Ever been aboard a flight during the night? If there isn't any cloud cover, you can
easily tell when you are flying over a city or open land. Why?
Because of the lights.
Ever been in a movie theater and someone starts messing with
their cellphone? How do you know they
are doing that? Because the light from
their phone in the darkened room quickly alerts you to the fact.
Light has a way of easily calling attention to itself. Jesus has told us that we are the light of
the world, a city that is set on the hill and cannot be hidden and therefore we
are to let our lights shine (Matthew 5:14-16).
Ever notice how light doesn't really fit in well with
darkness? If it did, it really wouldn't
be light anymore or at least not a very good light. You wouldn't want to use a flashlight that
hardly produced light would you? Or
watch a movie where you couldn't make out what was happening on the screen
because of the lack of light? Yet, we as
Christians, who are called lights of the world (and the world is a darkened
place), somehow feel the need to try and "fit in" and be like the
world so the world will come to Christ.
However, we cannot "fit in" if we are shining lights because
our light exposes darkness and the world does not like that (John 3:19).
So do not worry about being mocked for your faith or
ridiculed or judged. Jesus already
promised it would happen (John 15:18-25 (and many other places). Live out your faith and let the light shine
and don't spend your time worrying how you can fit it so the "cool
kids" will like you and want to hang around you. Love people like Jesus did, serve them like
He did, but also know the world will hate you even in doing that because they
hated him.
I will leave you with this 90 second clip that speaks
perfectly to this thought: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ZZqUonNIFs
Original blog posted on refugesanger.wordpress.com as this blog post comes from further thoughts of the sermon on
John 15:12-27 titled “The Great Juxtaposition Paradox” which can be found by visiting http://www.refugesanger.com/teachings. Sermons I have taught are also on iTunes - search "Refuge
Sanger" or "Pastor Mike Massey" to find our messages.
