The Light of Love part 3
When the light shines you can see clearly. And, just for the record, the light always defeats the dark. Look at Psalm 68:1, "Let God arise, let his enemies be scattered..." And look at 1 John 1:5 (NLT, "This is the message we heard from Jesus and now declare to you: God is light, and there is no darkness in him at all." That's an important concept to me. Think about it like this: When you're in a dark room, and you turn the light on, you aren't in a dark room anymore. When God arises, His enemies are scattered. When the light shines, the darkness flees. Here's the key though: God is light... and God is love. Light is love. The light of the world is the love of the world. And, by the way, according to John 1:4 (NLT), "The Word gave life to everything that was created, and his life brought light to everyone." Jesus' life is the light of men. Light... life... love. All the same thing. So when we're talking about the light shining, it is God's love in our lives. When God said, "Let there be light," He was introducing Jesus to a dark and void situation. When God arises... love manifests. And that, to me, is the old Abraham Lincoln principle of destroying your enemies by making them your friends. And you do that by shining the light on them. By showing them who God is... by loving them. Heaping fiery coals onto their heads, not to burn them but to melt their hearts. When you get past the place of an eye for an eye, past the place of wanting "justice" for what has happened to you, and you get to the place where you just want everything to be good for everybody... that's maturity. That's when you can really experience this life. And, since to live is to love and to love is to live, we experience this life by giving it away. Love is giving. You can give without loving, but you can't love without giving. So when you focus on living life, you can't be self-centered. You have to be Christ-centered. Which means being people-centered. Giving everything you have and everything you are. Laying your life down for your friends. Shining your light. Don't hoard it. Don't hide it under a bushel. Let it shine! Let what's inside come out. And the only real way to do that is by knowing and believing that it's in there. Knowing that you have something to give. And knowing that it is worth giving. Filling yourself to overflowing with what God has already filled you with. We love because He first loved us. We give because He gave us something to give. We are blessed to be a blessing. Living out of our abundance is all about understanding that LOVE is what makes the abundant life abundant. Receiving and releasing the love of God. Letting Him shine on us, and then shining on each other. When the light shines, the darkness flees and we can see clearly. We can BE who we are because we can see who we are. What you see is what you be. What you magnify in your life is what will manifest in your life. What you feed is what will grow. So it's important that we walk in the light. That we live in the light. That we let God's Word--which is Jesus, which is love--be a lamp unto our feet and a light unto our path. That's how this life works, in a real, practical way. We let God love us (shine His light on us) and we love Him back by loving each other (shining His light of love onto everything and everybody we come into contact with). God is light, and there is no darkness in Him at all. We are that same light, and that means there is no darkness in US at all either! So let your light shine among men. Let what's inside come out by knowing and believing that it's in there! Let your love shine!