Rabbi Schneider - Darkness in Disguise
I am teaching on something here that I believe can be transformative for so many of you. Once again, I'm calling this "The Principle or the Law of Resistance". I want you to consider something with me. In an electrical light bulb, inside a traditional light bulb, inside the glass there's a positive and there's a negative pole. And in between the positive and the negative pole there's something that's called a filament. What happens is, is that the energy flows through the filament; the negative is giving, the positive is receiving. Between the positive and negative pole is a filament. What happens in a light bulb, is that when the electrical current is running, the filament is restricting the amount of energy that can flow. It is resisting the electrical flow. And as that filament resists the amount of electricity that can flow to the positive pole, as that filament resists the electrical flow, listen now, heat is generated and that heat is what creates the light inside a light bulb.
The point that I'm stressing here, is resistance creates heat and creates light. Think about another example here. When you think about a rocket returning from space, when a rocket has gone to the moon for example and now is seeking to enter back into the earth's atmosphere, when the rocket is coming towards the earth it's fine temperature wise. But once that rocket capsule hits the earth's atmosphere, suddenly it heats up so badly that special measures have to be taken so that rocket capsule doesn't explode because of the intense heat it experiences when it hits the earth's atmosphere. Why is that? Because there's no resistance in outer space, but when the rocket hits the earth's atmosphere it hits the molecules of resistance that surround the earth and hitting the earth's atmosphere, it heats up and again it has to be specially built so that it won't blow up. Once again, we find that resistance has generated heat and light.
Again the rocket, free in space, no problems, but when it hits the earth's atmosphere all of a sudden it heats up to such enormic proportions that precautions have to be built around it so that it won't blow up. Resistance, listen now, creates heat and creates light. The reason I share with you those two examples, is because the same thing happens in the realm of the spirit. When we resist false light, when we resist the forces of darkness, we build up internal heat, internal light, internal power, in the Holy Spirit; that causes us to overcome and be conquerors for God. Think for example about Jesus. Jesus goes to the Jordan River, right, to be baptized by Yohanan, John the Immerser, John the Baptist. Right? The Spirit of the Lord appears above his head and the voice comes from heaven, "You are My beloved Son and in You I am well pleased".
Immediately after that experience, the scripture tells us, that listen now, the Spirit of God, the Spirit of Elohim Himself, led Yeshua into the wilderness where the devil came and tried to trap Him, tried to seduce Him, tried to tempt Him by doing what? Getting Him to yield, listen now, to false light. Remember Jesus fasted for 40 days and what did the devil say to Him? The devil said at the end of the fast, "Cause these stones to become bread". He tried to seduce Jesus into taking authority outside of the Father's will. But notice how the devil appealed, listen now, to Jesus' desire to be fulfilled from His hunger pains. But He did it, listen now, with a false light. Jesus had to resist the devil's false light and after Jesus resisted the devil's false light, the Bible says, "Yeshua came out of the wilderness," get it now, "in the power of the Spirit".
He was led into the wilderness by the Spirit, but it was only after He resisted, remember we're talking about the Law of Resistance. It was only after Yeshua resisted the false light, the light that tried to fulfill Yeshua's desires through illicit means; it was only when Yeshua resisted, allowing Himself to try to fulfill His desires through illicit means, it was only after Yeshua had resisted the energy of the darkness that He was empowered to come out and minister. And beloved one, the same is true for you and me. We need to learn how to resist the darkness that always disguises itself as an angel of light.
I want you to hear me when I say to you, you need to be aware of the energy that surrounds your soul and gain the discernment to learn how to resist that which is coming from the darkness, so that you can stay in the light and not yielding to the darkness. Let me give you some examples. How many times you have a really good day with God? I mean you're praying, you feel really connected. The prayers that are coming from your soul, you know that they're originating from the Holy Spirit. You're confident God's gonna answer those prayers, because you know that the prayers that you're praying are Biblical, you're praying that God would lead you into a deeper experience with Him. You're praying that you'd have a deeper recognition of the Holy Spirit's presence in your life. You're just feeling really connected to the Lord.
Then you go to sleep. You wake up the next day and all of a sudden you wake up the next day, have you ever had this experience? And you feel totally disconnected for no reason at all. You went to sleep feeling connected to God and for no reason at all that you're aware of, you wake up the next day feeling disconnected. All of a sudden God feels far away from you. Right? It seems like He's not near. You feel discouraged. You don't know why. You feel depressed. You don't know why. You feel hopeless. You don't know why. What are you feeling? You're feeling the darkness. You're feeling, beloved ones, the darkness. What we need to do, is to resist the darkness; whether the darkness comes to us in a way that's trying to falsely fulfill our desire, or whether the darkness just comes to us in the form of darkness itself. Either way, listen, we need to practice the Law of Resistance.
So if I wake up the next day after feeling really connected to God, then I wake up the next day, God feels far away. What do I do? I have to resist feeling hopeless. I have to resist doubt. I have to resist feeling sad. I have to resist the concept that God is far away. And instead what I do is do what I always do, I do my devotional in the morning. I pray. I talk to God. Though I feel nothing, I put one foot in front of the other. I still seek to control the thoughts that I think about. I still seek to control my attitude. I still seek to show love and serve to people, even though I feel nothing.
What am I doing? I'm resisting the force of darkness that is trying to make me feel that I'm alone, separated from God. I resist that rather than yielding to it and I keep on pressing on in the light, in the Spirit of God, doing what's right. And through resisting the darkness and continuing to do what's right though I feel nothing, you know what happens? Our spirit is then built up. Our spiritual muscle, you could say, is built up and when we get strong we'll be happy. Even as Jesus resisted the force of darkness when He was in the wilderness, so too beloved, we need to learn how to resist the negative energy of the devil.
I just talked about resisting the darkness when you can feel that it's darkness, when you feel sad, when you feel alone, when you're tempted to be short with somebody, when you're tempted to show anger when it's not right to show anger. You have to resist that energy. You have to resist that impulse and you have to instead do what's right not because you feel like doing what's right, because you're rather choosing to do what's right. See God never said, "Whosoever feels". He said, "Whosoever will". We can't always control how we feel. Just like we can't control whether it's sunny outside, or whether it's cloudy outside. We can't control that. What we can control is what we do, what we choose.
So first of all we said we need to reject and resist the negative energy, the types that I've just described; anger, lust, being selfish. We resist and we choose to do what's right, but we don't feel like it. But the other point that I want to make. I said I was gonna shift and I'm shifting now is and I touched on this last week, we need to resist, listen now, when the enemy, when the powers of darkness come to us making us believe if we do what they are enticing us to do, we will somehow be fulfilled and be happy. You see every single person is born in this world with a desire to be happy, with a desire to be fulfilled. We were born this way.
You see even as in the physical world you think about energy, you think about electricity. There's a positive pole, right? In electricity if you look, for example at your car battery. Have you ever had to start your car battery, you noticed there was a positive pole where there's a plus on it and there was a negative pole where there was a minus on it and you had to connect the wires, right? So you didn't get a big spark and blow your battery up, right? Well if you think about electricity, there's a positive and there's a negative. The same truth or parallel, listen now, exists in the spiritual world and in creation. We see electricity in the physical world, but remember that which we see in the physical world is a shadow, or a type of what exists in the invisible realm.
In the invisible realm there is also a positive. The positive in the invisible realm is first of all God. He is the Creator. He's the plus factor. From Him and through Him and to Him are all things. God is the giver. In Him is life. So God is the giver. He created mankind to be the receivers. That's why the church, beloved one, is called the bride of Christ. Right? We're called the bride of Christ. Why? Because we're the receivers. Father is the giver. We're the bride. We're the receivers. Yeshua's the giver. The church is the receiver. It doesn't have to do with sexuality. It simply has to do with the fact that God is the giver and we're the receivers. Just like on a battery there's a positive pole that receives, there's a negative pole that outputs in the spirit world, God is the giver and we're the receivers.
Human beings have been created in His own image, now listen, to receive. That's why God created us, so that we could receive Him; because He wants to, listen now, share Himself with us. God is bliss. He feels so good. He's love and His desire is to share Himself with us so that we can partake of Him and feel like He does. So God created us, beloved, listen now, to be, get it now, receivers. He created us to be, listen, people that desire. We have deep need. We want to be fulfilled. We have deep desire. We have this inner longing, this pining, this great desire from the bottom of our soul to be fulfilled. We have a longing. We're the negative pole and the electrical current. What we have to do, listen now, is we have to learn how to resist trying to have our desire, our craving, fulfilled by the negative by yielding to false light. God is the true light. We have to resist trying to have this deep need we have, this deep desire, we have to resist trying to fulfill it by yielding, listen now, to false light.
Isn't that how Satan deceived Eve in the Garden of Eden as I said last week? He appealed to her through The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. She looked at it. It looked good to the eyes. She thought it would be good to her taste buds. She desired it. She thought it would fulfill her. Satan appealed to her pride. She thought it would make her wise. So the reason that she ate of the tree, is because she was trying to have desire fulfilled. And when she tried to fulfill her desires by yielding to a false light she ended up falling into darkness and obviously it's affected humankind ever since. The truth is you and I are in the same battle today. We have a deep desire to be fulfilled. What we have to do is practice resisting the forces of darkness and the false light, so that we don't try to fulfill ourselves, listen now, with false light. You see false light is very powerful. False light is so powerful that upon first tasting it, it feels more satisfactory then the true light.
That's why people get hooked on drugs, because the experience they have on drugs feels better to them then being sober. But the after effect of the drugs is a wasted life, families destroyed, children ending up being dysfunctional because the parent was a drug addict or an alcoholic. So the key to understanding how to resist the false light is to be able to have the spiritual discernment to recognize that it is false. Although it might feel better in the beginning, an illicit relationship, an experience on drugs or alcohol, trying to get rich quick. Although at first it seems more fulfilling, it feels more intense, it's like I said last week, it's like a light bulb that gives out a big shout of light right before it goes out. Remember a light bulb right before it goes out, right before it's done it gets out a big bam of light and then it's over. That's what false light does, really powerful at first, but it ends in death.
As I begin to close I want to really bring this home. This concept of resisting false light, applies beloved ones even to the way we release our emotions and our words. A lot of times for example, things happen that we feel angry about. And sometimes the anger feels so strong, it feels so intense, that every part of us is screaming. We just want to release the anger. We just want to let it all out. We want to scream. We want to cuss. We want to take out the anger on the person that made us feel angry and we feel that it's gonna make us feel better. We feel that we've got to release the anger, we got to vent it and if we vent it and release it we're gonna feel better.
And let me ask you this question, after you vent the anger do you feel better? Five minutes later we don't feel better, right? Maybe for a second, maybe for a second when we gave in to the false light that made us feel that we just have to say it, we just have to get it out, we just say the person deserves it, we feel it too strong, it has to be said. We think it's gonna make us feel better by venting it, but you know what beloved? We feel death afterwards. We feel remorse afterwards. The principle of resistance has to do with resisting, beloved, giving our self over to false energy. Energy that's coming to us as false light, energy like anger, energy beloved that makes us want to speak things that shouldn't be spoken, we have to practice resistance. We resist releasing anger. We resist speaking words of anger. We resist speaking words that you might want to say that would make you closely intimate with somebody that you shouldn't be closely intimate with.
You may be dying to say something to someone because you feel so close to that person. You want to be close to that person. But you know what? That person isn't yours, they're not meant to be yours, they're not meant for you to be close with. So you have to resist saying something. You have to resist the energy and we have to remain, beloved, in the Word of God and abiding in Jesus. I found in my own life that through resisting anger my soul was transformed. I'm a very driven person, so when things get in the way of me going where I want to go it frustrates me. I just feel anger inside. And when I was younger I didn't have the discernment to recognize, you have to resist that feeling. You need to resist releasing words of anger. But as God began to teach me and show me that I needed to take responsibility for my anger, that I couldn't blame it on circumstances, that I couldn't blame it on people.
When I started resisting the anger my soul was elevated and transformed. I want to close with this illustration. Consider beloved ones a rocket that takes off from NASA towards the moon. As the rocket takes off it gets closer and closer to the sun. It's going towards the moon, but as it's heading towards the moon it eventually gets closer to the sun. And yet once that rocket gets past the earth's atmosphere, it doesn't see the sun's light anymore. In other words, it can see the sun, but outer space is black.
Have you ever seen a picture of outer space? It's black. It doesn't make sense. Why would a rocket have light on earth and the earth is farther away from the sun, but yet when that rocket gets closer to the sun pass the earth's atmosphere space is just black. Why is that? Closer to the sun, but it's black. It's because the rays of the sun have no resistance in outer space and in order for the rays of the sun to be seen they have to hit something that resists them. When the rays of the sun hit the earth's atmosphere, the atmosphere that surrounds the earth has molecules in it and when the rays of the sun hit those molecules, which are resistance, light then can be seen.
The same thing is true in our lives. God has ordained it to be that for the Holy Spirit to radiate light through our lives we must resist. We must resist the forces of darkness, thereby strengthening the power of the Holy Spirit operating through our life and through resisting beloved, the power of the Holy Spirit is built into our soul and we shine as the lights of Jesus in this world, ascending into His strength, His power, and His victory. Beloved, Jesus said, "He that overcomes will inherit the paradise of God". This world is not meant to fulfill our needs. This world, beloved, is meant to fight in. You and I are soldiers of God. Let's resist this false light and let's overcome in Yeshua's name.