Don’t Give Up Your Shine…
Matthew 5:13-16 (Amplified Bible)
13You are the salt of the earth, but if salt has lost its taste (its strength, its quality), how can its saltness be restored? It is not good for anything any longer but to be thrown out and trodden underfoot by men. 14You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden. 15Nor do men light a lamp and put it under a peck measure, but on a lampstand, and it gives light to all in the house. 16Let your light so shine before men that they may see your moral excellence and your praiseworthy, noble, and good deeds and recognize and honor and praise and glorify your Father Who is in heaven.
I use to go to a young lady to get my hair braided and she was always saying “she was not going to let people take her shine.” I use to chuckle not because of what she was saying but how she was saying it. She said it with such conviction and determination. I was not sure I fully understood what she meant, until one day I was sitting with her talking and she was relaying a story where someone close to her was trying to bring her down, make her feel bad, take her upbeat attitude and make her spin into a place of hurt and confusion, a place where she felt betrayal and alone. But the beauty of it was that she refused to give into the feelings that were trying to be inflicted upon her. She refused to let someone’s behavior impact her ability to be in a good mood, to have a good time, to overlook the obvious pursuits to bring her down and to make her lose her shine!
As I prayed this afternoon after four consecutive conversations, e-mails and text messages expressing personal distress, at the hands of others. I heard the words “don’t give up your shine; don’t give up the light that shines within that I placed there.” All too often we let things that happen, and people that we are close to or just people we encounter, take the light of God in us and diminish it or even in some cases extinguish it. We allow things said and done by others to take us from our God given assignments and bring us into a place of distraction, a place where we become dull and we look just like everybody else. There should be tenacity within us that no matter what, I am determined to do the will of my Father, who sent me His way; that I am going to be the messenger of God’s light because He placed it in me. When we let God control our deeds, our comings and our going, our assignments and the steps we take, we allow the light of His love and purpose ultimately to guide us, our deeds and reactions, so even when people around us treat us poorly we can still lift up our heads and carry on, knowing who we are and who we belong to. Our purpose is founded in Christ and so it becomes His battle to fight, His wrong to right. We just have determine within ourselves to give our whole selves over to God and do what He calls us to do so that He gets the Glory. We have to decide that our light will not be given over or extinguished by anyone no matter who they are.
Today whatever it is that God desires of you, wherever He wants you to go, whoever He wants you to bless or help, encourage or uplift, intercede for, sow into or lead to Him, do it, with the brightness of His light in you. No matter who tries to talk you out of God’s will, no matter who treats you badly because they lack the wisdom to understand “the God in You,” get your shine on! Do Him, with the brightness, swagger, and shine that only God can provide….
No comments:
Post a Comment