Lighting the Way Back to God
- illuminate the truth about God and man before others?
- Do people see my good works (the fruit of the Spirit) and glorify God?
Here’s another way to put it:
- You’re here to be light, bringing out the God-colors in the world.
- God is not a secret to be kept.
- We’re going public with this, as public as a city on a hill.
- If I make you light-bearers, you don’t think I’m going to hide you under a bucket, do you?
- Now that I’ve put you there on a hilltop, on a light stand—shine!
- Keep open house; be generous with your lives.
- By opening up to others, you’ll prompt people to open up with God,
- this generous Father in heaven.
The Message Eugene H. Peterson
- like a city on a hilltop that cannot be hidden.
- No one lights a lamp and then puts it under a basket.
- Instead, a lamp is placed on a stand, where it gives light to everyone in the house.
- In the same way, let your good deeds shine out for all to see,
- so that everyone will praise your heavenly Father.
- you may reach for a beam of light with the dirtiest hand, but you leave no mark on it.
- A sunbeam may shine into the filthiest home in the slum of a city, but it will not be soiled.
- Merely moral people may be soiled in spite of their integrity,
- but those who are made pure by the Holy Spirit cannot be soiled—they are as light.
Thank God for those men and women...
- who spend their lives in the slums of the earth,
- not as social reformers to lift their brothers and sisters to cleaner sties,
- but as the light of God, revealing a way back to Him.
- God keeps these workers as the light, pure and undefiled.
- Walk as children of light.
- People may dislike it, preferring darkness when their deeds are evil—
- but the light reveals sin and guides to a better way ( John 3:19–21).
Studies in the Sermon on the Mount Oswald Chambers
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