Coming To The Light

The following is an excerpt from my book, Exposing the Darkness: Lighting the Way to Life in Christ.  This truth has been foundational to my victory over habitual sin. The Scriptures teach us that we have victory over sin through Christ, yet so many professing Christians continue to struggle with recurring sin that seems to keep them in a never-ending cycle of failure. In order for us to overcome our sin, it must first be brought to the light. “For everyone practicing evil (that would be anyone who is practicing sin) hates the light, and does not come to the light, lest his deeds should be exposed. But he who practices the truth comes to the light, that his deeds may be clearly seen” (Jn 3:20-21). Coming to the light is the first step on the road to freedom. Ideally, that would be through confession. But for me, because of my arrogant pride, my sins had remained hidden from others, so they had to be exposed in a radical way. Because I was not willing to confess my sin and bring it to the light, God eventually had to do it for me. He will be long-suffering with us for a season as He patiently awaits our repentance, but eventually our sin must be exposed to His light one way or the other. It was my pride that put me right where the evil one wanted me—in the dark. We’ve all heard it said that pride kills. It was killing me. The more prideful I became, the more difficult it was for me to overcome sin, and the more I struggled with sin, the more prideful I became.

Throughout our marriage, my pride grew to a point that it was unbearable for RaeLynn. In my mind, our marital problems were always her fault. I would accuse her of being rebellious whenever she would bring up an issue, yet I see now that my guilt, which manifested itself as pride, caused me to turn my finger on her. All along, my sin was ever before me and was directly responsible for most of our problems.

Psalm 51 speaks of a place within us that God desires to occupy with His truth: “Behold, You desire truth in the inward parts, and in the hidden part You will make me to know wisdom. Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean; Wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.” The above verses in Psalm 51 spoke to my heart after my sin was brought to the light in ways that I had never seen before. God said to me that He desires “truth in the inward parts.” But pride stood in the way of truth reaching that inner sanctuary, and I will explain how. The fact is that a prideful person is in actuality—and ironically—a very insecure person. They want everyone to see them as being perfect. They love to be liked. But the problem with sin is that in many cases it is embarrassing or what we perceive to be as “ugly.” The prideful person wants to be pretty on the outside. They want to be praised for their virtues while they hide from view all the imperfections and faults.

So what that means is that a prideful person such as I was sweeps all those imperfections under the proverbial rug. They get stowed away in the storage shed of our “inward parts.” Over a lifetime they either get so buried that they are almost forgotten, or they are decorated and adorned to make them appear to the prideful person to be a virtue. Yet at the same time the prideful person is acutely aware of his imperfections. The prideful are always two people: the costume that he wears and the real person that is locked up tight and out of sight, or so he thinks. His “inward parts” spoken of in the Psalm in reality are shrouded in deceit because he is living a lie. And because lies fill the sanctuary of the inner man, there is no room in the inward parts of a prideful person for truth.

On the outside I looked very secure. I had an attitude of no fear; I was a successful manager in state government. But I was an overachiever and a perfectionist to the extreme in an attempt to overcome my insecurities. I appeared to be a decent and honest man and even preached against dishonesty to my children while I was the dishonest one. I would lecture my children when they were trying to be honest as if I didn’t believe them, which caused them to quit being open with me about their feelings. At out-of-town meetings, I would go out with the boys in the evenings and preach to them about Christian virtue, morals, and ethics and then go back to my room to indulge in pornography.

David says, “In the hidden part You will make me to know wisdom.” The problem for the prideful is that there is no room for wisdom because the “hidden part” is crammed full of unconfessed or secret sin. These secret sins are the skeletons in the closet. They are the sins that we will never tell or admit to, and as long as we hold on to these secret sins, Satan has a stronghold in our heart. He stands at the doorway of the storeroom, our hidden parts, and guards it fiercely.

Before we move forward, allow me here to briefly explain the difference between wisdom and knowledge. One can have a vast amount of knowledge and yet have no wisdom whatsoever. Wisdom comes when our knowledge is coupled with understanding, and with understanding comes practical application to life’s challenges. Now, looking back, I can see that I have always had a great amount of both knowledge and wisdom in the area of health and nutrition. I could speak on this topic with authority and wise application. Yet in the area of Scripture or doctrine, I always had to write it out in order to speak it. Why? Because I had the knowledge, but I had no understanding and therefore no wisdom. How could God “make me to know wisdom” while my inward parts were guarded so tightly and crammed to capacity with hidden sin?

Do you see the dilemma I was living? As long as I held on to secret sins, God could not impart wisdom to my deep inward parts, or my heart. Therefore, David continues in the Psalm, “Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean; Wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.” These secret sins must be purged in order for our inward parts to be clean, and then the storeroom must be washed, swept, and put in order by God. Hyssop was used in ancient times to purge the temple, to cleanse lepers, as an antiseptic and antiviral, and as a spring tonic to purge the blood of impurities. Likewise, in this Psalm we are asking God to purge the temple of our heart with hyssop. It is much like when my family moved into our new house. It was left a mess by the previous owner, whom my kids called “the dirty guy.” It first had to be purged of all the junk and debris the former resident left behind. Then it had to be thoroughly washed and painted before we could move in.

We cannot have victory over sin without Christ. He is the door to freedom. But we must first submit. And the first step to submission is admission. Not just to God and ourselves, but to the church. That leaves us free for His Holy Spirit to do His good work within us. So first is the admission of our sin, then our submission to Christ and then He does His work of remission of the cancer of sin.

Who Am I?

I figured for my first blog post I would introduce my self and share with you the purpose of my writing this blog. 

So, who am I?

My name is Darryl Fitzwater, and I am first of all, a lover of God. I try to spend a good deal of time with Him and learning about Him. This was not always so, though I believed I was, and proudly claimed to be a “Christian”. For 13 years I was a Christian in name only, because I continued in the same habitual sin that I lived with prior to my so called conversion. I blame myself for this, but there is no mistaking the fact that the nature of the modern church gave me a comfortable environment in which to live an unregenerate life. 

Yet I want to be careful here when I refer to the modern church, because there are many churches that don’t fit this description. And more importantly, there are many within the church who are searching for a way back to the pure Gospel of Jesus Christ and all that it implies. But by and large, the modern church in America has lost its first love. Jesus said to the church in Ephesus, “I know your works, your labor, your patience, and that you cannot bear those who are evil. And you have tested those who say they are apostles and are not, and have found them liars; and you have persevered and have patience, and have labored for My name’s sake and have not become weary.” Sounds pretty good so far doesn’t it. It might even describe our modern American church. But then Jesus continues, “Nevertheless I have this against you, that you have left your first love” (Revelation 2:2-4).

That is why it is possible in our day to have a Christless Christian. That was me, and I was quite content thinking I was saved and that grace would cover my continued sin. While God had been convicting my heart of my sin for so many years, the church taught me that my behavior was normal. Well it was normal if normal is defined as common. But the “Normal Christian Life” According to Watchman Nee is:

“What is the normal Christian life? We do well at the outset to ponder this question. The object of these studies is to show that it is something very different from the life of the average Christian” – Watchan Nee, The Normal Christian Life.

Normal in this sense means well, as in not sick. Paul tells us of the normal Christian life that it is “No longer I who live, but Christ lives in me” (Gal. 2:20). This normal Christian life needs the Great Physician living in us and through us. I was, like so many “Christians” I knew, sick. And as this sickness continued, it finally culminated in my being found out in a most embarrassing and painful way. I was exposed for the wretch that I was and it destroyed life as I knew it, which was right where God needed me to be for Him to begin His healing work. It was “invasive surgery” you might say.

This blog is a result of His work within me. Shortly after my exposure I began to write, as God would reveal areas in my life that needed work for true change to take place. He began by giving me a Scripture as the foundation of my new ministry: “You were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Walk as a child of light…finding out what is acceptable to the Lord. And have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather expose them…All things that are exposed are made obvious by the light, for whatever makes obvious is light” (Paraphrased from Eph. 5:8-13). The first fruit of God’s healing was my book, “Exposing The Darkness, Lighting the Way To Life In Christ”, in which I put to pen the insights that God had shown me about myself that laid fertile soil for the seeds of corruption. This blog is the next phase of my ministry, in which I will make myself available to any of you who can identify with my former condition and who might need encouragement, and solid Biblical, Gospel honoring advise.

My entire purpose is to light the way to Christ by exposing the darkness that has descended like a fog over Christ’s beloved church in America. This is multi faceted and will be exposed in many forms, but that is the slippery nature of deceit. It is really all the same lie, from the same author of lies, but deceit is a chameleon that changes form when it is in danger of discovery. So in the months and years to come, I hope to meet many of you as we walk together the narrow road which leads to life.