You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden;

Matthew 5:14

Salvation is a supernatural event.  God’s Spirit comes in and regenerates the dead human spirit, making a person alive again.  When a human believes, a change takes place, that changes a human being, dead in their trespasses and sins as they were, to being a new creation in Christ (2 Corinthians 5:17).

A man does not need to be told or convinced that he has been born again, or saved, by any other person.  Affirmation and good Bible study is always advisable, and continued pointing to the truth of the Word of God is always recommended, but, when a man is changed, he knows it on the inside.

In him was life, and that life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it.

John 1:4-5

When a light shines, it shows what is really there.  It reveals the things otherwise hidden.  It does not change things, but merely makes them known.  This is how Jesus came.

Men were already dead in their sins before He came.  He did not need to pronounce condemnation on those that were already condemned, as that would have been redundant (John 3:17).  Their own hearts condemned them.

What was hidden in darkness was death to those in the world.  Yet, many preferred the darkness, not wanting to accept that what was in them was really evil.

This is the judgement.  Light came.  Men loved darkness.  They killed the light.

Many things propose to be the light today.

Many things look like the light, and, while many of them are light to a degree, most do not really shine when you look at them closely.

Why do we know this?  Because sin, within the body, is not confronted.  Because errors, factions, heresies, seditions, strife, envy, rage, violence, murder, hatred, bigotry, and all the other obvious works of the flesh are rampant in our assemblies.  Because love is not what we are known for.  So, the light within us is small.

We do not shine as we ought.  We do not glow and beam with His magnificence.  If it is to the Father’s glory that we bear much fruit (John 15:8), where do we get off with our false humility in being small?  The Father’s greatness demands that His children shine like the sun.

The way of the cross is the way of the Gospels.  It was the Sermon on the Mount that got Jesus there, and it was His secrets of the Kingdom, revealed, that brought Him back up, in His Father’s righteousness, to His Father’s glory.  It pleased the Father to crush Him, and He raised Him back up on the third day, in fulfillment of the scriptures.  In fulfillment of Matthew 5:3-11.  In fulfillment of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.  What He Himself prophesied and taught, He proved and fulfilled.

Now the way is given to us.  Do we hear and obey, as Matthew 7:24 directs, or do we hear, and try our own thing?  Do we trust that He is Lord enough to have foreseen every possibility when He laid out His tenets, or do we assume that we can do better with our own methods?

The way of Faith is to hear and obey.  If Jesus only did what He saw the Father do, how much better are we?  Do we believe we can improve on His methods.  Of course, we have the written Word.  We do already have many instructions laid down for us in writing, which must be approved first.  Yet, the daily and personal details, of which the scriptures do not have direct instruction for us, matter to the Lord as well.  If some details are left to us for us to figure out on our own, how much or how many are for the seeking?  Proverbs writes…

Trust in the LORD with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding.
In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths.

Proverbs 3:5-6

The writer instructs to acknowledge Him in ALL your ways and you will receive direction.  How many have consulted Him in major decisions recently, let alone the medium and smaller ones as too?

We must not live out of a place of “function”, where we have a new set of rules.  But rather we must come to a place of being His children, of simply living out of the place of complete reliance and dependence upon His Spirit to guide us.

We have no light of our own.  Jesus is the light that gives light to every man.  He alone can turn our darkness into light.  He said that apart from Himself, we can do nothing!  Nothing at all!  So why do we function with little prayer?  Little abandon in worship?  Such little light?  Do we forget how far we have fallen?

Some sects, of course, make whole doctrines about why we don’t need to walk in gospel power and authority, with demon-inspired lies like “cessationism”.  It is found no where in scripture (except a twisting of one passage in 1 Corinthians which a contextual analysis disproves immediately), contradicts the entirety of scripture (God does not change), and without signs and wonders, makes much of the New Testament of absolutely no relevance to us today (why have discourse on speaking in tongues if it isn’t for us today?  It makes would make part of Scripture irrelevant).

Yet, the truth remains, the Kingdom of God is not a matter of words, but of Power.  If you disregard the Kingdom, writing it off in some dispensational argument that it is for another day, you must not believe that the Kingdom of God had really come upon those watching, nor that the violent were entering it violently in His day.

If we are to be the light, we must have the light and give reign to the light.  If we want to shine, we must be as the clear glass around the glowing filament of His Spirit, empty to everything but Him, so that He can shine.  It is not an emptying, but a filling.  We are not left as orphans, but we have the wonderfulness of the Holy Spirit flowing within us!  This is even better than what the apostles themselves had with Jesus in their midst!

We must be diligent.  We must recover the faith once entrusted.  We must dust off the Gospels, and re-learn the secrets of the Kingdom entrusted to us (Matthew 13:11).  We must be deliberate in our attack against culture and the spirit of the world and the spirit of the anti-christ in our midst.  We must overcome.

Jesus overcame, and gave us Himself.  He has given us everything we need.  If we need wisdom, we must ask, but we must stand like the lights that we are, take our place in the army of God in the full armor of God, and be victorious in our warfare.  Then, and only then, will we take the culture of the Earth.  Then, and only then, will the lost be won in sheaves.  Then, and only then, will the anti-christ, liberal demon be broken off our homelands.

The world lies waiting, and all we have to do is believe.  Stand up, swing your sickle, for the harvest is ripe.