Continuing my thoughts from last week on light, let’s move on to the next stage of being the light of the world. I wrote of us being flames, and the fact that a flame needs fuel. Without fuel, a flame is immediately snuffed out, it cannot exist apart from the fuel. To be the light of the world, we must let the Light of the world, Jesus, be our fuel.In addition, there comes a realization that, without JesusHis anointing, His guidance, His power, His presencewe are nothing. As Jesus told the disciples in John 15, apart from Him we can do nothing. Naturally, He was speaking that apart from Him we can do nothing for Him. We can accomplish a great deal on our own, but it has no part of Him. We can achieve greatness in this world without Him, but it not a part of His greatness, glory, and renown.
Proverbs 27:19 reveals to us, “as in water face reflects face, so the heart of man reflects man.” What’s in our hearts then? Our deeds and words will reflect what is in our hearts. Only if Jesus is the true center of our hearts will we reflect Jesus in our life, otherwise we are just reflecting ourselves. There is a process of Jesus working in our hearts that we must allow to take place. On the day of our salvation, Jesus doesn’t just come in and change us immediately, we must allow His Spirit to work in us and through us. “But prove yourselves doers of the word, and not merely hearers who delude themselves. For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks at his natural face in a mirror; for once he has looked at himself and gone away, he has immediately forgotten what kind of person he was.” James 1:22-24 NASB
Interestingly, a reflection has absolutely no substance of its own. When you view yourself in the mirror, it is not yourself that you see, but a pale reflection of yourself. The phrase “pale reflection” itself comes from man’s description of moonlight. Moonlight is beautiful, but in actuality there is no such thing as moonlight. What we are really seeing is sunlight being reflected by the moon. The moon has nothing of its own to give in the way of light, but can direct a pale reflection of the sun’s light toward the earth.
The moon is beautiful in its own right, but its beauty is revealed only in the light of the sun. We too, are beautiful creations of our Father, but only in the Light of His Son. Genesis reveals to us that we are the very image of God, but we are not God. We are His image, His reflection, but we have no true substance of our own apart from Him.
David Crowder has a fairly new song entitled “Everything Glorious,” which has a line at the end of the first chorus which is, to me, simple and profound:
You (Jesus) make everything glorious,
You make everything glorious,
You make everything glorious
and I am Yours.
What does that make me?
This is an amazing recognition that God, through His very nature and presence, makes all things glorious. We are God’s, and He makes us glorious as well. But without Him, apart from Him, away from Him, what are we? Nothing.
Jesus is the source of Pure Light, and we have been called to be His reflection. Go out and be a reflection of Him and Him alone.
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