David looks at the darkness around him and then lifts his eyes to the God who gives both life and light. He knows that real vitality does not come from comfort, success, or human strength, but from the Lord Himself. In this verse he celebrates a God who is not only the source of life, but the One by whose light everything else finally makes sense. When we slow down and sit with his words, they invite us to stop sipping from shallow puddles and come drink from the One true source.

The Fountain That Never Runs Dry

Psalm 36:9 says, “For with You is the fountain of life; in Your light we see light.” God is not a dry well we visit occasionally; He is a living fountain—constant, pure, and overflowing. Our souls were never designed to run on entertainment, affirmation, or achievement. They can only run on God Himself. Jesus picks up this same image when He cries out, “If anyone is thirsty, let him come to Me and drink. Whoever believes in Me, as the Scripture has said: ‘Streams of living water will flow from within him.’” (John 7:37–38). He is not offering religious garnish; He is offering life at the deepest level.

Yet many of us try everything else first. We scroll, we plan, we work, we compare, hoping that one more thing will finally satisfy. But the more we drink from broken cisterns, the thirstier we become. Only when we admit our dryness and come to Christ in repentance and faith do we find what our hearts have been secretly longing for. “In Him was life, and that life was the light of men.” (John 1:4). Real life is not found in adding more to your schedule; it is found in drawing nearer to the fountain.

Seeing Everything in His Light

David not only says that life is with God; he says that “in Your light we see light.” God’s light is not merely a spotlight that shows us where to walk; it’s the very lens through which reality finally comes into focus. Left to ourselves, we misread what success is, what love is, what freedom is. We call darkness light and light darkness. But “this is the message we have heard from Him and announce to you: God is light, and in Him there is no darkness at all.” (1 John 1:5). When His light breaks in, everything else is exposed for what it really is.

This also means we cannot insist on clinging to our own definitions while asking for His blessing. To walk in His light is to let His Word correct our instincts, desires, and opinions. “Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path.” (Psalm 119:105). As we submit to Scripture, the Spirit reshapes how we see sin, holiness, marriage, money, time, and eternity. God’s commands stop feeling like prison bars and start looking like guardrails on a narrow mountain road—firm, loving boundaries that keep us from plunging into the dark.

Living as Children of the Light

If God is our fountain and our light, then we cannot stay on the sidelines as spectators. We are called to actually walk in what we see. “But if we walk in the light as He is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus His Son cleanses us from all sin.” (1 John 1:7). Walking in the light is not perfection; it is honesty and surrender. It means dragging our secrets into His presence, trusting that the blood of Christ is enough, and letting Him reorder our steps day by day.

This changes how we move through a dark world. We don’t hide, blend in, or dim down to avoid standing out. We belong to the One who said, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows Me will never walk in the darkness, but will have the light of life.” (John 8:12). His light in us will sometimes expose what others want to keep hidden, but it will also offer hope where there was only despair. To live as children of the light is to let His life and truth flow through us—into our homes, our workplaces, our conversations—so that thirsty, stumbling people might be drawn to the same fountain we’ve found.

Lord, thank You for being my fountain of life and my light. Today, help me turn from every broken cistern and walk boldly in Your light, so that others may see You and be drawn to drink.

The evangelical Church today is in the awkward position of being wrong while it is right, and a little preposition makes the difference. One place where we are wrong while we are right is in the relative stress we lay upon the prepositions to and from when they follow the word saved. For a long generation we have been holding the letter of truth while at the same time we have been moving away from it in spirit because we have been preoccupied with what we are saved from rather than what we have been saved to. The right relative importance of the two concepts is set forth by Paul in his first epistle to the Thessalonians: "Ye turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God; and to wait for his Son from heaven" (1 Thessalonians 1:9-10). The Christian is saved from his past sins. With these he simply has nothing more to do; they are among the things to be forgotten as the night is forgotten at the dawning of the day. He is also saved from the wrath to come. With this also he has nothing to do. It exists, but not for him. Sin and wrath have a cause-and-effect relationship, and because for the Christian sin is canceled wrath is canceled also. The from's of the Christian life concern negatives, and to be engrossed in them is to live in a state of negation. Yet that is where many earnest believers live most of the time.

Is the Spirit of the Lord straitened? - Micah 2:7

And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit. - Acts 2:4

WHAT did the Pentecost declare and hold forth for the faith of the Church? I need not dwell at any length upon this thought. The facts are familiar to you, and the inferences drawn from them are commonplace and known to us all. But let me just enumerate them as briefly as may be. " Suddenly there came a sound, as of the rushing of a mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they were sitting." And there came " cloven tongues as of fire, and it sat upon each of them; and they were all filled with the Holy Ghost." What lay in that? First, the promise of a Divine Spirit whose symbols express some, at all events, of the characteristics and wonderfulness of His work. The "rushing of a mighty wind " spoke of a power which varied in its manifestations from the gentlest breath that scarce moves the leaves on the summer trees to the wildest blast that casts down all which stands in its way. The natural symbolism of the wind, the least material to the popular apprehension of all material forces, and of which the connection with the immaterial part of a man’s personality has been expressed in all languages, point to a Divine, to an immaterial, to a mighty, to a life-giving power which is free to blow whither it listeth, and of which men can mark the effects, though they are all ignorant of the force itself. The twin symbol, the fiery tongues which parted and sat upon each of them, speak in like manner of the Divine influences, not as destructive, but full of quick rejoicing energy and life, the power to transform and to purify. Whither soever the fire comes, it changes all things into its own substance. Whither soever the fire comes, there the ruddy spires shoot upwards towards the heavens. Whither soever the fire comes, there all bonds and fetters are melted and consumed. And so this fire transforms, purifies, ennobles, quickens, sets free; and where the fiery spirit is, there is energy, swift life, rejoicing activity, transforming and transmuting power which changes the recipient of the flame into flame himself.

In the fact of Pentecost there is the promise of a Divine Spirit which is to influence all the moral side of humanity. This is the great and glorious distinction between the Christian doctrine of inspiration and all others which have, in heathen lands, partially reached similar conceptions, that the Gospel of Jesus Christ has laid emphasis upon the Holy Spirit, and has declared that holiness of heart is the touchstone and test of all claims of Divine inspiration. Gifts are much, graces are more; an inspiration which makes wise is to be coveted, an inspiration which makes good is transcendentally better. And there we find the safeguard against all the fanaticism’s which have sometimes invaded the Christian Church, that the Spirit which dwells in men, and makes them free from the obligations of outward law and cold morality, is a Spirit that works a deeper holiness than law dreamed, and a more spontaneous and glad conformity to all things that are fair and good than any legislation and outward commandment can ever enforce.