DOMINION OVER DARKNESS (PART 1)

TEXT: Gen. 1:1-5 “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, Let there be light: and there was light… and God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day”. (KJV).

One of the things man lost in Eden is identity and one of the things man acquired in Eden is what is called a diseased perception of reality. It is this diseased perception of reality that makes man drift away from light. One of the things we must understand in the above scripture is the nature of darkness. Darkness is the absence of light; it is the absence of colour. Wherever you find darkness, everything is monochrome, dark. Wherever you find darkness, you will find voidness and formlessness; things will be out of form. The panacea for darkness is light. Light is God’s prescription for darkness.

Another thing you should take note of is the creative power of God’s word. God’s word has the power to create. You should also take note of the transformation ability of the word of God. God’s word transforms and transforms very deeply – it transforms formlessness into form, it transforms voidness into a concrete thing. Are you feeling void in any area of your life? Is your life empty? God’s word is what you need.

Another thing we need to learn from this scripture is how God confronted darkness. God spoke authoritatively, He called forth light but before He started calling forth, he had to allow the Holy Spirit to move; the Holy Spirit had to brood over. To brood over means to hover as when a mother hen broods over her eggs to bring forth life. The spirit of God came to brood, to hover over situations in order to produce life. He brooded over and the world came into existence. The word and the spirit will create and re-create in your life. There is so much power that God has given to his Church that is waiting to be deployed; so much power waiting to be put to use to transform situations and lives. You can actually practicalize this and your life will never remain the same again. That unsatisfactory issue in your life is darkness and every unsatisfactoriness of things can be confronted and changed using the same pattern of allowing the Holy Spirit to move and by calling forth what you want to see into manifestation; “let there be …” There is absolutely nothing you cannot change.

Darkness is an entity, an aggressive personality. John 1:1-5 “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God … And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not”. Darkness must always bow to light. Jesus is the word of God that was made flesh. Jesus is life, he said “I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me”. John 14:6. That is why Christ in you is the hope of glory. The glory of God is meant to shine. 1 John 1:5 says “This then is the message which we have heard of him, and declare unto you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all”. We are called to be people who reflect this light. We are called to dominate darkness and not to frolic with it, we are not called to negotiate with darkness but to dominate it. There is so much darkness in the world today because the Church has refused to shine.

Take note of the fact that darkness is a foundational problem. It is not a surface problem, it is very deep. There was darkness in the deep. If you must have dominion over darkness, you must be ready to deal with it from the root. You cannot be a surface-to-surface person. A surface-to-surface Christianity is empty; it does not produce result and it cannot handle the kind of darkness that is in the world today. That is why you need to make up your mind to be a solid Christian who is well grounded, with no darkness at all. Any area of your life that is not yielded to the light of God’s word is a dark spot.

For some people, Jesus is Lord only on Sunday mornings, every other time, anything goes, they are the boss. The devil likes it that way. Sunday service has been reduced to ceremony with empty rituals. That is the reason why the world is upside down. Light is not going to shine from the world to the Church; it is darkness that flows from the world. Light will only shine from God through the Church to the world. However, it must be a Church that is connected and full of God not a compromised Church. A compromised Church is a Church in darkness. God is light and that implies that the absence of God in any area of your life is darkness. Some countries have thrown away the word of God by banning the reading of the word in schools. Anywhere you remove light, darkness takes over immediately. The word of God is light. The solution to darkness is light; the two are mutually exclusive. Whoever rejects the word of God has enthroned darkness. Can you say, like the Psalmist, “Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path”. Psa. 119:105. If you miss the word of God, your judgments will be unrighteous; your choices will be wrong; your decisions will be faulty and your conclusions will be defective.

TO BE CONTINUED.