Hi there. my name is Lisa Van den Berg with The Ways of Wisdom and I want to welcome you to God Today. Today we’re going to be talking about Matthew 5:16. It is my favorite verse and it is my favorite verse because God actually calls us to partner with Him in this space.
You know, we can have this view of ourselves as, “Oh, I’m just little and a worm and God’s this all mighty God”, but the truth is that there is this invitation to partnership with Him. That means that we get to give our “yes” to Him and step into the truth of Matthew 5:16. The verse says, “let your light so shine that men see your good works” and the natural result is that they will glorify your Father in Heaven.
Let’s look at the three pieces. The first piece is “let your light so shine.” Each one of us has been uniquely and beautifully made and it is our decision to let our light shine. In the proceeding verses you can see Jesus talking about, you know, why would you want to put your light underneath a bushel? How would you want to hide it? Put it on a lampstand, put it on a hill so that everyone can see, and as we do this, as we give permission for our lights to shine, what will happen is that people will see our good works. So they’ll see what we get to do at work, how we get to live our lives, what our families look like, what our relationships look like, all areas of our lives.They’ll get to see what this looks like as we’re letting our light shine.
The cool thing is that the natural result of our “yes” in letting our light shine and then men seeing what that looks like, the natural result is they get to look at us and go, “Wow, how did you do that? How does that work?” And naturally, God is glorified because we give our ‘yes’, we let everything that’s in us be seen by the world. And because it’s not us doing it alone, but this beautiful partnership with God, He gets to be glorified. And that gets to look like, “Wow, I try to do then life, but it doesn’t really work. How do you do it?” Then we get to say, ”Well, let me introduce you to Him. His name is Jesus. I get to live life with Him and do life this way.”
This is the beauty of our “yes” to God and saying “yes”, letting our light shine, not playing small and wormy and humble, but actually standing up and going, “God made me for a reason. God made me to be this way and I’m going to fully say yes to what He created me to do so that everyone can see what that looks like as a partner with God.” God will naturally get the glory from it. This is what I encourage you in today, is to fully step into this “yes’ and let everything that God’s doing in your life be seen.
Let’s pray. Thank you so much, Lord, for the opportunity to be able to say “yes” to You, to say “take all of what it is that you’ve made me to be” to partner with You today. Holy Spirit, to do today with You, so that everything we do can receive and the natural result will be that You are glorified. What an amazing way to say “yes” to You, partner with You, and to see everything You want done. Come to pass in my life today in Jesus’ name, amen.