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Shining Like Stars

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“You are the light of the world. A city on a hill cannot be hidden. Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house.”  Matthew 5:14-15

Jesus called you and me the light of the world. It only makes sense, really, since He is the “the true light that gives light to every man” (John 1:9) and now He dwells within us. As His body, saved and redeemed by His blood, He asks us to shine His light. And according to Matthew 5, that light should never remain hidden. Instead, it should light up the sky like a city on a hill.

Do you shine, dear one? Are you giving Jesus what He asked for?

I can’t help thinking of the song I used to sing as a little girl in Sunday school. We’d proudly hold up our hands with fingers pointing toward the heavens and proclaim, “This little light of mine, I’m going to let it shine.”

But it didn’t shine. I never let it out.

We often make the mistake of trying to act like Jesus. We think we shine His light by imitating what He would do. Only we don’t have the strength to act like Him all the time, so that inner “self” we try to hide through our good behavior reveals itself more often than we’d like it to. And the watching world looks at our version of Christianity and calls it hypocrisy.

Can we really blame them?

You and I aren’t supposed to act like light, dear one. Jesus intends for us to become light.

God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

2 Corinthians 5:21

… God is light; in him there is no darkness at all. 1 John 1:5

Jesus carried the burden of our sin to the cross so that we could become His righteousness. He gave it to us the moment we put our faith in Him and received His Spirit to dwell within us. Now we need to let Him out. We need to yield to the power of His Spirit within us and let Him take over.

You see, beloved, Jesus shines through a transformed heart.

Have you offered Him your heart to mold and change, dear one? Have you told Him you’re willing to let go of your bitterness? Have you invited Him to circumcise your heart to love with His selfless love?

It’s time we stopped pretending and let Jesus set us ablaze with His light!

Times are changing. Evil seems to show itself in increasing measure. Scripture foretells of astonishing things to come—some of them terrible, some wondrous—but all of them remain certain.

Yet in Christ, we have glorious hope!

But at that time your people—everyone whose name is found written in the book—will be delivered. Multitudes who sleep in the dust of the earth will awake: some to everlasting life, others to shame and everlasting contempt. Those who are wise will shine like the brightness of the heavens, and those who lead many to righteousness, like the stars for ever and ever. Daniel 12:1-3

When will these things be fulfilled? God made this astonishing announcement to the prophet Daniel centuries ago.

… When the power of the holy people has been finally broken, all these things will be completed.” Daniel 12:7

When the power of the holy people has finally been broken? What on earth does that mean?

Consider for a moment the power struggle that rages within you. Each day you must choose whether to bow to your own self-will, or to bow to the leadership of the Spirit. More often than not, your own desires win the battle, quenching the Spirit’s power.

Yet in the last days, the power of the Spirit will rise victorious. Christ’s own will finally learn to overcome and claim the victory Jesus purchased for them through the cross. As in the days following the church’s conception, believers will choose to abandon self-will, leaving its power broken. Christ’s church will rise, yielding to His Spirit in glorious surrender, uniting in the love and unity glimpsed at the birth of the church and restored in time for the return of the King.

Beloved, you and I can hasten His return.

You ought to live holy and godly lives as you look forward to the day of God and speed its coming. 2 Peter 3:11-12

As we choose to surrender to the work of the Spirit in our lives, allowing Christ to sanctify our hearts and renew our minds with His purpose, we move us toward the fulfillment of God’s great plan of redemption.

Like the Disciples who first answered Jesus’ call and paved the way for us, will you choose to live radically for Jesus, abandoning all else to the rise of His glory? I pray that you will, beloved,

. . . so that you may become blameless and pure, children of God without fault in a crooked and depraved generation, in which you shine like stars in the universe. Philippians 2:15

Then our eyes will finally gaze upon our Lord and King without a veil. Glory rises, dear one. Will you allow Christ to release it through you?

 

Empowered in the Wilderness

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Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, left the Jordan and was led by the Spirit into the wilderness. Luke 4:1 NIV

I imagine the wilderness isn’t high on your list of places you’d like to visit. It certainly doesn’t top my list. Give me oceans, lakes, or mountains with bubbling streams any day.

Yep. I’m a water girl. Something about the way the light glistens atop it stirs my soul. I love its sound, the feel of it on my skin, even the coolness in the air as you get closer to it. Water refreshes in so many ways—which makes the wilderness pretty unappealing.

So I find it surprising that the very first place the Holy Spirit led Jesus after His baptism was the desert.

Does it surprise you too? I mean, Scripture teaches that we’re supposed to follow the Spirit to abundant life. So why would He lead Jesus straight into the desert?

Verse 2 tells us what happened there.

 Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, left the Jordan and was led by the Spirit into the wilderness, where for forty days he was tempted by the devil. He ate nothing during those days, and at the end of them he was hungry. Luke 4:1-2

I don’t know about you, but that doesn’t sound like a whole lot of fun to me. The wilderness offered Jesus confrontation from the evil one and an empty belly. Conditions like that tend to defeat most of us. We wallow in our misery and assume that God has abandoned us.

But that’s not what happened to Jesus. Verse 14 describes Jesus at the end of His wilderness adventure:

 Jesus returned to Galilee in the power of the Spirit, and news about him spread through the whole countryside.

Did you catch it, dear one? Jesus entered the wilderness under the leadership of the Holy Spirit, and He left that wilderness empowered by the Spirit. Notice the Spirit never left Him. But what happened in the wilderness moved Jesus from simply following the Spirit to operating in His power.

Could it be that our own treks into the desert hold that very same purpose? What if our testing in the wilderness holds the key to igniting the power of the Spirit within us?

Listen, dear one. God wastes nothing. Nor does He allow or ordain anything for our lives that He can’t bring great good from. Jesus needed His wilderness experience to fulfill His purpose. If He didn’t, God never would’ve led Him there.

You and I spend our lives trying to avoid the desert. We want to head straight into our Promised Land that flows with milk and honey, endless provision, and rest. But we fail to realize that we’ll never make it into our Promised Land without traveling through the desert. God uses the wilderness to strengthen us in His Spirit so that we can defeat the enemy camping out on our inheritance. We will need to conquer the enemy to take our ground.

So what must you and I do to become empowered in the wilderness instead of defeated by it? We do what Jesus did. We must choose to stand on truth when faced with the enemy’s temptations.

When Satan challenged Jesus to take the easy way out and turn a stone into bread to end His hunger, Jesus replied, “It is written: Man does not live on bread alone” (Luke 4:4).

Over and over, each time Satan tempted Him, Jesus quoted Scripture to refute him.

Beloved, you and I are not strong enough to defeat the enemy on our own. But when we choose to challenge him with God’s truth and stand on His Word, something beautiful happens. The Spirit within us perks up. He rises within us to give us the strength we need to remain standing.

Unfortunately most of us don’t exit our wilderness experiences victoriously. When the Spirit leads us into the desert, instead of drawing on His strength to stand against the enemy’s fiery darts, we succumb to them. We allow the enemy to govern our thinking instead of standing on truth. We feel defeated and remain that way because we haven’t ignited the Spirit within us by choosing to claim and believe the truth of God’s Word.

Many of us even prolong our stays in the wilderness by allowing the enemy’s lies to control our thoughts.

What if you and I learned to do what Jesus did? What if we chose to respond differently in the wilderness? What if we determined to stand on Truth instead of bowing to the enemy’s lies?

I think we’d find what Jesus found. Each time we exercise faith by standing on truth when we don’t feel like it, the Spirit will equip us in our need. We will become stronger and stronger in Him. And when it’s time to exit the wilderness and head toward our destiny, we won’t just follow the Spirit. We’ll go in the power of the Spirit. And we’ll be equipped to claim our ground.

Kind of sheds new light on James 1:2-4, doesn’t it?

 Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance.  Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.

That’s the point of the wilderness, beloved. God doesn’t want you leaving any of your blessings behind.