The Only Way Out

For twenty years, Clint was certain God didn’t exist. Then he hit a place so deep and so dark that only one thing could reach him—the one thing he’d spent his whole life rejecting.

But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light.
1 Peter 2:9 NIV

Clint didn’t drift from God. He rejected Him—deliberately, for more than twenty years. He was a devout atheist, and the world was the only thing he believed in. He held no quiet longing, no faint spiritual pull. Just certainty that there was nothing beyond what he could see.

Until the hole got too deep.

That’s how Clint describes it—a hole he dug himself, so deep that no human ladder could reach the bottom. And at the bottom, he found the love of Jesus. It was rescue, plain and sudden, from the only One who could get that far down.

Peter wrote to people who understood exactly this kind of before-and-after. Many had lived outside God’s covenant, outside the promises, outside the Light entirely. And yet Peter tells them they are chosen, a royal priesthood, God’s special possession, called out of darkness into wonderful light.

God reached into the darkness and pulled you out.

Clint is a couple of years in now—still a new believer by his own description, learning and growing. But he knows this with more certainty than anything else he’s ever held: God is real, and God is sure.

If you’ve spent years wondering if there’s more—or years convinced there isn’t—Clint’s story is a direct answer. The longing you can’t explain, the emptiness that the world keeps promising to fill and never quite does, the sense that something is missing even when everything looks fine on the outside: that is the darkness 1 Peter 2:9 is talking about. And the light it describes is a person. It is Jesus, who went looking for Clint at the bottom of a hole the rest of the world couldn’t find—and who is looking for you in exactly the same way.

Purpose doesn’t begin with having the right background or the right amount of faith. It begins the moment God calls your name out of the dark. If you’re not sure He’s called yours yet, consider the fact that you’re still looking is evidence He’s already looking for you.

Today’s One Thing
Read 1 Peter 2:9 slowly and replace the plural with the singular: “I am chosen. I am part of a royal priesthood. I am God’s special possession, called out of darkness into His wonderful light.” Say it out loud. Let what God calls you be louder today than what you’ve called yourself.

Go Deeper

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