Shine Your Light 🔦

1 John 1:5-7, 1 Peter 2:9

Watch on YouTube

So imagine you are out in the woods, had a campfire with your friends, and you are getting ready to head back now to your cabin or your camper, and you have a flashlight and you get it out. You turn it on, but then you put it in the backpack. You put it away. Your friends, they didn’t think to bring a flashlight. You’re the only one who has one. And you put your flashlight in your bag and then proceed to walk back, complaining the whole time about why, why did nobody else bring a flashlight? Man, it’s so dark here. More people should be using flashlights today. That wouldn’t make any sense. If you did that, would it? That would be really strange.

And Jesus says something similar in Matthew chapter five. He says, you are the light of the world. (Matthew 5:15) And then he talks about how nobody lights a lamp and then puts it under a basket. Like that would not make any sense. So then here’s my question for you in this world today, where there’s a lot of darkness, what are you doing with your light? Are you shining it into the darkness or have you buried it? It’s really easy for us to just complain about the darkness of this world to say, man, look, you know, churches are shrinking. There’s less people who are honoring God. There’s things going on in our world and our nation that seem to be against God. And it’s just easy for us to just complain about the darkness. But we have a light that shines into that darkness. So let’s embrace it.

How do we do that? Well, first of all. First John chapter one says this. It says

This is the message we heard from him and proclaim to you: God is light. In him there is no darkness at all. If we say we have fellowship with him but still walk in darkness, we are lying and do not put the truth into practice. But if we walk in the light, just as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus Christ, his Son, cleanses us from all sin. (1 John 1:5-7)

So how do we embrace the light and live in the light? It starts by confessing our sins. Bring our sins out into the open. Lay them before the cross of Jesus. Be honest with the fact that sometimes we get caught up in the darkness of this world, and we get caught up complaining about that and missing what he’s done. Lay that before the cross. Be assured that you are forgiven, that you are right with him. And then, as someone who is forgiven, who has been brought out into the light, you get to now shine that light to a world around you that so desperately needs it. In first Peter two nine says,

But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, the people who are God’s own possession, so that you may proclaim the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. (1 Peter 2:9)

You get to declare the praises of God in this world. You get to tell the world about a God who created them, who designed them, a God who, even though we have sinned against him and turned away from him, who has pursued us relentlessly, you get to tell them about a Savior, Jesus, who came into this world to take our sin on himself, to lay down and to die in the cross and to rise again. You get to tell them about a God who gives us hope beyond this world, and a God who meets us in every challenge in this world. You get to proclaim the praises of him. You get to shine that light, shine that light today.