yourself first. You have to find out that God is holy. You have to find out how awfully sinful you are. You have to find out how great the love of God is. After you have some glimmer of the holiness of God, and after you have some small understanding of how sinful you are in the light of that holiness, and after you begin to see how much love God has for you in your sinfulness, then I will tell you the good news.”
I did not hear from her for several weeks. Then she called and asked, “How could the Father love the Son and send Him to the cross?” She was starting to understand.
“Oh!” I replied. “It didn’t say He loved the Son. It says, ‘For God so loved the world that He gave His only-begotten Son.’ That tells us not how much He loves the Son, but how much He loves the world.”
I realized that she probably had enough understanding for me to tell her the gospel. However, I wanted to speak to her heart. Her head was already filled with truth, but it had not sunk in. I decided to give her the gospel in song and poetry. Over the phone, I sang her hymns like The Love of God, The Deep, Deep Love of Jesus, and At Calvary.
Sometime later, she was working a job cleaning apartments. As she ran the vacuum, she was singing, “He is Lord, He is Lord, He has risen from the dead, and He is Lord,” and she was saved in the middle of the chorus. She was looking up to God, and her conversion was real.
After we are saved by grace through faith, walking in the light is a grace/faith event. There is no other way. Colossians 2:6 says, “Therefore, as you received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in Him” (ESV). How did you receive Christ Jesus the Lord? By effort? By trying? No. You quit trying when you received Christ Jesus the Lord, and you trusted. When you quit trying and trusted grace, the Lord changed your life.
“Therefore, as you received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in Him.” The same procedure by which I was saved is the way I live the Christian life. When I became a Christian, I quit trying—and having become one, I still quit trying. Living the Christian life is like being born again every instant. It’s grace and faith. You didn’t try to get in, and you don’t try to live.
You say, “Yes, I do.”
Well, I want to know this: do you succeed?
People come to me and say, “Jim, I don’t know why I failed. I tried to live the Christian life.”
“Oh,” I say, “that’s why. You fell because you tried to live the Christian life.”
We are not to try to live the Christian life. Walking in the light is grace, faith, grace, faith. As soon as we get saved, we are tempted to revert to trying. We are not to do that. The entire book of Galatians was written against that. Paul said, “Oh foolish Galatians!” (Gal. 3:1). You idiots! Tell me how you got into this kingdom. “Did you receive the Spirit by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith? Are you so foolish? Having been made alive by the Spirit, are you now made perfect by the flesh?” (Gal. 6:2-3).
Look up to God and reject trying. This is what the New Testament teaches. We read it and hear something else. We try to reinterpret everything into something we can do. Do not read this Scripture and go back to trying.
“If I don’t try, I’ll fall.”
If you do try, you’ll fall.
A multitude of groups today are out there teaching the secret way to the “deeper life,” and seekers flock to them by the thousands. Those ways don’t work. This is true, and it works, but people aren’t flocking to it—because they don’t want to walk in the light. They want a quick fix that doesn’t require so much cleaning of their hearts. They would rather try, or they would rather have a periodic cleansing.
Christians today do not walk in complete joy, nor are they whiter than snow. They are living subnormal Christian lives. However, it is possible to walk in the light as He is in the light. That way, you do not have to keep confessing so many of the same sins over and over, because you will not commit them.
I used to be a
“tryer” and a charger, and the Lord spared me. I am “doing” more with less
effort now than I used to do with effort. This is so contrary to our normal
mode of thinking that it may not make sense to you. Ask God to help it make
sense so that you can reject trying and trust Him.[1] Books
that have helped me walk in the light include The Calvary Road, We Would
See Jesus, and Broken People,
Transforming Grace: The Gospel’s Message of Saving Love by Roy Hession and Continuous Revival and The Key to Everything by Norman Grubb.
[1] For more on living by grace
through faith, read my book Dead and
Alive: Obedience and the New Man, available at Amazon.com and ccmbooks.org.
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