Lighthouse part 3
A lighthouse has a light within, that shines out, in order to keep others safe. That's why I chose that term as my title for this Rant series. Because so many times we get so fixated on "uncovering sin" and "getting the sin out of the camp" that we seem to forget that when people are in trouble... they don't necessarily need punishment. More likely, they need help. And, as always, I'm not saying you should just let anything and everything go. As I tell my son all the time, "This isn't a free for all." If you don't stand for something, you'll fall for anything. And the thing to stand for--to stand ON--is love. That is our foundation. That is the beginning and the end. The alpha and the omega. That's what is important in this life: God and people. Loving God and loving people. Loving God BY loving people. And that, truly, is what happens when we let our light shine. (Notice I didn't say when we shine our light. This isn't about forcing something to happen. This is about letting what's inside come out, naturally, by knowing and believing that its in there.) Because God is light (and there is no darkness in Him at all) and God is love. So light is love. When God said, "Let there be light," He was saying, "Let there be love." He was giving us His only begotten Son. He was giving us His Word (Jesus, love), and making that Word become flesh. Which is charity. Love in action. When we shine the light on people we are not exposing them in order to shame them. There is no condemnation in Christ. If your goal is to make yourself look bigger and better by making someone else look smaller and worse... you really need to reevaluate your goals. And, honestly, how you treat people says a lot more about YOU than it does about them. Trying to control people does not--and will never--work. People are gonna do what they're gonna do regardless. Behavior modification through fear is the best thing religion has. But that's why so many people are turned off by religion. And that's why we must understand that Jesus didn't come to give us religion. He came to give us LIFE, and that more abundantly. He came to give us a RELATIONSHIP with our heavenly Father. To show us who we really are by showing us who God really is. That's what happens when the light shines--it reveals things as they really are. It reveals things to already BE in Divine Order. Jesus taught His disciples to pray, "Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven" (Matthew 6:10). And then, on the cross, the Kingdom came! We are IN the Kingdom, and we ARE the Kingdom. We are now able to experience the days of heaven ON earth. Because we are in heaven. Because heaven is in us. We don't need to pray for things to happen anymore. The move of God that everybody seems to be waiting for happened over 2,000 years ago. What we need now is a revelation of Jesus, so we can know what the move of God was, and what that move of God means. (Interesting that it was BEFORE the cross that Jesus identified us as the light of the world, but I'll have to save that for some other time.) What that move of God means is that we can identify ourselves fully and completely as God's Son. We can stop trying to be someone we're not--and disqualifying ourselves because of our mistakes--and we can BE who we are. We can arise and shine, because the light IS COME!