ESOCS Devotional 22 July 2025 – Choose Light and Shun Darkness
MEMORY VERSE: “And rend your heart, and not your garments, and turn unto the Lord your God: for He is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness, and repenteth Him of the evil.” Joel 2:13 KJV.
TEXT: JOEL 2:1-20
The word of the Lord that came to Joel the son of Pethuel.
2 Hear this, you elders,
And give ear, all you inhabitants of the land!
Has anything like this happened in your days,
Or even in the days of your fathers?
3 Tell your children about it,
Let your children tell their children,
And their children another generation.
4 What the chewing locust left, the swarming locust has eaten;
What the swarming locust left, the crawling locust has eaten;
And what the crawling locust left, the consuming locust has eaten.
5 Awake, you drunkards, and weep;
And wail, all you drinkers of wine,
Because of the new wine,
For it has been cut off from your mouth.
6 For a nation has come up against My land,
Strong, and without number;
His teeth are the teeth of a lion,
And he has the fangs of a fierce lion.
7 He has laid waste My vine,
And [c]ruined My fig tree;
He has stripped it bare and thrown it away;
Its branches are made white.
8 Lament like a virgin girded with sackcloth
For the husband of her youth.
9 The grain offering and the drink offering
Have been cut off from the house of the Lord;
The priests mourn, who minister to the Lord.
10 The field is wasted,
The land mourns;
For the grain is ruined,
The new wine is dried up,
The oil fails.
11 Be ashamed, you farmers,
Wail, you vinedressers,
For the wheat and the barley;
Because the harvest of the field has perished.
12 The vine has dried up,
And the fig tree has withered;
The pomegranate tree,
The palm tree also,
And the apple tree—
All the trees of the field are withered;
Surely joy has withered away from the sons of men.
13 Gird yourselves and lament, you priests;
Wail, you who minister before the altar;
Come, lie all night in sackcloth,
You who minister to my God;
For the grain offering and the drink offering
Are withheld from the house of your God.
14 Consecrate a fast,
Call a sacred assembly;
Gather the elders
And all the inhabitants of the land
Into the house of the Lord your God,
And cry out to the Lord.
15 Alas for the day!
For the day of the Lord is at hand;
It shall come as destruction from the Almighty.
16 Is not the food cut off before our eyes,
Joy and gladness from the house of our God?
17 The seed shrivels under the clods,
Storehouses are in shambles;
Barns are broken down,
For the grain has withered.
18 How the animals groan!
The herds of cattle are restless,
Because they have no pasture;
Even the flocks of sheep suffer punishment.
19 O Lord, to You I cry out;
For fire has devoured the open pastures,
And a flame has burned all the trees of the field.
20 The beasts of the field also cry out to You,
For the water brooks are dried up,
And fire has devoured the open pastures.
Read Other ESOCS Devotional Here
In the beginning, when God created the world, the earth was without form and empty. The raging ocean that covered everywhere was engulfed in total darkness, and the Spirit of God moved over the water. Then God commanded, and light appeared and overthrew darkness (Genesis 1:1-3).
Understandably, God is light, and one of His first acts in creation was to dispel darkness. Logically, darkness became a symbol of sin and evil. It follows therefore that living in sin is walking in darkness. As a matter of fact, any one controlled by sin is under the influence of the powers of darkness (1 John 1:7).
Nonetheless, Christ came as the light of the world, to release people from darkness, and whoever follows Him shall not walk in darkness (John 8:12). Moreover, those who believe in Him must put away the deeds of darkness, in order to become lights in this dark world of sin and sorrow. Those who do not believe in the Son of God, will face the judgment day as a day of darkness and gloom. Worse still, such will face hell itself as the ultimate darkness.
Heaven, on the other hand, is the place where God will replace the sun as our everlasting light (Isaiah 60:20); and where the Lamb of God is the lamp that lights the New Jerusalem (Revelation 21:23). Therefore, to escape God’s judgment, Joel in our text instructs all people to repent and return to the Lord. He called for a day of pertinence and fasting, believing that the anger of the Lord would be averted. More so, by encouraging repentance rather than dwelling in sin, Joel showed more interest in solution than problems. This should be the goal of all believers; to return sinners to God – encouraging sinners to choose light and shun darkness.
By reason of pertinent repentance, and God turning from His wrath, believers would realize that their God is the Lord of grace and mercy. This would bring about the requisite spiritual renewal for everyone through the Spirit of Christ.
CHALLENGES
- Whoever claims to have fellowship with Christ but walks in darkness is a hypocrite. Do you agree?
PRAYER POINT
- Lord Jesus, I prefer to walk in the light of your word: please help me.
FRTHER READING: Joel 2:21-31; Mark 1:1-18; Acts 28:13-30
ESOCS Devotional 22 July 2025
