Shine!

“That ye may be blameless and harmless, the [daughters] of God, without rebuke, in the midst of a crooked and perverse nation, among whom ye shine as lights in the world….”
—Philippians 2:15

It’s hard to be a shining light. Matthew 5:14 says that we are the light of the world. That’s a pretty high expectation, isn’t it? But God also promises that “[He] is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that worketh in us…” (Ephesians 3:20).

Even though He promises that, it’s still oh-so-easy to forget and go off on our own thing, then get depressed at our lack of love and spiritual awareness of God (sound familiar, anyone?). We get to feeling like God doesn’t really love us after all—and even if He does we aren’t really worth His notice anyway. Friends, I want to tell you, though—that thought is wrong. Just think about this little fact for a moment:

Jesus is real. And He’s still working.

“Candle light” by Alesa Dam is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

Now, I know it sounded strange for me to say that, but I think sometimes we can forget this simple, yet profound fact. We shouldn’t forget—oh, no, of course not! But when we don’t really see Him working in a drastic way in our lives at the moment, it becomes easy to forget. To forget that He actually IS the Son of God, come down to a little earth that He made, confining Himself (as God) to the body of man’s flesh—that He had created! It was—is—an incredible event.

But while we can know all that in our heads, it’s easy—too easy—to forget that in our hearts. So this next week, I challenge you: Practice remembering God’s presence in your life. Take time to remember what He’s done for you in the past. Notice all the things He made—in a single word! And then remember that He took special pains to make you just perfect, not just speaking and forming man in a single word like He did the animals (see Genesis 1:27 and 2:7 on that). No. He took special pains to make you. Then, beyond that, remember that Jesus prayed for you—for you!—here on earth! In John 17:20 Jesus is praying, and He says, “Neither pray I for these alone, but for them also which shall believe on me through their word…” (emphasis mine). That’s you He’s talking about there!

By remembering, your light can shine brighter—because it has good reason to! When we forget why we’re here, what our purpose in life is, and Who Jesus really is, our light dims. But by remembering, our joy—our light for Jesus—grows brighter.

Remember. So that you’ll never forget. Because He calls you “precious” (1 Peter 2:3-5).

Esther