Sons by Gift, Children by Walking

I want to give you two words now, and the difference between them is the difference between standing still and going somewhere.

The first word is son. The moment you belong to God — the moment His Spirit comes to live in you — you are a son. A daughter. A child of God, fully and immediately, with nothing left to earn. This is not a prize for the advanced. It is a gift at the door. The Spirit Himself, Paul says, bears witness with your spirit that you are a child of God — and the witness comes out as a cry you did not manufacture: Abba, Father. That cry is the surest sign there is that you belong. It is not a technique. It is a child, in the dark, knowing whose house they are in. You are a son the instant you are His, and your sonship does not flicker when you fail, because it never rested on your performance in the first place. It rests on His Word, and His Word does not break.

But there is a second word, and it is the one this whole book has been walking toward. The second word is child of light. And that one is not only a gift you receive. It is a walk you take.

"For you are all children of light, children of the day. We are not of the night or of the darkness. So then let us not sleep, as others do, but let us keep awake and be sober." — 1 Thessalonians 5:5–6 (NET)

Do you hear both halves? You are children of light — that is the gift, already true. So then let us keep awake — that is the walk, still to be taken. You are light, the moment you are His. You become a child of light, day by day, as you let that light actually move through you into the world — as you stay awake to it, walk in it, let it pour out of you in the small unglamorous choices that make up a life.

This is the difference between the empty thrones and the filled ones. The fallen sons of the council had the status. They were sons of God; the psalm calls them exactly that. What they never did was walk — never let the love of God actually flow through them to the people they were given. They kept the title and refused the life. And the title without the life is the saddest thing in the cosmos: you are gods; you shall die like men.

God is not after children who merely hold the title. He is after children who walk in the light — who take what they have been given and let it move, let it pour, let it cost them something, let it reach the ditch and the road and the borrowed upper room. You did nothing to become a son. That was pure gift. But there is something for you to do as a child of light, and it is this: stay where the love is flowing, and let it flow.

That is the walk. Not a climb. Not a striving. A walk — taken one ordinary day at a time, at His side, in His direction, letting the love that was poured in keep finding its way out. There was a man near the beginning of everything named Enoch, and the whole of his life fits in one short line: Enoch walked with God; then he was not, because God took him away. That is the entire biography. Not Enoch achieved great things. Not Enoch ascended to the council. He walked with God — beside Him, year after year, through whatever the years held — until one day the walking and the going home were the same thing. That is the life of a child of light. A walk, taken at His side, that simply keeps going.