Let Your Light Shine
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Last week we did Keys for Kids devotionals for our Bible time instead of our usual Bible Study Guide for All Ages, due to the craziness of Italy Immersion Week. You can get the devotionals free in the mail. At least, you used to be able to. A while back, the Keys for Kids folks sent a request for a donation. It’s still sitting on my desk and eventually, I’ll have a little extra tad of change to send to them, so they’ll start sending us our books again.
Or, I may just read them online. They’re free there, too.
In the meantime, we’re conserving our books by just checking off the devotionals that we’ve completed, rather than going by the dated pages. Once again, God showed us how He likes to orchestrate things. The devotion we read on Thursday was dated for sometime back in July. It was centered around the key verse:
Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven. – Matthew 5:16 (KJV)
After I finished reading the story, I read the kids the questions at the bottom of the page:
Do your actions cause people to notice that you’re different — different from the world in general? […] if you’ve trusted Jesus as your Savior, your words, your actions and your attitudes should shine as a light, pointing others to Him.
I was met with silence. The kids wouldn’t look at me. Megan did mumble, “No.” How telling is that? Of course, if the truth be known, I wouldn’t have wanted to look at me either. A lot of times — okay, maybe even most of the time — my words, actions and attitudes don’t point people to Jesus. Sometimes they do, but is it more often than not?
Guess what our Scripture verse was when we got to our Scripture memory box? Yep, you guess it — Matthew 5:16. Okay, God, I think I’m hearing You.
As a Christian, I know I’m not perfect and God doesn’t expect me to be. He knows that I can’t. However, there should be a difference in me — at least a majority of the time — that causes my words, my actions and my attitudes to point people to Him. I think that was the part that struck me the most — my words, my actions and my attitudes. While I believe that God does expect me to specifically tell others about Him, seeds are often planted, curiosity often peaked, when we Christians are just going about our daily lives, by what we say when we’re not talking about Christ, what we do when we aren’t in church and how we react to our life’s circumstances. Those are the moments that speak louder than our words of evangelism.
Will you be able to look God in the eye when He asks you if your actions cause people to notice you’re different? Pray that your words, your actions and your attitudes will point people to Christ. That’s my prayer for myself this week.
Kris Bales is a newly-retired homeschool mom and the quirky, Christ-following, painfully honest founder (and former owner) of Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers. She has a pretty serious addiction to sweet tea and Words with Friends. Kris and her husband of over 30 years are parents to three amazing homeschool grads. They share their home with three dogs, two cats, a ball python, a bearded dragon, and seven birds.
Great post as usual… I have decided that we will learn this verse as well.
We really like keys for kids. We also do the miller family series. We don’t agree with everything they believe because they are Mennonite but they have great stories. We love to do the one on Proverbs.
I think that this is a verse I needed to.