REFLECTION 6: BRIGHTEN UP!   LIGHTEN UP!  HEIGHTEN UP!

"Let there be light!" Genesis 1:3
"My yoke is easy and my burden is light." Matthew 11:30
"But those who wait on the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with        wings like eagles...." Isaiah 40:31

I hate oppression.  Heaviness swamps us.  Pain pursues us.  Despair crushes us.  Sin strangles us.  A broken spirit who can bear?  Bad memories are marauders who raid and rob our joy again and again.  Nightmares attack us in the night-watches and rape our rest.  Worst case scenarios encircle us like a python and squeeze all hope from our hearts.  It is the death of a thousand inner cuts.  These cruel cuts are self-inflicted by our own faithless thoughts, devilish doubts and fickle feelings.  Sometimes, everything within us cries out there is no help in God, no love from God, and no victory with God.

I recently was in just such a state of oppression.  I had my face literally crammed in the corner of a room trying to hide from reality, just like an ostrich with his head stuck in the sand.  I felt physically pained, mentally drained, and emotionally maimed.  But then a lightning bolt!  The Lord sent an "occurrence" my way.

The Lord spoke three dynamic charges to my heart:  "LIGHTEN UP!  BRIGHTEN UP!  HEIGHTEN UP!"  The words had a tone of brisk energy and festive goodwill.  I experienced relief almost instantly.  As is always the case, I discovered the Lord's  view of me is always as a champion on the rise and never as a quitter stuck in the gutter.   I left my "timeout corner" and got back in the game.

 

These three words have continued to energize my whole life. It is as if the Lord sent me a rhema FLARE to dispel the darkness that was trying to kill me.  The Lord's flares never burn out!  All I have to do is to keep His flare out from under the bushel of my neglect.  Oppression will then have no place in me.

Beloved, I also want you to hear the Lord speak this same flare to you.  Don't just receive it from man.  Let the Holy Spirit light this flare NOW within you.  The time of darkness is over. The time of fear is over. The time of condemnation is over. The time of nightmares is over. Let there be light.  The chaos is over. BRIGHTEN UP!  LIGHTEN UP!  HEIGHTEN UP!

First, the God who loves you wants you to BRIGHTEN UP.  He wants you to be happy.  That in itself is a revelation for many. "You mean God doesn't want me GRIM, GRAVE and GLUM about life in this fallen world?"   NO!  The word "grim" is the first name we give to death---the Grim Reaper.  The word "grave" is what we call the place of the dead.  The word "glum," which is defined as moody and melancholy, is where we get the word "gloom." All these words are related to death, despair and darkness, yet for many they are the lynch pins of the dour demeanor most Christians show to the world.

What earthly father wants his children to live under this heaviness?  How much more does our heavenly Father hate the idea that we think He wants us weighed down with religious grief.  By religious grief, I mean not only self-condemnation and self-flagellation, but I also mean condemning others with our whiplash judgments and critical opinions. The body of Christ should be a fount of joy and mercy rather than a sewer of shame and blame.  The good news is that even if our hearts condemn us, God is greater than our hearts (1 John 3:20).

Want to brighten up your countenance? Want to have a face that shines God's goodness out to the world? Want to have a glowing heart to go with your fluorescent face? Want to leave drooping eyes, stooped shoulders, buckling knees, dark attitudes, and wrathful words behind? Then it's time to get a Holy Ghost facial!

"If your eye be single, your whole body will be full of light." Matthew 6:22.  Single on what?  ON GOD!   Please follow this carefully.  The Apostle John chose to express the essence of the Gospel this way: "This is the message which we have heard from Him and declare to you, that GOD IS LIGHT and IN HIM IS NO DARKNESS AT ALL." 1 John 1:5.  THERE IS NO DARKNESS IN GOD--ONLY, ONLY, ONLY, ONLY LIGHT!  So, if we are single-eyed on God, we will only see things through His radiant light.  "In His light we see light."  Psalm 36:9.  In beholding His luminous face, our faces illuminate (2 Corinthians 3:18). By beholding His brilliant love, we are able to brilliantly love (1 John 4:19).

I think we can all agree that the only way to truly BRIGHTEN UP is to GOD-GAZE.  As our inner faith-eye sees only Him, every fiber of our being both absorbs His light within and reflects His light without.  This is the brightness that heals the sick and delivers the oppressed. Peter and Paul both brightened the sick to health with the glow coming off their bodies.  Prisons they occupied were aglow with God's brightness and supernatural activity, not to mention the towns where they ministered the deliverances of God.  True Christians should be known not by their denominations, but by their shine.

      

In God's brightness, we all have fullness of joy!  Part of this process of BRIGHTENING UP also includes the simultaneous dynamic of LIGHTENING UP.  They go together like love and flirting.  "Lighten up" is a phrase author Tom Robbins reveals comes from the ancient word "erleichda," which is based on a belief that when we die, if our heart is weighed down with sadness and oppression, it will sink down to the netherworld, but if our heart is light with joy it will float up to heaven.

To LIGHTEN UP is to empty our hands of ALL worry and concern.  It is "the cares of the world" which Jesus said "choke" the word of God from manifesting in our lives (Mark 4:19).  "World-care" chokes out God's word.  Even the word itself, "care," has an earthly quality to it which is lacking divine power.  "Care" often has imbedded within it the ideas of "concern" or "worry" or "fear" or "lust to possess, control or experience."

 

These "cares of the world" infest our thought life like kudzu until they take over.  All we can do is lust for what we don't have and worry about losing what we do have.  We resent our yesterdays and fear our tomorrows. These "kudzu cares of the world" overrun us until the word of God is covered up and hidden from view.

IN JESUS NAME, STOP WORLD-CARING AND START GOD-DARING!  Open your hands and DROP each and every care, concern, fear, worry, dread and worse-case scenario which haunts and taunts your mind.  Dare to believe that God is for you and stands ready to deliver you from ALL darkness. Dare to not care!  What can man do to you?  God wants you to cast ALL your cares on Him.  Worrying doesn't help one iota---WORRYING DOESN'T HELP ONE IOTA!  Every moment you spend world-caring is a moment you don't spend God-daring.

 

Thus, as we simultaneously BRIGHTEN UP by consciously beholding God's nature of pure light, we also LIGHTEN UP by literally jettisoning all our earthly cares overboard.  This is a twin occurrence and must happen concurrently or not at all.  We cannot BRIGHTEN UP without also LIGHTENING UP at the exact same time. When these two dynamics occur, a third dynamic is then ignited---we now are able to HEIGHTEN UP.

A hot air balloon pilot must do two things to take the balloon high into the heavens.  First, he increases the flame intensity so that the air inside the balloon continues to heat and rise. Second, he throws sandbags overboard to lighten the load so that the great balloon will continue to ascend.  Do you see this blessed comparison?  We increase the inner blaze and BRIGHTEN UP, while at the same time dumping all worldly cares overboard in order to LIGHTEN UP.  The result will be that we HEIGHTEN UP to the high life of God.

Like the great eagle rises above the clouds to avoid storms, we are called to soar above and not beneath. To HEIGHTEN UP is to be lifted up by the grace of God into higher ways of thinking, feeling and experiencing the love of God both for ourselves and others.  High hope, high faith, high love.  From this higher view, all our earthly problems pale, shrink and shrivel.

 

We see that God, through Christ, has made US upright sons WELL ABLE to overcome all the evil of this earth with His power from ON HIGH--that HIGH power which I like to call the Shekinah goodness of God!  Just as the Shekinah glory illuminated the Ark of the Covenant, the tabernacle, and the temple, this same light source burns bright in our mouths, hearts and minds.  This light allows us to do the three most important things in the universe---BRIGHTEN UP, LIGHTEN UP AND HEIGHTEN UP!