Shine Your Light Brightly For All To See

Jesus once said to a large group of people gathered on a mountainside that they were the light of the world.

Jesus’s words were revolutionary back then because he didn’t tell them that the clergy or an organized religious system was the light of the world, but that they were! A bunch of ordinary farmers, peasants, and day laborers.

I think this is just as revolutionary today too.

We have a bright light to shine because the light of Christ is shinning brightly within all of us. While this sounds exciting, it is also…very abstract. So when I think about how we can shine our lights brightly in the world in a tangible way, there are two things that come to mind.

Shining light starts with listening. There are so many opportunities in a day where we can show great love to others by simply giving them the grace of a listening ear. Being fully present in the moment and investing in someone else’s life through listening is a powerful way to shine light. Best of all, this is something that all of us can do if we choose it.

The other is to focus on encouragement. Our words have a tremendous amount of power. By using them to build others up and encourage them in their lives, we shine God’s light of love to others who might need it the most. Every single person is almost always going through really complicated and difficult situations in life, so use your words and your light to encourage them in the things that they are doing well instead of being critical or sarcastic. The default setting of our culture is to be negative and to tear others down, shine light by building others up with love.

At Hope Fellowship, we are a community of ordinary folks following God into this way of life together. We often have conversations on Sunday morning about how we can shine our light more brightly in our everyday lives.

Come join us at 10am any Sunday morning at Muddy Creek .