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The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness can never extinguish it. John 1:5 NLT After a recent caving trip with a group of college students, we stopped to talk about the experience. I asked the students a series of simple questions. “What’s the opposite of up? What’s the opposite of hot? What’s the opposite of light?” When I received the obvious answer that darkness is the opposite of light, it sparked a conversation about how darkness is not actually an opposing energy force to light but an absence of it. The same is true of spiritual light and darkness. Spiritual darkness is simply the absence of spiritual light. In the cave when we had turned off all our lights, the darkness was overwhelming and complete, but a single pinprick of light from a headlamp immediately extinguished the darkness for a far as the beam could reach. It is my belief that in the church today we often discount the power of Christ because we don’t understand the nature of the spiritual battle we are in between the forces of light and the forces of darkness. Either we discount the reality and the severity of the battle, or we tend to give the enemy too much credit, as if he is an opposite near co-equal power to our sovereign Lord. The reality is that even though we live in a realm of extreme darkness, we are to be bearers of the true light of Christ. When that light shines into the darkness, the darkness has no choice but to flee. It can never extinguish the light! This new year, may you boldly carry the light of Christ into the dark places of this world, trusting in His power and all sufficiency to prevail over the darkness.