Into His Marvelous Light (Lord Of All 2018)

This article was published in The Lord of All on February 2018, the official publication of the Cathedral Church of St. Michael - Kalibo, Aklan; Philippines.

On January 17, 2018, I found myself tweeting this:

“Feeling a certain kind of love that does not come from any particular person today. It’s the kind that warms my heart and fills me up with light and makes me smile like a total weirdo. This is You, noh? <3”

Have you ever experienced that before? There you are, going about your daily activities and all of sudden – boom – a surge of love just fills you up and you know in your heart that it’s Him.

I am grateful for those moments. Those little glimpses of God’s great love being physically manifested in us.

I used to never feel things like that before. You see, I tweeted this a few weeks after the installment of the Primate – who, for the sake of those who do not know yet, happens to be my dad.

When I heard about this a year before, I wasn’t in a very good place in my relationship with God. I did not know how to process this new development in my dad’s life, and I did not know how this would shape my role in this journey.     

But God IS God. He is sovereign. He sees, hears, and knows everything, including my heart. Every little bit of it, its glimmers of light and streaks of darkness, its truths, its scars, its triumphs, downfalls, and fears.

Through my period of unrest, I knew He was there. But He was never obtrusive. I focused on dealing with everyday mundane things and welcomed the familiarity of what I felt was normal and ordinary until the days leading to The Event drew closer.   

And then one day this word was planted in my heart. “But you are not like that, for you are a chosen people. You are royal priests, a holy nation, God’s very own possession. As a result, you can show others the goodness of God, for he called you out of darkness into His wonderful light.” (1 Peter 2:9, NLT)

You are not like that.

You are a chosen people.

The King James Version even uses “A Peculiar People.” Different from the usual.

It was never going to be a “normal” life and I knew in my heart that I just had to embrace it. Slowly, ever so gently, He ushered me out of that place. I started saying “Yes” to Him again and He showed me in His great, wonderful and loving way how obedience, choosing Him, choosing LIGHT, will bring blessings to your life.

“Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold the new has come.” (2 Corinthians 5:17)

Sure enough when the day came, I was able to enjoy the event and bask in the many supernatural things that happened. He changed and prepped my heart and has even planted desires in it that I never thought I had. 

It scares me, but it excites me.

I am letting God be God in my life and because of this, every now and then He graces me with little sweet surprises such as the one I mentioned in my tweet.

“I am the light of the world. If you follow me, you won’t have to walk in darkness because you will have the light that leads to life.” (John 8:12)

There is liberation in choosing to be obedient to God. “It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. So I live in this earthly body by trusting in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me.” (Galatians 2:20)

May we always choose light over darkness and trust that He, in His immeasurable love and wisdom, knows what is best for us. To God be the glory.

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