Coming Out of Darkness - Tracy Gutierrez

Let's go to the Lord in prayer. Father, we just thank you for the opportunity, Lord, that I get to be your hands and feet in this moment, Father, that I get to be a vessel that you pour through for your sons and daughters. Lord, we just give you all honor and all glory for all things. And we thank you, Father, that whoever listens in the moment they're listening, Lord, that your Holy Spirit will move upon them, Father, that they will have eyes that will see and ears that will hear everything you are speaking to them, Lord, and that their heart will receive and take it in, Father, that they will reflect, that they will turn to you, Father, that they will seek you and find you for whatever it is you want to show them, Father. We thank you, Jesus, for your blood that covers us all. We thank you, Father, for the forgiveness of our sins, and we thank you, Lord, for your message. In Jesus' name we pray, amen. So the title of my message is Coming Out of Darkness. It's based on 1 Peter 2, 9 and other scriptures. I could have given you many warfare prayers and strategies. That's usually the lane that we're in. But that's not the place that the Lord took me today for you. Those prayers are great. Those strategies, they're needed and necessary. But what about all the in-between? And that's what the Lord was showing me today for you, is for us to have an additional awareness of what is going on and all the different types of darkness that we go through. So if we turn to 1 Peter 2, 9, right above that it says, in 8, at the end of 8, it says, for they stumble because they are disobedient to the word. And to this doom they were also appointed. And then the good news, verse 9, but you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for God's own possession, so that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who has called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. For you once were not a people, but you are the people of God. You had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy. Verse 11, beloved, I urge you as aliens and strangers to abstain from fleshly lusts which wage war against the soul. Verse 12, keep your behavior excellent among the Gentiles, so that in the thing in which they slander you as evildoers, they may, because of your good deeds as they observe them, glorify God in the day of visitation. So many of us may be familiar with 1 Peter 2, 9. We always want to speak out, declare, we are a chosen race. We're a royal priesthood, a holy nation, but yet we've negated the first part when it's talking about the importance of disobedience and the end of it, when it talks about our behavior. And that's what I want to share with you guys today. I want to help you to know that there are different types of darkness.

One of the types of darkness is being lost, unaware, no direction, lack of knowledge, the absence of light. So that's physical and spiritual. Physically, if there's an absence of light, if you're in a hard place, or if you're trying to get from A to B and there is no light there, it's very challenging, very difficult. If you're someone who's blind, that's a bigger physical difficulty because you literally can't see light. And so there's a physical and a spiritual to this part of being lost. Spiritually, being lost and being unaware means you don't know the way. And if you feel you don't know the way, it's because you don't know Jesus who is the way. John 14, three through six says, If I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to myself, that where I am, there you may be also. Verse four, And you know the way where I am going. Thomas said, Lord, we do not know where you are going. How do we know the way? Even the disciples who did love him, who did follow him, had those opportunities of, Do I really know the way? What am I going to do? What's going to happen. So when I said the statement that if you don't know the way, you don't know Jesus, it's not condemning. It's just in those moments of our choices, in the moments of the things that come against us, we forget the one who is the way, who has the answers. Jesus said to him, verse 6, I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father but through me. And so we forget in those moments when we are struggling, when we are feeling lost, when we have no direction. It feels dark, and it is. It is a darkness that we can be through, and the only way for that light is Jesus. He's the only guide. He's the only one that can illuminate the path for us to come out of darkness. John 8, 12 says, Then Jesus spoke to them, saying, I am the light of the world. He who follows me will not walk in the darkness, but will have the light of life. John 12, 35-36 in the ESV version says, So Jesus said to them, The light is among you for a little while longer. Walk while you have the light, lest darkness overtakes you. This is so prevalent for now. We were asked, when I was asked to do this, it was said to me, if this was the last message that you could ever give to a prisoner, to someone who is incarcerated, to someone who's straying, what would be your message? And I would have to tell you, this part of this verse really screams out to me for this. Walk while you have the light, lest darkness overtakes you. He says, A little while longer, there will be a time where there will not be the same choice you have right now for this. It is so important that you

understand you do have a choice right where you're at in the whole feelings and emotions and hardship that you're enduring and that you're struggling with. You have the choice, the only choice that's going to really matter. And that's going to be the light that illuminates your path and the one that is the way out. Jesus already knew that we would not know the way without him. The bottom part of that verse in 36, it says, The one who walks in darkness does not know where he is going. So this is why. So when you can't understand anymore, I'm speaking to the one now who has known Christ, who has known the way, and it's like, what's going on? I thought this, I thought that, and all the plans are changing. Please remember, in that moment, it says, While you have the light, believe in the light that you may become sons of light. Remember, he is the way, and your choices are going to matter in that moment. And it's your surrender in that place of, I don't know, Lord, I need you to guide me. That shifts everything. Another type of darkness is bondage. Bondage is being bound and trapped. Captivity, which is what you're familiar with right now. Captivity doesn't feel good. Bondage is heavy. It is burdensome. It weighs you down. It's also physical and spiritual. Physically, you can be bound. You can be in captivity. But spiritual bondage and captivity is far worse than being behind bars. You must begin to understand there are two types of the bondage, and there is a choice to be able to come out of one of them. We're going to read Isaiah 50, 10 through 11 right now. It says in the NASB version, Who is among you that fears the Lord, that obeys the voice of his servant, that walks in darkness and has no light? Let him trust in the name of the Lord and rely on his God. Behold all you who kindle a fire, who encircle yourselves with fire bands. Walk in the light of your fire and among the brands you have set ablaze. That's your thinking. That's your doing. That's you, more of you than him. This you will have from my hand. You will lie down in torment. Are you wondering why you're still feeling tormented? The Amplified version of this says, Listen carefully, all who kindle your own fire, meaning devising your own man-made plan of salvation. It's not going to be about you. If it's truly salvation, it's a surrendering of you. How many of us have lied in torment or are still now?

I have, and I'm sure you have too. The bondage of torment also is sorrow, and it's many other things too, and the Lord had me list them for you today. Torment can be, I'm sorry, forgive me, I forgot the Geneva version. It says, and are compassed about with sparks, you shall lie down in sorrow. If you give a visual of that spark, when you just say a fire, you think of a big fire and heat, but if God is the fire, right? If he is the one that lights our passion, if he is the one that gives off the light for you to follow, our tiny little spark will never be enough. Torment can be trauma. It can be hopelessness and despair. It can be the lies of the enemy with the doubt and the disbelief and the condemnation. It can be the rejection and abandonment, can be what torments you daily. Your imaginations can torment, replaying memories over and over of your disappointments and failures, the guilt, self-hatred, self-rejection, unworthiness, it's all torment. Unforgiveness of yourself or of others brings torment. Blaming others instead of forgiving them, falling into retaliation. If you are retaliating, you're in torment. Not only have you been tormented, but now you believe the lie,

it's okay to torment someone else. Don't be the instrument of retaliation. You have to forgive and trust him in it and with it. Payback never really pays back. There's also the torment of physical pain. There's a physical pain of heartache or ailments in your body, injuries, sickness, disease. There's a torment of victimization, never seeing the way out, never seeing the victory through Jesus. Instead of staying and believing you're a victim, instead of knowing the victory is surrendering all of what's happened to you, all of what you couldn't do differently and allowing him to bring the healing for you to have the victory. He showed me this morning, do you know what torments us the most? It's the root of what we can't change. There's so much of what you right now feel you can't change. You can't change what's been done to you. You can't change what you couldn't control. You can't change where you're at right now physically. You can't change what anyone on the outside is gonna choose to do. And some of you can't change your anger at God because he didn't stop what happened to you. Fear will come when we can't change or we can't stop a thing. And when fear comes, so does control.

The more we fear, the more we want control. And for you sometimes, the more you feel out of control because you can't. I wanna read to you what Oswald Chambers says. "'The discipline of dismay "'is a necessary part of discipleship. "'The danger is that we will try to escape the darkness "'by kindling a fire of our own.'" It's Isaiah 50, 10 that we read. "'When the darkness of dismay comes, "'endure it until it is over. "'Out of it will come a following of Jesus, "'which is an unspeakable joy.'" Surrendering to Jesus through what you're enduring while you're enduring is what gets you out of the bondage and the torment. It won't be the changing of what happened, it's done. The only thing you can change now is what you choose now. Endure it till it's over. We try to escape the discipline, we try to avoid it. We must persevere through the hard, through the discipline and correction. Persevere. Perseverance, the definition, is continued effort to do or achieve something, despite difficulties, failures, or opposition, despite the failures, despite your opposition. Perseverance is doing it anyway. Hard is going to happen. You are not ever going to stop the hard. But how can we get through it?

Trusting God through the hard is the only way. James 1.12 said, Blessed is the man who remains steadfast under trial. For when he has stood the test, he will receive the crown of life which God has promised to those who love him. And I'm not talking about the crown of what we would envision with the crown. I'm talking about the life you get to have with him someday. That's the ultimate crown. That's what our focus needs to be. Galatians 6.9 says, Let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap if we do not give up. I want you to think for a minute how many times you didn't give up on the things in the world, but how easily you give up on God. Think of all the times you went back. All the times, even now, when anger comes back, or hatred, or any of those things that tries to come back, the rejection, the pain, the thought of, I can't believe that person did that, or even if you were wrongly accused and you are doing this time. I want you to look at discipline differently after today. The definition, one definition of discipline, is control gained by enforcing obedience, or order, orderly conduct or behavior. It also means self-control. You understand about the enforced obedience. When you aren't able, when I'm not able in my choices to have the self-control to be obedient in that situation, God will allow something to come and enforce it. That's what's happening with you most likely, but it's to teach us the self-control we didn't have before. It also means punishment. That's another form of discipline. Punishment means suffering loss or hardship in response to a crime or an offense. We can't negate the punishment, none of us. If we have done wrong in the sight of God, there's going to be something that comes to

help us to learn from it. The third definition is training that corrects, molds, or perfects. The mental faculties or moral character, don't we want our moral character perfected? Don't we want to be able to be trained? How many of us don't know why this thing still happens to us? It's because we need discipline in that area that we don't have. It also means a field of study or instruction, a discipline to research, to learn. In the thesaurus, it says the checking of one's true impulses. That has to be done. If we aren't checked by Him, who will? Who will truly check us in this place? I call it a measuring stick. With those that we teach and we help, we call it, where are you at on the measuring stick? When you used to react way up here to something, you used to be, ah, when something would happen or anger or just completely flip out, overwhelmed, just want to die in that situation. Now, when God is working with you and God is dealing with you and you have truly surrendered your heart to Him and you've truly said, whatever I must go through, Lord, it's worth it to just be with you. It's worth it to just serve you, to love you. If I never get anything back at all, if I only have the relationship with you, everything I've gone through is worth it. That type of surrender, when you have that, you're a measuring stick. When you react the next time or you have a harder situation, you may still react. You may still not be where you want to be, but it's not like those things at the fair when you hit it and it goes, bing, it's just here now because you're growing and you're learning. The discipline of dismay, Oswald says, there is dismay in the discipline. Let's be honest. You feel at times, I feel at times, dismay in this correction. Dismay means to cause, to lose courage, sudden disappointment.

We've all had that. To trouble the mind of, to make uneasy. There's your torment. That's the explanation of the torment. So when we're being disciplined, we have the choice. We can move into the feelings and the emotions of dismay. This is terrible. Or we can switch over to Lord, whatever it takes. I want to be disciplined by you because I want to be all that you've created me to be and nothing more. Proverbs 6.23 says, For the commandment is a lamp, the law is light, and the reproofs of discipline are the way to life. You say you want Jesus. The true way is allowing him to discipline you. The laws are boundaries. Discipline correction is to help light the path. It's a map. You need it. I need it. We all need it. There is no coming out of darkness without surrender. We have to surrender our heart. We have to surrender our desires. We have to surrender our plans. We have to surrender our purpose. We have to surrender our whole entire life. What we want doesn't matter. And you may never have been told this before.

It isn't about us. It is always about him and our relationship with him. Where has what we have wanted gotten us so far? Where has our choices taken us? Our choices do matter. Our soul is our mind, our will, and our emotions. Our mind is our thinker, our will is our chooser, and our emotions is our feeler. If you are stuck in what you feel, if you are stuck in what you think, then what you choose will be that. You must have healing. And for me, the prayers and the warfare and all of those things were fantastic. But it was when I came out of the self-centered gospel, when I came into a place of truly understanding that it isn't about me, is when I had freedom. I couldn't be free of me and everything I chose until I died to me, which is the true surrender that is only to him for whatever you want. And it is not easy. It is hard. That's why I say to you, you can't avoid hard. Start embracing it. It's here already. Lastly, another type of darkness is the evil. Wickedness, sin, bad character or conduct. It means causing discomfort, harm, morally reprehensible. We've all been morally reprehensible at times. And if we don't think so,

let me remind you what the scripture says. 1 John 1, six through eight. If we say that we have fellowship with him and yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. But if we walk in the light as he himself is the light, we have fellowship with one another and the blood of Jesus. His son cleanses us from all sin. If we say that we have no sin, we are deceiving ourselves and the truth is not in us. So if John 14, six says, Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life, and the other scripture says the truth isn't in us, if we say that we don't sin, we've got to recognize how we deceive ourselves. We have to recognize how it says in the word that our heart is deceitfully wicked. We don't follow our heart. We follow him. Then he changes our heart and then we're step in step. It's not the other way around. He is not the genie in the bottle. It's time to face the truth. It's time that you be accountable for your choices. It's time that you start looking at your time in prison, this time right now as a refuge in the Lord, not a prison. A refuge is shelter, protection from danger or distressed. So you may say, but I've, it's been hard in here. I've been hurt in here. I'm not protected in here.

Yes, you are. Stop hiding in your sin. Stop hiding in the blame of what brought you here in this place. Start hiding in him, in the shadow of the Almighty. Says in Psalm 91, my refuge, my fortress, he can be your refuge right where you are. to be. Endure. Persevere. Embrace it. Instead of running away from their correction, accept it. Ask the Lord, what do you want to show me in this? What can I do, Lord? What can I do and what can I learn from this? Instead of, look what they're doing to me. It's the only way I was free. Use your time instead of just doing the time. You may not feel you have choices in this bondage, but you do. Just because you're where you're at, you don't have to be in bondage there spiritually. The takeaways from today in this message for you. We can't have freedom from darkness without surrendering. We can't stop the hard. Torment won't leave if we keep doing things our way. It isn't about us. It's about Him. Obedience does matter. Our choices do matter. Following God's will and His plan allows us to see and follow the light, the way. It's the only way. Revelation 22 five says, and night will be no more. They will need no light. So I leave this with you in the hope, the hope you can have right now. The peace you can choose to have because He said He gives His peace. The reason we won't need the light then is because He will have the light. He will be all that we need. Some of you may not know how to even have that. Some of you may have had it and have forgotten because of the torment, because of the pain, because of the darkness and no longer seeing the way, whatever your situation is. I want to say a prayer and however it fits for you, just plug it in for yourself because you do matter to Him. What you choose does matter and He prefers you do your time, allowing Him to guide you than continuing to resist in your own way. Let's pray. Lord, I thank you so much for our time together, Lord. We come before you in all humility, in all surrender, Father, that what we want, what we desire, our plans don't matter. Only you matters the most of all things. We won't know the plans until we know you. We won't know how to come out of our situations unless we know the way and you are the way, Jesus. We ask you, Lord,

to move upon us, Lord, to change us, to shine your light within our soul for all darkness that has remained, for anything we are choosing, Lord, for anything I'm choosing, Lord, that goes against you, for anything that has hindered or stopped or caused me to not progress, Lord, for all correction that I resist, for all stubbornness and pride that I continue to use as the wall around me for protection when only you are my fortress and my protection. I surrender it all to you now, Lord. I choose to believe that you died on the cross for my sins. I choose to believe that you were crucified on the cross and on the third day you rose again. I choose to believe you are life, that you died so I could have life and life more abundantly, not because of what you can give me, Lord, but because I want to love you, because I want relationship with you, Lord. If I never get anything ever again from you, Father, just to know I have you is all I need. I ask for your forgiveness, Lord. I choose to forgive all choices that were made against me, all offenses, even my own. I ask for your forgiveness. your new start today, that as I die to myself right here, right now, that with you, through you, with your knowledge, your wisdom, your revelation, and by your blood, Jesus, you will bring me to life. My time in here, the end of the time, when I get out is not important anymore, Lord. I choose to use my time as a refuge with you. I trust you, Lord. I fully rely on you, Lord. And when I'm not, Holy Spirit, show me and convict me. I give you all honor and all glory. I love you, Jesus, and I praise you. In Jesus' name, we pray, amen. ♪♪♪