July 31

1 John 2:11 (NIV84)
11 But whoever hates his brother is in the darkness and walks around in the darkness; he does not know where he is going, because the darkness has blinded him.

There is a darkness that can and will invade the soul. This darkness comes by us “joining” with darkness in dark activity. This particular activity is hatred (a strong dislike with the implication of aversion – or avoiding) of a fellow Christian. Yes the word could mean wanting to kill somebody or have bad things happen to them, but it doesn’t need to go that far to be hatred. When we avoid a person because we dislike them, we have hatred for them. We all know and agree that this type of attitude is wrong and should not be among us as Christians – right? There are NO exceptions!

The revelation of this verse is darkness and how it operates. Once darkness has a place in you, (in this case hatred), you begin at that point to walk around in darkness! How dark and to what extent we don’t exactly know, but what we clearly see is that the person who has accepted ANY darkness, especially hatred as defined above, does not KNOW where they are going! They are blind! Darkness affects your whole life! When we participate in the deeds of darkness, (gossip, judgmentalism, back-biting, deception…), we open our souls to being blind in many areas if not all areas of our life! We will be taken to more darkness and perhaps believe that we are doing right. Why? Because we are blind! Darkness knows no bounds and will stop for nothing but the light!