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“Shine, Sparkle, Glow”


                   
      Have you ever heard the phrase, "shine bright like a diamond?" I seem to hear it a lot lately. At first it sounds like good advice, right? I mean in Matthew 5:14-16 we are told that we are the light of the world! We are so bright, our light cannot be hidden! We should let this light shine before men, so that they can see our good deeds and praise our Father in heaven!
      
      Someone made an interesting point to me about this once: a diamond can't shine without light and also, it cannot regulate its own light. If you put it in a dark room it will not be able to glow.
     
      But isn't this also true of us? We are all diamonds-- well, first we are just a lump of dirt. But once the Creator gets a hold of us, He molds us into beautiful and precious jewels!  However, if we choose to believe that we only need God to renew our hearts and then we turn and go down our own self-righteous paths, we will never be able to shine in the way Matthew describes. We might be able to shine temporarily with our limited talents, (although, even those are still God-given) but our light will burn out fast and we will be left in the cold, dark world, filled with our own sin. Without the light of the Father beaming through us, we cannot shine; our sin blocks the light.
     
       When we truly love God and let Him take control of our messy lives, we will beam brighter than the sun, and we will want to share His love and grace with everyone we come in contact with, telling them how He made us new-- and how He can make them beautiful too! When we allow God-light to shine through us and clean up all the griminess of sin, we will truly become the light of the world and others will see what God has done for them and they will glorify the Father in heaven along with us!





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