You Can’t Hide in the Light: The Truth About Real Christianity

Added: 2026-05-05

[00:01:00]Hey guys, good morning. Welcome, welcome, welcome to Before the Noise. My name is Chad Prather. If you guys are new here, I'm glad you decided to join us. I see you in the live chat there on Rumble. If you're watching by way of YouTube or on X or Facebook, welcome.

[00:01:12]I'm glad you guys made it this morning.

[00:01:14]Happy Monday. Hope everybody had a fantastic weekend. Let me know if you can hear me. some of those dance of bananas there in the live chat. I uh glad you guys uh glad you guys choose to join us. How many of you took the opportunity to listen where podcasts are offered to the btn weekend episode?

[00:01:35]It's only where podcasts are offered.

[00:01:36]There's no video. It's audio only.

[00:01:39]And we do that on the weekends. Uh we talked about what happens when you die.

[00:01:44]What happens when you die? And that that stirred up a lot of people. I got a lot of interesting comments on it. Uh how can you have trust that um that all of this is true that there that that there is an eternity? And I I dealt with it theologically, but I also dealt with it uh philosophically as well. And I hope you'll take the opportunity to go over there and and listen to that uh in uh wherever podcasts are offered. Apple, iHeart, Podbean, uh Spotify, whatever they all are. Get your grandkids to teach you about a podcast. And while you're there, leave us a rating and review. You can do that right now by blowing up the chat, but also hit that thumbs up if you're watching on YouTube or watching on Rumble. That helps drive the algorithm up. I hope you guys are doing well. Uh, and the notes for today are I'm I'm back to putting the notes into uh before the noise.com.

[00:02:37]Still got to get caught up on some of our past teachings, but we're beginning a new study in First John. Uh first John, we're going to be in chapter 1 today. Uh if you're new here, these are my devotional thoughts. You guys sit in with me, and I'm always happy that you do. And uh the um uh we just work systematically and expository through the scripture. And today we're starting in First John. Hey, I spoke yesterday at the NRA prayer breakfast, the National Prayer Breakfast. Had a had just an incredible time, a phenomenal responsive time and I was honored to be able to do that and uh was there with the folks from Patriot Mobile. Patriot Mobile, I was reminded just how much they do for us uh in standing for not only our rights, but our convictions both as Christians and conservatives. They're America's only Christian conservative wireless provider. And that, you know, when you sit down to pay your um to pay your uh cell phone bill, you ever think about where that money is going? Well, you're like, "Well, yeah, I'm paying for the service." Well, they use that money for different things. And the big three send portions of your money to some very, very progressive crazy causes out there.

[00:03:46]Patriot Mobile doesn't do that. And they use the same cell towers. You get the same coverage, but you've got people who have the same values as you. So, I want you to go over to patriotmobile.com/chad.

[00:03:56]You can call them on the phone 972 patatriot. 972 patatriot. 100% US-based customer service team. They'll help you switch over. They'll even give you some free months. So, hey, why not? Why would you not be with patriotmobile.com? Go to patriotmobile.com/hat or call them on the phone 972 Patriot.

[00:04:13]Use promo code Chad if you're over there and they'll give you a free activation.

[00:04:17]So, go over there and talk to those folks. All right. First John. Let me ask you something right out of the gate. If you're looking for First John in your Bible, that's over towards the end of the New Testament there. You're getting close to the book of Revelation. All right. Uh let me let me let me see if I can phrase this question the way I want to way I want to phrase it. All right.

[00:04:36]What if what if the version of Christianity that you're living with or that you're comfortable with or that you've gotten used to isn't real?

[00:04:47]Now, that's a heavy question to lay on you right there. What if it's not real?

[00:04:51]What if it's possible to say all the right things, believe all the right things, show up in all the right places, hang around with the right people, and still be completely out of sync with God.

[00:05:06]That's what that's what this first epistle of John is all about. Uh first John chapter one is gonna confront this.

[00:05:15]This is not a feel-good chapter. And I wanted to get into this because there is a massive movement of this weird heresy that was happening in the first century that John's going to address here. And it's making it's rearing its head again in a big way.

[00:05:33]It's making a resurgence in our world today. I see a lot of people out there who are putting videos out that are teaching some of this stuff. And we'll deal we'll dig into it in the next few days.

[00:05:46]But John is confronting a heresy. He's confronting a false teaching. And he's confronting people who are operating at a surface level faith. And he draws this line in the sand. And what First John is going to do, particularly here in chapter one today, is it's going to force us to answer a question that most people will spend their entire life doing everything they can to avoid.

[00:06:12]Are we actually walking with God or are we just claiming that we are?

[00:06:19]I've I've spent a lot of time in my life just claiming that I'm walking with God.

[00:06:24]But we need to do a test. We needed to put a little stress test on our faith today. See, there's a version of faith.

[00:06:32]It sounds right. It looks right. It convinces other people. You can put the mask on, but you're building it in the shadows, man. You're not walking in the light. You're still your heart, so much of your life, so much of your dedication, so much of your commitment, so much of your devotion is still in the darkness. It's in the shadows. And here's the problem. You can hide from people.

[00:06:54]You can curate and manage your image.

[00:06:57]You can even convince yourself that everything is good. You're walking with God. But you cannot, and I'm going to stress this, you cannot have fellowship with a God who is by definition, by his own declaration and revelation, pure light and hold on to darkness at the same time.

[00:07:21]John's going to expose some darkness.

[00:07:23]He's going to expose some deception.

[00:07:27]And this is an eternal consequence here, or I should say this is a circumstance with eternal consequences. who cannot have fellowship with a God who is pure light while holding on to darkness at the same time.

[00:07:38]This is not about condemnation. This is not about uh just exposure. It's not about just information.

[00:07:47]But but it is about revealing honestly when we talk about exposure. See, sometimes people think that that that we're getting into when you read the scripture and you don't like it or a preacher says something or somebody confronts you with something and you think it's to shame you. That's why I say it's not just about exposure. It's not exposure to shame. It's exposure to heal you. Uh my arm, as you know, I had surgery on it a couple of weeks ago and they took the stitches out and and on the lower incision, I won't show it to you. It's kind of gross, but there there was a little spot that was there that the sutures didn't quite hold together. And there was a little exposure of some gooey flesh there. You know what? It's kind of fun to look at and poke around at. You know, put a stick on it like a jellyfish. But I uh you know, you squirt a little peroxide on there and you like to watch it bubble up. We're boys. We do these things. And the doctor said, "You know, we might want to prescribe you a we might want to prescribe you a little um medication there, antibiotic or something to to to help with that."

[00:08:49]There's a little little skin infection that was there.

[00:08:53]Well, I've been opening this up, you know, and and letting it breathe a little bit, letting some air get to it, exposing it for the purpose of healing.

[00:09:03]That's what God wants to do. Sometime God wants to put sometimes he wants to put a little disinfectant on you. Maybe do a little spiritual antibiotic, but also expose what's going on in our heart so that we can honestly step out of the darkness and and into something real. If we just keep everything covered up all the time, it's not going to heal is my point. So by the time we're done with this, we're going to know where we stand. And that's a good thing. Now the question is, are you ready for it? Are you ready for it? Let me see those dancing bananas. We're in First John.

[00:09:31]We're in chapter one. Here's the key to the context.

[00:09:34]the church there in the first century.

[00:09:36]First John was written around probably 85 or 90 AD. John is an this is the disciple whom Jesus loved, right? We worked through the gospel of John uh months ago. This is John. This is one of the 12. He walked with Jesus. He's nearing the end of his life. Uh he's an old man at this point and he's had a lot of influence over the churches of Asia Minor, particularly around Ephesus, uh modern-day Turkey. uh he's writing to these churches that he has oversight because he's dealing not with their with persecution that's arising. It's as we've seen many times as a pattern in our studies. The church is dealing with a drift and a distortion.

[00:10:15]There's a group of people who had broken away from the church and they're spreading this false teaching about who Jesus is and what it means to follow him. And you're going to see this, we're going to see it hinted hinted at later on in the letter.

[00:10:28]and they claimed to have this deeper secret knowledge and they downplayed or denied sin and they redefined what it meant to live in righteousness and most dangerously they began to distort the identity of Christ. Now this this is a this is a a heresy and I'll get I'll get messages about this because there's a lot of people out there. There's a trend going on right now for people to go back and embrace this and they're trying to make this a mainstream thing. They act like it's some kind of new revelation.

[00:10:54]It's not. It's been around for centuries. It's something called gnosticism. G n o s t i c i s m.nosticism like and the wordnosticism comes from the Greek word nosis which means intimate knowledge. So these people who you'll see them sometimes they'll show up in the comments section talking about having an intimate knowledge or a revelation of who Jesus really is and who we are and what creation is and all of these things. And sonosticism is creeping in to the early church. It's creeping into the church now.

[00:11:26]And the Gnostics believed things and taught things like the physical world around you is bad. And the only thing that matters in this world is the spiritual thing. Jesus, they would say, wasn't truly human. He only appeared to be human. He was really a spiritual being. And they would say things like, "What you do in your body doesn't really matter. It's who you are spiritually."

[00:11:51]And John starts to address this. Now again, that's a shallow view ofnosticism. We could go pretty deep on that, but but I want you to think just in light of that. Think about what that does.

[00:12:02]If Jesus wasn't truly human, then the incarnation falls apart. If sin doesn't really matter, then holiness goes away.

[00:12:08]If truth is subjective or it's hidden from us, then anybody can redefine it.

[00:12:12]If it's all about revelation, like there's no there's no objective truth.

[00:12:16]And so John's writing this letter to pull back the curtain, pulls back everything. wants to pull pull it back and expose that and bring his people back to the center.

[00:12:25]This is why he opens the way he does in 1 John chapter 1 verse one. He says that which was from the beginning which we've heard which we've seen with our eyes which we've looked upon and have touched with our hands concerning the word of life. The life was made manifest. Verse two, and we've seen it and testified to it and proclaimed to you the eternal life which was the father was with the father and was made manifest to us.

[00:12:49]He's combating the idea that Jesus was just some mystical concept or some spiritual being. He's saying, "No, he was real. He was in the flesh. We walked with him. We touched him. We lived with him. Slept with him. Ate with him. We watched him sweat. We watched him bleed.

[00:13:05]We watched him weep."

[00:13:08]In verse one, I'm sorry, verse five of chapter one, he says, "This is the message we've heard from him and proclaimed to you that God is light and in him there is no darkness at all."

[00:13:19]He's confronting moral relativism. God's not adjustable. God is absolute. Verse eight, he says, "If we say we have no sin," so he's correcting that gnostic idea that behavior doesn't matter. It does because truth and life are connected. So historically, this letter is is sitting there in a moment where the church is being tempted to separate belief from behavior and truth from experience in Jesus from reality. John says, "We're not going to allow that."

[00:13:49]You say, "Okay, well that doesn't apply to me." Oh, it does apply to you. 100% it applies to you. It applies to all of us because we're watching it happen in real time right now.

[00:13:59]He's wanting to reestablish, John is wanting to reestablish three core anchors. And that is first of all right belief about Jesus. He's fully real.

[00:14:08]He's fully revealed.

[00:14:11]Right belief about Jesus. Some people some people struggle with this. Some people are struggling. And he says, "No, Jesus is real and he's been fully revealed. There's no ongoing mystical revelation still coming to you that you got on a jail cell floor one night after coming down off of a LSD high."

[00:14:31]He says, "No, you got to get back to a right belief about Jesus. You got to have a right understanding of sin and holiness.

[00:14:39]And you got to have a right evidence of true faith, which is a transformed life marked by love and obedience." If you don't have those three things, you're in trouble.

[00:14:48]So, the church is drifting because it's been distorted. It's been distracted.

[00:14:52]And John's pulling them back to what's real and what's true and what actually produces real life in them. So, let's step into this. You guys here with you with me? It's kind of heavy on a Monday morning this early. I know. But man, I my my feed is blowing up. My comment section blows up with these people who want to tell me, you know, this new revelation they have about who Jesus is and this new revelation about Christianity and this new revelation about faith and this new revelation about the nature of God and this new revelation about the nature of the world. This new revelation about how you read the scripture, how the Bible's not the word of God.

[00:15:25]Listen, Paul pulls back the curtain, I'm sorry, John pulls back the curtain on all of that.

[00:15:31]And he doesn't start here by saying, "Okay, let me give you some advice.

[00:15:35]Let's modify your behavior." He says, "I want you guys to understand the reality of the nature of what you claim to believe in." He says, "That which was from the beginning, verse one, which we've heard, that's our ears, which we've seen, that's our eyes, which we've looked upon and have touched with our hands." He's using all the senses here.

[00:15:54]He's doing that on purpose.

[00:15:57]and we've handled concerning the word of life.

[00:16:04]Look what he's doing. He's stacking He's stacking the language of your physical senses. Heard, seen, looked upon, touched, handled.

[00:16:13]He says, "I want to show you evidence for the sake of certainty." John is saying, "I walked with the man Jesus."

[00:16:21]He's not a philosophy.

[00:16:24]He's a person.

[00:16:26]Everything about our faith rises or falls on that truth right there.

[00:16:32]Christianity is not built on ideas that make you feel better.

[00:16:38]Christianity is not something that touches your emotions and say, "Oh, I'm going to make it. I'm going to be good because I got this ooey gooey feeling from God today and and oh, I I I know more than other people and I've been the he's spoken to me and I've got this revelation and I'm just going to bask in my warm fuzzies." No, he says your faith is built on a real historical living Jesus.

[00:17:02]And you'll have people who will come along and say, "Well, you don't even know that Jesus existed or that Jesus lived or taught or or any of that." And no honest real historian believes that garbage.

[00:17:16]Everyone will testify to the to the reality of the historical Jesus.

[00:17:21]There's more historical evidence of the person of Jesus Christ 2,000 years ago than any other human being that's ever existed in human history.

[00:17:31]John keeps going. He says the life was manifested.

[00:17:36]He says, "And we have seen and bear witness and declare to you that eternal that eternal life which was with the father and was manifested to us." The word manifested there means God pulled back the curtain and revealed it. made visible because he stepped into human history. And John saying eternal life isn't just something you get later.

[00:17:56]Eternal life is not something you die to get. Eternal life is someone who showed up in human history.

[00:18:04]Eternal life is in Jesus. End of story.

[00:18:07]Period. Put a bookmark right there with an exclamation point. Shut the chapter and say, "That's a done deal in my heart. I find eternal life not somewhere, not sometime but in someone.

[00:18:19]Now don't miss this because it gets personal here. He says to which he said he said that which I'm sorry verse three that which we have seen and heard we declare to you that you also may have fellowship with us. Now why is he saying all this? Well he's not saying it so you can win arguments with people online. He's not saying it so you can quote it back and sound smart and theological and have some kind of system of belief and people say, "Oh, wow. You really know your Bible." He says, "I'm telling you this so you can have fellowship." The word fellowship is deeper than we use it. Because this word fellowship uh is not coffee in the lobby at the church. It's not small talk with your little small group. It means there's this shared life of participation of union. He says, "We're inviting you." The apostle says, "We're inviting you into the same relationship that we've experienced." Now, how many of you have said to yourself, "Man, if I could have just walked with Jesus, if I could have just seen Jesus, if I could have been like Thomas and put my fingers in the scars on his hands and and and touch where the where the spear went into his sight. If I could have just walked with him, if I could have seen the risen Jesus, or if I could have listened to him teach, it'd make all the difference in the world. I contend to you that it would have made a difference in the world because again it's by grace through faith in him that you come to that place where you see that revelation. And John's saying John's saying I'm inviting you into the same relationship we experienced with the physical Jesus.

[00:19:50]I'm inviting you to come into that type of fellowship where Jesus is that real to you.

[00:19:57]He says, "I'm going to engage you with my senses, to your senses, and say, we're going to make Jesus real in our life."

[00:20:07]Look at what he says in verse three there. He says, "And truly our fellowship is with the father and with his son, Jesus Christ." Think about that for a second. You guys still with me?

[00:20:15]Y'all okay? You with me? How many of you want that kind of fellowship? See, the invitation of the gospel is not just, "Well, he's going to forgive you of your sins."

[00:20:24]The invitation of the gospel is it's fellowship with God himself.

[00:20:29]You're being invited into something that's not distant.

[00:20:33]It's not philosophical or theoretical.

[00:20:36]It's not symbolic. You've been invited into a real relationship.

[00:20:42]Look at verse four.

[00:20:45]He says, "And these things," and we are writing these things so that our joy may be complete.

[00:20:57]We're writing to you these things so that our joy may be full. Your joy, my joy, our joy, not not a joy that comes upon you and manifests in a partial way or occasional joy. No, he said full joy.

[00:21:14]He's confronting people here. He says, "Do you have this kind of faith?"

[00:21:21]Do you have that full joy that comes from knowing the true fellowship with Jesus Christ? Have you walked into the light with him? And you know beyond the shadow of a doubt that he is real, something far deeper than your physical senses.

[00:21:35]He says, "Do you have this kind of faith or do you have something else?

[00:21:40]Is your faith built on a personal encounter with the revel with the revealed person of Jesus Christ? Or is your faith built on something you've just been told, something that's been passed down? Grandma's religion, mom and dad's religion, Sunday school religion.

[00:21:55]Do you know Jesus as a living reality or just as a concept that you agree with?

[00:22:00]Well, I was born in America. I went to church. I grew up in traditional values.

[00:22:05]I guess I'm Christian.

[00:22:08]John would say, no.

[00:22:10]You're not at all. That's there's nothing Christian about that.

[00:22:15]If everything external was just stripped away, church and culture and routine, what have you got left? Do you still have a faith? Or would you just say, well, well, I don't have to talk about that anymore because everybody that ever uses that vocabulary, now they're gone. They're not in my life anymore. show. So I don't I don't really need to talk Christian vocabulary anymore because all the external influences of Christianity have now been removed. Do you still have faith in light of that?

[00:22:43]So John's drawn a line right here at the beginning. He said there's a difference between knowing about Jesus and knowing Jesus. There's a difference between inheriting a belief system and stepping into a relationship with him. He says, "I want you to step into the light." And we don't like to admit this tension, but there's a lot of people who are trying to live out of faith that they've never actually experienced. You're exhausted trying to do that. That's why it doesn't stick. That's why it doesn't stay.

[00:23:06]That's why it doesn't feel authentic.

[00:23:08]Some of you feel like you're faking it.

[00:23:10]Well, because there's elements that you're holding on to the darkness.

[00:23:12]You're trying to approach a God who is pure light while holding on to the darkness. It's going to feel fake. It's going to feel inauthentic. You're going to feel hypocritical. You're repeating language that you've heard. You've defended ideas that you've that you've heard about or read about, but you've never stepped into real fellowship with Jesus Christ. That's why your spirituality, that's why your relationship with Jesus, that's why your Christianity is dry. That's why it feels like you're forcing it. You got to get yourself up and make yourself do these things. That's why it feels distant.

[00:23:47]And the reason is because secondhand faith will never produce firshand life.

[00:23:54]Let that sink in there for a second.

[00:23:56]Secondhand faith will never produce firsthand life.

[00:24:01]John is saying, "We touched him. We walked with him. We experienced him. We heard him. And now we're inviting you 2,000 years later.

[00:24:13]Come and do the same thing.

[00:24:15]come do the same thing.

[00:24:18]And it gets very necessary, albeit uncomfortable, it becomes very necessary for ask the question is when is the last time your faith felt real and didn't feel like a routine or an obligation or or performance. It felt real.

[00:24:37]Everything we're going to talk about in First John, the foundation, I should say, of everything we're going to talk about is this is this right here.

[00:24:46]Because we're going to talk about walking in the light. We're going to talk about dealing with sin. We're going to talk about experiencing cleansing.

[00:24:51]But it all starts right here. A real Jesus, a real encounter, a real relationship. And if that's not where it can begin, if that's not where it's beginning with you or for you, nothing else we talk about is going to make any sense. So before we move on, before we say, you know, I got to get myself in shape here. I got to I got to get my spiritual life back together. I got to modify some behavior. I got to fix myself. I got to clean myself up.

[00:25:19]No, stop. I want you to stop that language right there. Was talking with a friend of mine yesterday who said, "Man, I'm in this cycle. I've got to fix myself." I said, "No, you got to stop because every time you try to fix yourself, you're creating a bigger mess."

[00:25:34]And he says, "I know. I know, but I've got to No, no. If you if your faith is starting with what you got to do, you don't have faith because you not only ain't got to do anything, you're not capable of doing anything to fix yourself. In fact, you'll just dig a deeper hole in a deeper mess and create a more complex issue that you got to come out of later on.

[00:26:04]This I'm gonna fix me or I'm going to clean myself up. Stop that language.

[00:26:10]Stop that language. If you have faith in Jesus, a relationship with Jesus, and that faith is alive, it's not borrowed from grandma. It's not borrowed from Uncle John. It's not borrowed from the preacher. It's not borrowed from a podcast host. If your faith is alive, all that getting yourself out of the mess stuff, I promise you Jesus is going to handle that. He's going to fix he he's going to work on you. The father is going to discipline you. He's going to get you in shape.

[00:26:39]So John is saying, "Listen, I want you to lay off the burden of these human philosophies you guys have embraced that that you're just going to everything's going to be a-okay because you got it under control." John's not inviting you into more religion. He's inviting us into a fellowship with the living God. I spoke yesterday. I told you at the NRA prayer breakfast, the National Prayer Breakfast, and it was a blessing of a time. I hope I made some sense.

[00:27:04]But one of the one of the the thrusts of the message that I delivered was about freedom and why freedom matters. It's not just defending freedom or passing more laws or pushing more policy or more bureaucracy to have freedom. We need to understand why. And I talked to him about what we talk about here on this show about the drift, the spiritual drift. And I said, if you don't have personal freedom in a man named Jesus, all the other freedoms don't matter because a as the Bible says, you know, that he brought us out of bondage to sin. We were slaves to sin, have now been made alive in Christ. see real life.

[00:27:41]It's interesting that the scripture when it says it that we were slaves to sin but now been made alive that slavery that bondage of sin unto death. The opposite of bondage and slavery is not freedom. It's life first.

[00:27:57]Once you come into life with that relationship with Jesus, once you walk into that light, I promise you that darkness in your life is going to start to it's going to start to diminish. It's going to back off. it's going to withdraw. Darkness can't penetrate the light. It's the opposite.

[00:28:13]And John here is exposing that. He says it's all about bringing it into the light.

[00:28:20]Look at this. If you miss this, I'm telling you, you're going to build a version of Christianity that feels comfortable to you. It feels it feels normal and it feels safe, but it won't be true.

[00:28:32]And this is some weighty stuff because he's moving from reality of the gospel to the nature of God himself.

[00:28:39]Look how direct this is. Look at verse five. He said, "This is the message we've heard from him, Jesus, and proclaimed to you that God is light and in him is no darkness at all."

[00:28:54]John's saying, "This isn't my opinion."

[00:28:57]Like, this isn't a teaching that originated with me. He said, "We heard this from him."

[00:29:03]So he says, "What I'm telling you carries some authority, and it's not cultural authority. It's not philosophical or theoretical authority.

[00:29:10]It's not from some seminary professor.

[00:29:12]It's not emotional authority. It's divine authority." He says in verse 5, "God is light. In him is no darkness at all. Not a little bit of darkness, not occasional darkness, not hidden darkness, not darkness you don't see, but you can feel it. No darkness at all.

[00:29:29]Absolute language. You say, "What does that mean?" All right, good. I'm glad you asked. Because we like a version of God that has a little flexibility.

[00:29:39]Oh, God will be all right. Me and God's got an understanding.

[00:29:43]You like a little gray area, don't you?

[00:29:45]You like having a God that you can negotiate with, a little something that, you know, we can go make a deal. God, God, you'll forgive me for this. I'm going to go engage in this, but I know my God's going to forgive me because he just knows how I am. God knows how we are.

[00:30:03]John removes all of those excuses.

[00:30:07]He says, "If you think you're approaching God who's part light, part darkness, who's got the gray areas, if you if you think he's deluded and compromising in some way, you're basically saying God is impure.

[00:30:20]You think God has an understanding with you and you're falling and failing and sin and and and you think that God has that kind of you're basically accusing God of being impure.

[00:30:30]See, the light reveals the light exposes.

[00:30:36]Light makes things visible for what they actually are.

[00:30:41]So if God is light, then being in relationship with him means I'm stepping into a reality where I don't have the exclusive convenience of keeping certain things hidden.

[00:30:56]Boy, that's heavy, isn't it? Uh that is so confrontational.

[00:31:03]Here's the here's the problem. We love the idea of God being loving, right?

[00:31:10]and he is.

[00:31:12]But here's the thing. He doesn't love the way we love.

[00:31:21]We love the idea of God being loving, but we think he's supposed to be loving like we perceive or interpret or define love.

[00:31:29]Part of him loving us is exposing us. We don't always love the idea of God being exposing, do we? because the exposure feels uncomfortable. Now, again, go back to what I said a little while ago. The exposure is not to shame you. It's to restore and heal you.

[00:31:47]John's saying, "I want you to step into the light, and it's going to be ridiculously uncomfortable for you for a little while."

[00:31:56]But you can't separate yourself from this. If you want to have a relationship with God through the person of Jesus Christ, you've got to step into the light. Again, I was talking to a friend yesterday who was talking to me about a pattern of sin and pattern of of chaos and confusion that he just can't break free from. It's become like an addiction to him.

[00:32:16]And he's saying, you know, this person, that person, and all he's blaming all these external things. And I said, stop.

[00:32:22]You are an undisiplined person. You have no self-control.

[00:32:28]You have got to come into the light. And you have got to come into the light alone. You can't bring your relationships in there. You can't bring your lust in there. You can't bring your addictions in there. You can't bring your insecurities in there. You can bring them, but I promise you, they're going to burn off.

[00:32:46]And it's not going to be that fun of a process, but it's going to be a healing process because God's holiness can't allow what we're trying to bring into his presence to exist. God's holiness isn't harsh. It's pure.

[00:33:01]God's light is not cruel, but it is true.

[00:33:05]And truth doesn't adjust to us, we adjust to it. So to press this into real life, because this is where things become way deeper than our little theological ideas here, is we have to ask where in my life am I trying to live in partial light?

[00:33:23]Where are we saying God can have this but not that? And I'm going to redefine what's right and wrong all so I can stay comfortable. I mean, I'll keep the same religious language, but I'm going to stay comfortable. There's going to be no real transformation or change in me.

[00:33:37]Because here's what we do. We don't we don't run from God outright. Like we don't say, you know what, I'm I'm just got to run away from God. Instead of doing that to make yourself feel comfortable, we reshape God.

[00:33:50]We water him down. We soften him. We redefine him. We make him more manageable.

[00:33:55]And there's so many people out there, call it gnosticism, call it whatever you want to call it, this special revelation, these people that think they have all this the edge on how God really is. I see them all the time posting their videos and they sound so smart.

[00:34:07]They sound so scholarly. They oh you just you just they love to tell you what you don't understand because they what they've done is they've made God manageable. They're making God in their own image and they're basically saying the revelation that we have about who Jesus is and about who God is and the nature of God and the nature of scripture and the n nature of the Holy Spirit, all those things, we're just going to make him more manageable.

[00:34:34]John shuts all that down with one sentence. He says, "In him is no darkness at That means God doesn't bend to your culture, doesn't bend to your so-called theology, doesn't bend to your philosophy, doesn't bend to your scholarship, doesn't evolve with your opinion. He doesn't adjust to your preferences. He really doesn't give a rip about what you think he is. He is who he is. And that's either going to draw you in or it's going to confront everything in you that resists him. And there's some people right now who are wanting to stiff arm this because you think you got this special deal with God where he excuses certain parts of what you're doing and how you're living and where your heart is. But let me tell you something. If God is light, then you if you're going to walk with him, you got to get honest.

[00:35:28]Now I am not saying you got to be perfect because you're not. Neither am I. None of us are.

[00:35:34]So, it's not about perfection, but it's also not about pretending. We got to get honest.

[00:35:40]And John's saying, "Listen, you can't bring darkness into the light and expect the darkness to stay hidden."

[00:35:47]Have you ever been exposed? It is not a good feeling, man.

[00:35:52]You just standing out there butt naked in front of God and everybody. You just just exposed. I mean, you just It ain't a good look.

[00:36:00]It's not a good look.

[00:36:02]God's not about embarrassing you. He's not about shaming you.

[00:36:08]But let me tell you what happens when God's light hits your life.

[00:36:12]What do you how do you respond to that?

[00:36:16]Well, what I hope I do, what I want to do is I want to step closer to him and say, "If you've exposed all of that, the reason I don't feel good with the exposure is because I know that that evil was something I was protecting and now I feel vulnerable."

[00:36:36]Well, my response should be, well, if if that stuff was destroying me and the exposure of it makes me feel uh the regret and the and the and the just the grief over it.

[00:36:50]Well, I should want to step in and say, "Burn more of it off so I can be pure. I want to be holy. I want to walk in the light." Now, if you start backing up to protect it, well, then you just chose who your God is.

[00:37:02]If you're not leaning into the conviction, instead you start justifying the things that are in your life. That's truly who your God is. You got more faith in the garbage and the in the nasty and sin in your life. You got more faith in that to comfort you than you do the holy, true, and living God.

[00:37:21]See, the evidence of whether you actually want God is not how loudly you talk online, how loudly you say you believe something. It's how you respond when the light exposes something.

[00:37:35]That make sense?

[00:37:38]See, when truth confronts our behavior, what's our response? Do we submit or argue?

[00:37:47]And don't don't look over at your spouse. Don't don't look over at your husband or wife and say, "Mhm, don't do that." It's all of us.

[00:37:56]When scripture starts to challenge our lifestyle, do we want to adjust our lifestyle or explain it away? When conviction hits your heart, are we going to repent and change our mind and turn back towards God? Or are we going to distract ourselves and say, "I'll get to that later on." But here's the reality.

[00:38:14]You don't get to have fellowship with God on terms that contradict his nature.

[00:38:19]Now, I'm going to settle in for a second. I I've sort of been ignoring you guys in the chat. Then, let me drop a couple of dancing bananas in the Rumble chat. make sure you guys are alive and well on a Monday morning. Welcome if you're here. If you just joined us, we're in First John chapter 1.

[00:38:33]And I want to say this again.

[00:38:38]You don't get to have fellowship with God on terms that contradict his nature.

[00:38:43]What's his nature? His nature is light.

[00:38:47]Which means if you want closeness with him, you got to be willing to step fully into that light. There's no compartments, no hidden corners, no secret rooms. There's no signs that say this part's off limits, employees only.

[00:39:02]There's no trespassing. You don't get to hang those signs.

[00:39:06]And I know what that feels like. It's vulnerable. It's exposing. It's uncomfortable. But what we have to understand, folks, is this.

[00:39:16]The light that exposes us is the same light that heals us. We really got to let that sink in.

[00:39:24]Again, I can't stress this enough. God does not reveal things in order to shame you.

[00:39:33]He reveals things in order to free you.

[00:39:38]He will not heal what you keep hidden.

[00:39:42]So, the invitation here is not just to believe something about God. It's to step into who he actually is. John's saying if you want to have fellowship like we had fellowship with Jesus like you know just we leaned into him in such a way like even John the the gospel of John we he says that I leaned on his breast there at the last supper you know leaned on his breast and whispered in his ear like I was that close to Jesus he says if you want to have that kind of fellowship where even your senses are overwhelmed with that relationship it's so real your relationship with Christ is even more real to you than what your senses can tell you.

[00:40:26]He says if you want to step into who he actually is, he said you got to come into the light.

[00:40:32]Full light, full truth, full holiness.

[00:40:36]And he's saying the question is not whether or not that light exists. It's are you willing to live in it? How many of you want to live in it?

[00:40:46]I see you guys. Don't get so distracted, man. I mean, I'm just sort of laying out some stuff that um I'm just laying out some of the stuff here that John says is the key to eternal life. No big deal here.

[00:40:59]And uh I just want to let that breathe on us for a second. Again, if you're joining us, I'm talking to me. You're just listening in. This is when I say you, I do mean I. These are my devotional thoughts, and you guys are sitting in them. Hey, do me a favor. Uh today, text Chad to 989898. at Birch Gold send you a free no obligation information kit on how you can diversify your investment portfolio backed by physical gold particularly your retirement uh A+ rated with a better business bureau the markets are fluctuating and they're crazy and who knows every every five minutes something's changing with Iran which affects the global economy which affects the dollar which affects the market and all this kind of stuff and some of you don't know if your retirement you know you don't know what's going on Burgeold can help you they'll send you the free free kit they'll send you the free information all you got to do and it helps this show more than I could ever tell you. Text C H A D I spell it Chad to 989898. Text Chad to 989898. Let Birch Gold Group tell you how to do it. All right, that's all you got to do. Text Chad to 989898.

[00:42:01]All right, John's about to uh John's about to draw a line here that a lot of us are trying to blur.

[00:42:10]And he says, okay, we talked about who God is. God is light. He says, "This Jesus which was from the beginning, which we've heard, which we've seen with our eyes, which we've looked upon, have touched with our hands concerning the word of life. The life was made manifest. It was revealed. We've seen it, testified to it, proclaimed to you eternal life." He says, you know, want you to walk in the light. God is light.

[00:42:32]There's no darkness at all in him.

[00:42:35]And now he's going to move from who God is into how you know if you're actually walking with him. And it's not complicated at all.

[00:42:45]Look at what he says in verse six. 1 John 1:6. If we say we have fellowship with him while we walk in the darkness, we lie and we do not practice the truth.

[00:43:00]And don't be subtle about it, John. Just tell us what you think. John's saying, "You can say all the right things.

[00:43:08]You can claim all the right beliefs.

[00:43:12]But if your life practically is moving in the opposite direction, you do not have real faith.

[00:43:19]You do not have a relationship with God.

[00:43:23]He does not say you're confused.

[00:43:26]He doesn't say you're struggling to figure it out. He doesn't say you're out there trying to sort out, you know, your relationship with Christ. He says you're a liar.

[00:43:37]Don't call me a liar. He said, 'Oh, but I did. You're lying and you know you're lying.

[00:43:43]And you know how he knows we're lying?

[00:43:46]Because we're liars by nature.

[00:43:50]And he says, if we'll lie about all these other things in life, how much more we lie about our relationship with God. Because we don't want to walk in that light. That light is all consuming.

[00:44:02]And this isn't about somebody battling sin, per se. This is about somebody that's gotten comfortable in darkness while claiming to walk in the light.

[00:44:10]There's a big difference because everybody struggles with sin. Everybody wrestles with it, but not everyone is honest about it. And so John's confronting the kind of faith that's all talk in no alignment. He says that's not faith at all. If we say, look at that in verse six, the first three words, if we say, and that phrase is going to show up again and again in this passage. In fact, if you, if you got your Bible and you write in your Bible, you might go through and just underline all the places where he says, "If we say, he says, you got this profession, but you don't have a practice." You got the words, but the words aren't backed up by the truth. Because Christianity is not proven by what you say, is revealed in how you walk. I've told you guys over and over again, the the word believe comes from the old English which means by life. I can know what someone believes by their life. If their words don't match up with their actions, they don't have integrity. Integrity comes from the word integer which means one.

[00:45:11]Your words and your life should be one.

[00:45:13]He's saying if you say you walk in the light and have fellowship with him, but you walk in the darkness, you lie. You don't have integrity. You're not one with your words. Walk. I love that word walk.

[00:45:29]One foot in front of the other.

[00:45:32]He's saying if you say, let me see if I can break this down. See if I can break it down to myself. If we say we have fellowship with him while we walk, that is a pattern of life.

[00:45:43]It's not a one-time thing. He's not saying if you say you have fellowship with him but you commit an act of darkness. No, no, no. Walk. There is a steady pattern to your life. A direction in your life that is consistently moving in a direction.

[00:46:03]He says if your direction in life is heading to the darkness consistently, but yet you say you have fellowship with him, you're a liar.

[00:46:14]He says, he says, "What direction is your life headed? It's not about what you say, not about what you post online.

[00:46:20]I don't care how many verses you post in your Instagram bio."

[00:46:27]Doesn't care how good you look on Sunday morning.

[00:46:30]He says, "What about the rest of the days? How are you walking?" Because here's the reality. You can't live in the darkness and have fellowship with the light at the same time. They're incompatible. They don't fit together.

[00:46:40]They don't they don't they don't ride in the same car.

[00:46:43]And we need to define something clearly.

[00:46:45]Darkness is not just sin.

[00:46:49]It's not just sin. Oh man, I you know, I told a little white lie. I need to repent of that. Or I I boasted a little bit. You know, my pride got the best of me and blah blah blah blah blah. Or I I looked at that. I shouldn't looked at that and I wanted to look at it again.

[00:47:04]And you know, it just revealed something in my heart. And darkness is not just sin.

[00:47:09]What it is is it's hidden sin. It's unconfessed sin. It's protected sin.

[00:47:15]It's the stuff you want to hang on to and you don't want exposed because you found a comfort level in it. Because this is where people get tripped up. You think that walking in the light means perfect. Because see, you you can you can hear someone talk about this kind of stuff and then say, "Well, we watch how you live." You you can't hold somebody up to a standard and say, "I expect that person to be perfect." Because John himself wasn't perfect.

[00:47:42]But he says, "I'm walking in a consistency."

[00:47:46]Actually, look at the next verse. Look at the next verse. Look at verse seven.

[00:47:50]He says, um, get the glare off of my screen there. He says, "But if we walk in the light as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his son, cleanses us from all sin."

[00:48:05]Look at that.

[00:48:06]Walking in the light doesn't mean you have no sin. It means you're not hiding it anymore.

[00:48:13]It means my life in walking with Christ is marked by an honesty and an openness and an obedience and a surrender now.

[00:48:22]I welcome the exposure.

[00:48:25]I welcome it because he's building a case up to something. You're going to see it in a minute. And here's the beauty of it. When you walk in the light here, here's where the cleansing happens. See, cleansing doesn't happen in the darkness. It doesn't happen in the denial. It doesn't happen in the pretending. It only happens in the light. So the goal of life and my relationship with Christ is not about me being perfect.

[00:48:47]The goal is alignment. It's always alignment. It's always coming into alignment with him. The goal is a life that says, "God, everything's on the table. I'm not hiding any cards up my sleeve. Everything's out. I'm not trying to negotiate some broker some weird deal.

[00:49:04]This is not a hostage negotiation where where I'm going to keep my precious sin hidden and I'm going to guard it at all cost.

[00:49:15]So we need to ask ourselves where is there a gap between what you say you believe and how you actually live?

[00:49:27]What area of your life would you not want exposed if the life light hit it right now? Now, let me just tell you occasionally, this is why it's so hard for leaders, particularly leaders in the church, this is why God says, "I want you to deal with this between me and you, and let's deal with it because if you don't, I'll expose it to everybody."

[00:49:54]God holds his leaders to a higher accountability.

[00:49:59]There's a higher there's a higher judgment, if you will. And he says, "If you don't expose this to the light and let me deal with it, and let's get rid of that darkness." How many times have we seen that over and over again?

[00:50:11]Scandal in the church or this God says, "I'll expose it.

[00:50:16]I will expose it because if you don't let me deal with it, then we'll let the community of faith deal with it." And that ain't always good because those people are broken, too.

[00:50:28]And and I'd much rather have a pure, holy God deal with me who knows how to heal me in his way than I would broken people trying to heal me. Now, God uses broken people. Don't get me wrong. God will, if you belong to him, he will bring you into the light.

[00:50:48]But what are some things that we're we're protecting? What area of your life do you not want exposed to the light if it hit it right now? What what appearances are we managing?

[00:50:59]Because it's possible, listen carefully, it's possible to build an entire version of Christianity that sounds right, looks right, feels right, still walk in the darkness.

[00:51:11]John says, here's the warning. If you have a faith that's verbal, but it's not directional in your walk, then you have a faith that's just claimed but not lived.

[00:51:25]Because again, what did we say last week? Most people don't wake up in the morning and say, "Ah, I'm just going to reject God today.

[00:51:31]You're starting to compartmentalize."

[00:51:34]You know, the way they built the Titanic, and this just hit me. You know, I was just thinking about the Titanic.

[00:51:39]You know, they built the compartments in the bottom and the idea was it was an unsinkable ship because if one compartment in the bottom got a hole in it and if that one filled up, they could seal that off and the rest of the compartment stayed empty. Well, when they hit the iceberg, whatever your conspiracy theories are, I really don't care in the live chat about the Titanic.

[00:51:56]Okay, I got at the Olympia and all this kind of stuff. Stop. But when that iceberg hit da da da da, it went down the side of it and all the compartments got holes in it.

[00:52:08]Well, I'll just tell you that God will put holes in all your compartments and the ship will sink.

[00:52:15]You think you can compartmentalize sin and you can compartment compartmentalize darkness and then you can keep other parts of the ship in the light where that's where God has this piece of my life. This part belongs to God. This part I'm keeping to myself.

[00:52:32]Over time, that gap gets wider and wider until eventually you're saying one thing and living something completely different. John says that's not fellowship with the light.

[00:52:43]But he says if we walk in the light, not perfectly, honestly, openly, consistently moving towards God, two things are going to happen. He says fellowship is going to become real.

[00:52:51]Cleansing is going to become active.

[00:52:54]Which means this, God's not asking you to clean yourself up before you come into the light. That's the beauty of it.

[00:53:00]How many of you How many of you take a shower before you take a shower? That's a weird thing to say. I just just popped into my head. Like Like if I've been out working in the yard or something and like I don't I don't take a shower in the hose outside so I can come in to take a shower in the house.

[00:53:22]I'm not talking about hosing off the mud or anything. I'm just saying I'm not I'm not out there with the soap and the shampoo and all that taking a shower out in the yard so I can come in the house, take a shower. Some of us do that in our spiritual life. We're trying to clean ourselves up before we come into the light. You like like God is judging you.

[00:53:37]This ain't a Miss America pageant. God's not judging your dress. He doesn't care about your talent. He's asking you to step into the light so he can clean you.

[00:53:46]Man, I tell you, if you realize that, it changes everything about how we look at this because because again, I don't want to just talk about the light. I don't want to walk in the light.

[00:53:56]I I want my life to answer the question when somebody looks at it and says, "Man, there there's some light there.

[00:54:05]I don't want to fake it till I make it.

[00:54:08]I don't want to fake it better than you.

[00:54:12]I want to step out of the shadows and live in the light for real." How many of you want that in your life?

[00:54:20]If you are hearing condemnation or guilt or shame in what I'm saying today, God's trying to expose something. And I promise you, it's not my intention to put guilt or condemnation because again, none of us are perfect. John is saying here, he says, "I want you to have real fellowship with Jesus."

[00:54:39]I've talked to a lot of people in recent days and they're they're they're they're dealing with a lot of doubt in their faith. They're dealing with a lot of doubt. I'll just leave it at that.

[00:54:51]And that doubt creeps in, doesn't it?

[00:54:53]How do I know that my faith is real? How do I know that Jesus is real? How do I know? This is why we did the BTN weekend, the audio only podcast. If you didn't get it, go listen to it where podcasts are offered, our Before the Noise weekend edition where I talked about what happens when you die. How can I know there's an eternity? How can I know there's an afterlife? How can I know there's a heaven? We dealt with that because so many people are thinking about it. You know, I've now experienced my dear friend passed away yesterday morning and I'm grieving over that. Um, not as one who has no hope and sorrow has no hope. I he had faith in Christ and but one of my dear dear friends died yesterday after a long battle with cancer and another friend passed away just last week and then another friend passed away the week before that. And it's four in four weeks. And then you you couple into the there's a there's a reason I didn't know that I was writing a prophetic book when I wrote this book, Born for Meaning, about grief and loss and tragedy and trauma. I didn't know I was writing a prophetic book about the things I was going to need.

[00:55:59]But I'm rereading my own book at this point.

[00:56:03]But I'm having conversations with people who are facing loss and tragedy and death and they're asking themselves, you know, what do I do? Is this stuff real?

[00:56:14]John says, I want you to have fellowship of the real Jesus. So that you know that you know that you know that you know that you know that the reality of your life, that relationship with Jesus, you've got a relationship with a real person and you can walk in the purity of God. you can walk in the light.

[00:56:36]And and he says he says, "Yeah, you got sin, but we're going to fix that, too."

[00:56:41]Look at what he says in verse eight.

[00:56:43]Because this is what the Gnostics would have said. The Gnostics would have said, "Well, your sin doesn't matter because what you do in the physical body doesn't matter. It's all about your spirit, right?" John addresses this. 1 John 1:8, he says, "If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us." So, he erases that perfection language right there. He doesn't say you're mistaken or you're a little off.

[00:57:03]He says you're deceiving yourself. Which means the problem is not just sin. The problem is selfdeception about sin. And that's dangerous because you can be completely convinced that you're fine while completely being out of alignment with God. And you normalize the things that God calls sin and excuse what God exposes and redefine what God has already defined. And John says when you do that, the truth isn't operating in you. Not because truth doesn't exist, but because you're resisting it. Now, watch what he contrasts that with. This is beautiful. This is so beautiful.

[00:57:35]First John 1:9.

[00:57:38]If we confess our sins, you say, "Whoa, wait a minute. What are you talking about?" No. John says, "Listen, we're going to bring them into the light. If we confess our sins, he's faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness."

[00:57:54]That's verse nine. There's the turning point.

[00:57:58]We're not denying our sins. We're confessing them.

[00:58:03]Confessing doesn't just mean admitting them. It means I'm agreeing with God about what my sin is doing, about what it is and what it does. I'm gonna call it what he calls it. It's not my failure. It's not my flaws. It's not my my trip ups, my goofs.

[00:58:22]I'm not going to spin it anymore. I'm not going to soften it. I'm not going to hide it.

[00:58:27]is saying, "God, you're right about me.

[00:58:29]You're right about my behavior. You're right about my life. You're right about my heart. You're right about my sin and my all these things." He said, "You say I'm not right. God, you're right. I'm not right."

[00:58:39]And it doesn't say God might forgive you. It doesn't say God will consider it. Says God is faithful and just to forgive. It is in God's nature according to his faithfulness and his sense of justice to forgive you if you do this.

[00:58:54]Faithful means he gonna do it every time.

[00:58:57]just means he's it's already been paid for through Christ. So, it's you better go cash it in.

[00:59:03]This is not this is not God bending the rules to forgive you. It's God honoring what Jesus already accomplished. And not just forgiveness, cleansing.

[00:59:14]He says he going to forgive you from all sins, but he's going to cleanse you from all unrighteousness. Means he doesn't just remove the penalty, he's going to remove the stain.

[00:59:22]Confession comes first. Cleansing follows. Which means God will not cleanse what you continue to cover.

[00:59:29]And John's gonna press into this one more time. Don't raid today, Steve. I want to keep talking. Don't raid. Party foul. Steve is our hall monitor in there. And then don't don't raid. We We'll raid later on. Okay. When I'm done, we can raid.

[00:59:43]This more this is more important than what's going on in Iran.

[00:59:46]Yeah, I said it. This is more important than anything President Trump's posting.

[00:59:52]Yeah, I said it.

[00:59:54]Look at what he says here because he knows how stubborn we can be. Verse 10, 1 John 1:10, he says, "If we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar and his word is not in us."

[01:00:10]That's even stronger than verse eight before he said you before he said you deceive yourself. And you remember when he said, he said, listen, if you're walking in the darkness but claiming to be in the light, you're a liar and the truth is not in you. He says, before you were deceiving yourself and lying to yourself. He says, 'Now you're saying, now you're calling God a liar.

[01:00:30]If you say you have no sin, and there's people out there say, "Well, I'm not even going to read." You know, I don't There are literally people out there who say, "We've got this revelation that we're we're just sons of God, and we don't we don't sin. Sin, what we do in the body doesn't matter because we're we're revealed to be spirits." Listen, I I read this stuff in the comments section. I'm like, "Oh, you guys think you got some kind of cutting edge stuff that somebody revealed this been around for thousands of years." He says, "God's already spoken clearly about sin, about righteousness, about truth." And when you say, "That's not sin." You say, "This is what I'm doing in my life.

[01:01:00]That's not sin. Me and God have an understanding or that doesn't matter.

[01:01:02]God understands how I am." What you're doing is calling him a liar. You're contradicting him. And the reality is you can't rewrite truth and stay in fellowship with the one who is the truth.

[01:01:13]So, it's not do you do you sin? We already know the answer to that. Yeah.

[01:01:18]The question is what do you do when you sin? Do you hide it, justify it, minimize it, redefine it, or do you bring it in the light and agree with God about it? Where are we currently downplaying something God's trying to confront? That's the issue. What have we gotten comfortable with that used to bother our conscience?

[01:01:37]When's the last time we honestly specifically confessed sin before God?

[01:01:41]Some of you don't even want to say it out loud.

[01:01:45]And I'm not talking about the vague prayers where you're like, "God, if I messed up somewhere, will you just forgive me?" Now, that ain't confession.

[01:01:53]I mean real, direct, honest confession.

[01:01:57]Because what happens over time, if you don't do that, you stop confessing, you're going to drift. If you stop dealing with the sin in your life, you're going to start living with it, and you're going to justify it. And the thing that once convicted you, it won't even bother you anymore. This is the danger John's talking about.

[01:02:12]But the hope is this, and it's powerful.

[01:02:14]God's not standing over you waiting to crush you when you confess. He's inviting you to come clean so he can make you clean. So there's no sin you bring to him that he's not ready to forgive. And by the way, you're also not going to surprise God. He already sees it. He's getting you and your heart in alignment. Well, if he knows everything, why do I have to confess it? He's getting you into alignment. He's bringing transformation into your real daily experience so you can have fellowship with the real person of Jesus.

[01:02:43]There is no darkness in you that's going to surprise him that his light can't cleanse in you. But you got to bring it. Stop hiding it, managing it, and pretending it doesn't exist. Freedom isn't found in denial.

[01:02:57]Freedom is found in confession.

[01:03:00]So are you covering your sin or you confessing it? because one leads to deception and distance and the other leads to forgiveness, cleansing, restored fellowship with God. And that's beautiful, right? That is beautiful.

[01:03:13]So, First John chapter 1, I don't know if I did it any justice today at all, but I will say there's a there is a response that's being demanded here.

[01:03:25]John says, "This is real. There's this real person named Jesus. He wants to have a real relationship with you.

[01:03:32]It's not a theory. It's not tradition.

[01:03:34]It's not inherited religion. There's a real Jesus. He's experienced. He's seen.

[01:03:38]He's known. He's manifested.

[01:03:42]John says, "I'm going to show you who God is. God is light. There's no darkness in him at all. There's no compromise, no mixture, no turning, no gray areas to hide in." He says, "You can say whatever you want, but your walk reveals the reality." Not not calling you to be perfect.

[01:04:00]It's not about perfection. It's about direction.

[01:04:03]It's about getting honest before God.

[01:04:06]And he says, 'Now, what do you do with your sin? Because I want you to walk in the light. I want this to be real to you.

[01:04:13]He says, if you keep denying it, it's going to lead to deception, but confession is going to lead to cleansing.

[01:04:20]So he says, there's a fake Christianity out there.

[01:04:25]And that fake Christianity is the version that says, "I can believe the right things, still live however I want."

[01:04:32]And John's exposing that version of Christianity, which is no Christianity at all, where it says, "I'm going to manage my image instead of surrendering my life." And he says, "Let's replace all that garbage and let's have a life lived in the light." Not a perfect life, an honest life. Not a sinless life, a surrendered life, a life that says, "God, there are no hidden corners. There's no locked doors. Everything's open to you.

[01:05:01]You're already living in one of two places. You're either in the light or you're in the darkness. You're either in the light or you're in the shadows.

[01:05:08]You're either walking in the truth or you're managing appearances.

[01:05:12]Yes, you. Yes, me.

[01:05:16]Your life already reflects one of those lifestyles. Which one is it?

[01:05:24]So, I hope you walk away from this morning's time together.

[01:05:28]This is my heart right here. I don't want to just understand this intellectually.

[01:05:33]I want to let this truth do what it's supposed to do. Let it search me, expose me, draw me out of hiding. Because the goal is not to feel convicted and walk away unchanged. The goal is to step fully into the light where God actually meets me.

[01:05:45]And the good news of all of it is when I step into the light, he doesn't reject me. You say, "But Chad, you don't know what I've done." I don't have to. I'm not the light that you're stepping into.

[01:05:57]God is. Don't underestimate what he knows about you. He knows the things you've done. He loves you. He's still inviting you in.

[01:06:09]You're not going to walk into the light and find a God pushing you away. You're going to find a God who's faithful and just to forgive. And not just to forgive, but cleanse you from all unrighteousness, restore you, renew you, bring you back into real fellowship with him.

[01:06:26]Now, now the issue is not what do you believe, not what you claim. Where's your life standing? Where's your walk right now? Are you in the light?

[01:06:36]You're holding on to the shadows.

[01:06:38]Step into the light. Let God do what only he can do. Okay. All right, first John chapter 1.

[01:06:45]All right, we got to go. I love you guys. Hey, you can get the uh btn.

[01:06:48]Where's the other? Yeah, I I love this patch so much right there. Jesus lives before the noise. I designed that. I love it. I got to sneeze.

[01:06:59]Not coming out. All right. Um and I got one of the one of the BTN notebooks.

[01:07:05]It's got the btn logo on there. You see that? It's got the pin built into it.

[01:07:09]You open it up, go to like the second page. See, this is where you need to be taking your notes, man. You can go over to before the noise.com, get all this stuff. Just pop the little pin out of there. It's kind of got a magnetic deal. You have to forgive me. I only have one arm here. I'm not even going to try to get that out right now with one arm. But anyway, got the btn notebook. You got the BTN bookmarks. You got Man, I'm trying here. Keep the lights on around this joint.

[01:07:33]Go to before the noise.com. get the notes of today and it's in the blog section at beforethenoise.com and you can go to shop beforethenoise.com. Oh, and I'd be remiss if I didn't tell you to because today is Monday which means we're going to try to get a new one out.

[01:07:48]Uh we're going to try to get the um a brand new above the noise class out.

[01:07:53]Join Above the Noise. I'd love to hear from you guys what you would like to hear teachings on at Above the Noise because we're going we're going into some deep topics there. So many directions I want to go, but I'd love to hear from you guys some maybe some topics you'd like to hear. Do me a favor, go to our podcasts are offered, listen, like uh leave a rating and review. Uh listen to the btn weekend about what happens next after you die.

[01:08:14]It's pretty thoughtprovoking, I thought.

[01:08:16]Uh but leave us a rating and review there. Uh Party House Steve, you can raid over into the next show if you've got that. Uh if you want to put that out there, we can raid over to Vince. Um I just make up my own rules around here.

[01:08:27]what we do.

[01:08:30]They'll send they'll they'll, you know, people might tell me what to do. That doesn't really work that well.

[01:08:36]I love you guys. Happy Monday. Go back now and read First John chapter 1 in light of what we said. You might want to hit rewind on some of this stuff. Hit like, hit all the stuff. If you haven't subscribed to Rumble or YouTube, hit subscribe. I don't know what I'm doing right now other than saying I love you.

[01:08:49]Uh, hey, thanks for spending a few sacred minutes with me this morning before the noise. My prayers that you walk into whatever comes next. Not empty, but filled, not rushed, but rooted. Not reactive, but renewed. Walk in the light. Take a deep breath. God's already ahead of you.

[01:09:03]He really is. He's got it under control.

[01:09:06]I'll see you tomorrow morning, Lord willing. Same place, same peace before the noise. Until then, I love you. God bless you. Bye.