Fighting Words: 7 Days of Speaking Truth Into the Darkness by Ellie HolcombSample

DAY 3: Stronger Than the Darkness

This verse from John reminds me of a day I’ll never forget. We were visiting our cousin, who homeschools her children in Texas, and I overheard her reading this verse from Psalm 139 to her children:

“If I say, ‘Surely the darkness will hide me and the light become night around me,’ even the darkness will not be dark to you; the night will shine like the day, for darkness is as light to you” (Ps. 139:11–12).

She asked her boys, “If y’all are in a dark room, and you turn on a flashlight, what are you going to see?” They both piped in energetically, “The light!!” She said, “That’s right, boys, don’t you ever forget that the light is always stronger than the darkness.”

That simple and beautiful truth has stuck with me over the years. It has deeply encouraged me on some of the dark nights of the soul that I’ve walked through. It’s also been a truth I’ve shared with the younger kids in my life. I’ll never forget the day I was explaining to a few six-year-old boys that light was always stronger than the darkness, and how they did not believe me! So I had them go test it out. I found a flashlight and said, “Go take this and turn it on in every dark place you can think of and let me know what you see!”

So they took that flashlight inside closets, under couches, and in bathrooms with the lights turned off. And you know what? Every time, they would scream, “Ellie!! The light IS stronger! We can see it!!”

I wrote a song about this on one of my kids’ EPs called “Light’s Always Stronger.” And really, I wrote it for every person, big and small, who has felt overwhelmed or lost in the darkness at times. My prayer is that the song itself—and this beautiful verse that inspired the song from John 8:12—would remind us all that there is always hope because of Jesus. 

He’s the Light of the world who shines bright, no matter how dark the night gets. What if we really believed that about Jesus today? What if we spoke this truth into the dark places of our souls and lives, and watched just how strong the light of Christ can be for us? What if we held onto this verse, and spoke it into our loneliest nights, our deepest fears, and our hardest circumstances? I believe that we’d start exclaiming with a child-like, giddy delight, “The light is stronger! We can see it!”

• Why do you think it’s sometimes so hard to believe that light can overpower darkness?
• In what certain situations do you sometimes choose to dwell in the dark instead of walking in the light?
• How has Jesus been the “light of life” for you? How have you seen Him be “stronger” than the darkness for you?