Let Your Light So Shine

As we prepare to celebrate one of Christianity’s high holy days, I want to talk about what it really means to let our light shine.

As one who was born and raised a Christian, I always had a problem with evangelism. Not the concept itself – you know, sharing good news that has so profoundly impacted your life you can’t help but tell others.

My problem was with the approach: “If you were to die today, where would you spend eternity? Do you know with certainty that you would go to Heaven?”

Yikes!

That whole approach is fear-based and, after years of study and introspection, I have decided that fear is the antithesis of what Jesus Christ is about.

Now that’s good news! (No pun intended.)

The bad news is I didn’t get an accurate view of the God I had served all my life from the sources that introduced me to Him – the church.

And notice I said the God I served and not the God I loved.

For my fundamentalist brothers and sisters, I thought the whole premise of salvation through Jesus Christ is that I can now have an intimate, one-on-one relationship with God out of love and choice as opposed to rules and obligation?

In short, it’s an inside job and that frees us to love Him, not be petrified of Him.

Jesus’ sacrifice on Calvary’s Cross – what this weekend is all about - also frees us from the worry and guilt, burden of doing something wrong and having to jump through hoops to be forgiven should you make the occasional faux pas so common among us humans.

Now, for my fire-baptized brothers and sisters in Christ, I am in no way saying we all have license to do whatever whenever and however. But why are those of us in the church so afraid to let people work out their own salvation? (Phil 1:2) Why do we have to control people’s lives and thoughts and clothes and music…you get my point.

That’s a huge turn off to many, if not most, which is why so many are seeking spiritual answers and practical applications – the Truth - from other sources.

I’m one of them.

And I was a dyed-in-the-wool church girl: saved; sanctified; filled‑with‑the‑Holy‑Ghost; runnin’‑on‑to‑see‑what‑the‑end’s‑gon’‑be girl.

But the way I was trying to relate to God was literally killing me.

So I began to search. Ask questions. Seek so I could find. Knock so the door could be opened.

And what I found is God had it right all along but had been woefully misrepresented.

He / She is a God of love and abundance and boundaries and wants us to live so well on earth that we can’t wait to see what’s in store in the hereafter (if that’s your dogma of choice). Self-help experts, business experts, metaphysicians, darn near everybody knows and is telling us that the essence of life is in the Spirit and that the way to success is through acknowledging, accepting, defining, and incorporating God into your heart and every day life.

So knowing, serving, and loving God is about far more than what happens to me when I die. But I can’t love and embrace a God as my Daddy, a Jesus as my brother, and a Holy Spirit as my live-in helper if all I know of Him is He’s either gonna put me with the sheep or the goats.

So as I prepare to celebrate the renewal that Resurrection symbolizes, here’s my Two Cents:

I’ve decided that knowing Jesus is about letting his light so shine through me, ever brightening, so that men and women will irresistibly and inexplicably be drawn to me and I can tell them the Good News.

Because, after all, remember – they’re supposed to know we’re Christians by our love.