This little light of mine …

Jesus said to His disciples in Matthew 5:16, “In the same way, let your good deeds shine out for all to see, so that everyone will praise your heavenly Father.”

That’s a concept we sometimes wrestle with.

Kind of like the story of a little girl who came home from Sunday School right after studying this verse. She repeated the verse to her mother and asked what it meant.

“Well,” her mother answered, “it means when you are good and kind and thoughtful and obedient, you are letting Christ’s light shine in your life before all who knew you.”

The very next Sunday, while in Sunday School, the little girl got into an argument with another child and created such an uproar the teacher sent for her mother to come and calm her down.

The mother was concerned when she got to the classroom and asked her daughter, “Sweetie, don’t you remember about letting your light shine for the Lord with others?”

The girl blurted out in response, “Mom, I have blowed myself out!”

Sometimes we make a mess of things and “blow ourselves out.” Sometimes, we let ourselves stay “blown out,” making the darkness around us all the darker. The important thing is to allow the Lord to re-ignite His light within us. His light never goes out, and He wants us to be a consistent point of light in this dark world.

“This is the message we heard from Jesus and now declare to you: God is light, and there is no darkness in him at all. So we are lying if we say we have fellowship with God but go on living in spiritual darkness; we are not practicing the truth. But if we are living in the light, then we have fellowship with each other, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, cleanses us from all sin,” 1 John 1:5-7.

Have you allowed sin to put a damper on the light of Christ shining through you? You can confess and repent of those sins and let Christ refresh you in your fellowship with the Father.

Are you being a consistent point of light in the dark world around you? What do you need to do to be more consistent in your fellowship with God so that His light shines more steadily from your life?

Scotty