Sarah Dixon Young's Blog: Love Much, page 20

All my Mind

    Dementia is a frightening prospect.

    We watch elderly relatives struggle with how to make a sandwich, what day it is, how to get dressed, or even who we are, and fear wells up within us. 

    We mourn the loss of who they used to be as we also dread the possibility of losing our mental faculties little by little.

The Flower fades…but the Word of the Lord stands forever.

    God gave us the mental capacity to think and reason. When we accept Christ’s forgiveness, He gives us a ...

All My Soul

In pre-marriage counseling, I told our Pastor, “I really hate folding socks.”

    It’s still true today. Socks are annoying. You have to locate both of them, and then, more often than not, you have to turn them inside out.

    Maybe it’s my innate laziness, or maybe it’s that I don’t really care if my socks are inside out, but it seems like such a lot of work for such a small garment.

Right side out.

    When Adam and Eve first disobeyed God and ate the fruit, their souls were tur...

All My Heart

“Why does God want my heart?” It was a simple question from a young child in Sunday School.

    But it stumped me. I had to hunt for the answer.

    The Greatest Commandment begins with, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart,” and it is a recurring theme throughout Scripture. But why does the Lord desire our hearts?

    When Adam was made in God’s image, there were three things that His image included which made man distinct from everything else God created: a will, a mind...

Where the Lord is at Home

    So many children’s books have to do with home.

    From Little House on the Prairie to A House is a House for Me and from Sweet Home Alaska to The Hobbit, the search for a place of comfort and belonging is universal. 

    So many of the children I have discipled have no physical home, and their real life challenges often overcome their first excited acceptance of the Gospel story. They have no foundation and no stability from which to grasp the Truths of Scripture and apply them.

My...

Abiding in His Light

My son was fascinated to read about Otis Barton recently.

Even as a boy, Otis wanted to know more about the deep parts of the ocean, so he designed and built a wooden helmet with glass windows that could connect to a hose. He weighted himself down and asked a friend to use a bicycle pump to pump air to him.

After half an hour walking on the sea floor, Otis hungered to know even more and resolved to repeat his exploration again.

I hope my son doesn’t get any wild ideas from Otis’s story, but we thought it was the perfect picture of abiding in Christ.

We catch a glimpse of the wonders of Jesus and start doing whatever it takes to get to know Him- reading the Bible, praying, going to church, spending time with Christians. And as soon as we get a really good look at the depths of Christ’s love, we want to venture deeper and deeper into a relationship with Him- spending more and more time in His presence. We realize that He sustains us with Himself even though we live in a hostile environment, This is abiding.

John wrote, “God is light and in Him is no darkness at all. Whoever says he abides in Him ought also to walk in the same way in which He walked.”

In my latest book, In His Light: Opening the Window to the Transforming Love of Christ, I share devotional thoughts that inspire Christians to open their lives and hearts to the transforming love of Jesus Christ and to continually abide in Him.

Living the Christian life isn’t really about shining a flashlight into dark places.

Instead, it is learning to abide with Christ- looking to Him as the source of oxygen from a foreign realm, like Otis needed oxygen under the water. It is following Him into the darkness, trusting that His light will be enough to lead us.

Organized into chapters about light and darkness, home and garden, worship, following Christ, and immortality, I point readers to Jesus and offer encouragement and hope to fight the good fight of faith.

In His Light also includes “Celebrating the Propitiation” and “Celebrating the Incarnation,” Lenten and Advent devotionals to share with the whole family.

Light pierces the darkness. Whether the darkness is pride, bitterness, addiction, or the other evil we see around us, God gives us an insatiable desire for the light. We want to abide in the light.

The Good News is that “God is light, and in Him is no darkness at all.”

In His Light is being published by Incarnation Press and will be available in both paperback and kindle formats on Amazon November 16th. The kindle format is available for pre-order now. https://www.amazon.com/His-Light-Open...

Are you searching for ways to truly abide in Jesus? Do you long to share the light of Jesus with those you love who are suffering in the darkness? I hope you will be encouraged to open the window to the transforming light and love of Jesus Christ.

Light Beyond the Sun

Where is the sun’s shadow?

Because it is a light source, the sun creates shadows but does not cast one.

I sat in the woods this week, studying the shadow of a cottonwood tree. It grew longer as the sun sank in the west, waving in the wind as the leaves tossed and turned. The sunlight in the leaves turned the warm golden-green that only happens at high summer, and it caused the tree to cast the shadow that fell on me and the little rabbit playing in the grass.

The sun cast no shadow.

It made me think of how the Apostle John summarized Jesus’ message: “God is light, and in Him is no darkness at all.”

I was alarmed as I realized anew that a light source casts no shadow.

What about all those comforting shadow promises?

“He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High will abide in the shadow of the Almighty.”

“Keep me as the apple of Your eye; hide me in the shadow of Your wings.”

“In the shadow of Your wings I will take refuge, till the storms of destruction pass by.”

“And I have put My words in your mouth and covered you in the shadow of My hand.”

“They shall return and dwell beneath My shadow; they shall flourish like the grain.”

Where is the Lord’s shadow? How can He cast one if He is the light source and contains no darkness at all?

Indeed, James even writes, “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.”

I can rejoice in the immutable purity of God and in His light, but in my sinfulness, I see the need for His shadow, to protect me from evil but also from His piercing goodness.

I wonder if Moses’ shiny face was anything like a sunburn. He veiled his face so that the people wouldn’t be dismayed… even second-hand glory was too much for the Israelites, and I’m sinful enough to know that it would be for me too.

Where is His shadow? As Malachi wrote, “Who can endure the day of His coming and who can stand when He appears?”

Jesus came to cast His shadow.

While Jesus contained all the Light and Glory of God, He took on human flesh to cast the shadow that we need, that we crave, that we cling to in turbulent times. God’s light shone fully on Christ, and He shielded us from all of God’s glory that we cannot bear in our sinfulness.

However, to be in His shadow, we must come very close to Him.

Think of Him on the cross, with the sunlight falling on Him, with His Father’s glory and righteous wrath falling on Him. We must crawl up to the very foot of the cross to abide in His shadow, while at the same time abiding in His light.