This Little Light of Mine

In Matthew 5:16, Jesus said, "In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven."

As disciples, we are to live a life worthy of the calling we have. This is not being passive, but rather requires us as true and effective followers of Christ to get into action! Since God is our Creator, he created us for his pleasure and good things. Which in turn means he has a calling for us to perform.

So how do I know my calling? Let’s look at three characters from the Bible and see what they experienced:

Noah - Do you sometimes feel inadequate for the task at hand or unsure whether God really wants you to go where he is leading? That is how Noah must have felt when he got the happy news to build an ark – many miles from any water, and for a flood that was not going to happen for over a hundred years. In a faithless generation, Noah acted in faith – that is he got to work. As disciples, we know that God's ministry should be known for its muscles as much as its mouth.

King David – David is called a man after God’s own heart - pretty cool. However, his early life did not start out that way. David slept with another man’s wife and had the man killed so he could have her. Those actions and the outfall from them followed David his whole life. However, God forgave David and still had good use for him. Point being, you have to put your past behind you. Not easy to do when the past is littered with broken relationships and past hurts. The lesson from David exposes the misconception that once a failure, always a failure. Not in God’s eyes. Like David, you have to ask God to help you put your past behind you so you can go forward. That’s cleaning up your spiritual inventory.

Paul – Paul started out a murderous Pharisee, but was converted to a person that God used greatly. His past could have kept from being effective, but he found forgiveness in the Christ he followed. Paul knew something we sometimes forget when events don’t go so good in our lives - Failure in the past does not mean we’ll never be able to change. Focusing on past failures, however, does guarantee their repetition. But Paul says it right in the letter to the Philippians 3:13-14 (NIV), “Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal ….”
Is there something that prevents you from serving? Ask God to help you clean it up. We work on that in Celebrate Recovery each week. Once you do that, then the question becomes: What is my calling? Trying to figure this out and going forth is not always the easiest thing to do. But that’s what we are expected to do. Each week in our bulletin there is an invitation to complete an Every Member In Ministry booklet and perform service. For Cokesbury UMC – sure, but more importantly for Jesus Christ.

God does not create us with unspiritual abilities; we just have a habit of misusing the abilities he gives us at times in our life. Noah moved forward in faith, David sought God’s heart by putting his past behind him, and Paul strained to move ahead for the goal. No matter what the task, God can and will use you.

In Christ,
Jerry McGuire