Purify Your Mind Series (Part 2) by Joe KirbySample

Radically Change Your Routine

Here we find a young man in a place he shouldn’t be, at a time he shouldn’t be out on the street. “In the black and dark night” literally means “in the center of night, even darkness.” The young man is not in the center of light, but darkness.

In the Bible darkness is a picture of men’s sin. Nicodemus visited Jesus by night. Why was that specific detail included by the Gospel writer? Because Nicodemus still wanted to remain in the shadows; he wasn’t ready to claim the Light of the World publicly. Jesus said that those who loved darkness more than light did so because their deeds were evil (see John 3:19). Many of the lustful sins of this world cannot be committed in the light, for it would expose their shameful wickedness. Unrepentant people refuse to leave their sin behind, which means they have to spend a lot of time in the darkness, late at night, nurturing that sin.

What does your nighttime routine look like? A very practical way to quit any addiction is to radically change the rut you’ve been living in for years and to transform your routine. If you stay up late watching things you shouldn’t, would you be willing to go to bed earlier and rise earlier, as a way of disrupting these sinful habits? The average pornography addict wastes ten hours a week watching wrong images on the Internet. Imagine if you took those ten hours from late at night and converted them into ten productive hours in the morning—you could start a new project, read a Christian book, or go to the gym. I guess what I’m really asking you is, don’t you think it’s finally time for us to become children of the light?