RISE AND SHINE!

 

                                                          RISE AND SHINE!

Do you remember the expression, “Rise and shine!”    I remember, even as a child hearing that expression which meant to wake up in the morning.  

The Lord tells us in His Word through the prophet Isaiah in Isaiah 60:1-3, “Arise my people!  Let your light shine for all the nations to see!  For the glory of the Lord is streaming from you.  Darkness as black as night shall cover all the peoples of the earth, but the glory of the Lord will shine from you.  All nations will come to your light; mighty kings will come to see the glory of the Lord upon you.”  (The Living Bible)

The Lord gave me these words recently, “It’s time to shine!”  It is time to shine.  We, as Christians, need to be the light in the darkness.  When Jesus came to the earth, there was great darkness.  People were enveloped in the darkness of poverty, fear, disease because of the oppression of the day.  He was a light in the darkness and He delivered them from it and gave them hope.  He healed their broken hearts and healed their bodies.  

Now in these times of great peril and death, we need to reach others and give them hope that God loves them and that no matter what is happening in the world, we can be confident that God sees and His very heart is breaking to see that which has come upon the world.  Sometimes it is only in suffering that we turn to the Lord and cry out to Him.  When things are going well, we don’t think about God because some have made riches and wealth our idols.  

God is reaching out at this time to draw people to Himself and show them His love and compassion just as Jesus did.  When everything is taken away, we are left to face God on our own.  We don’t rely on the government or the Church anymore but we are left face to face in essence with our own mortality.  Do we choose God or the world?  What has the world given us so far---only strife, greed and turmoil and fear. 

 We, as the Body of Christ, need to rise and be the light in the darkness.  This could be the greatest moment in time where the love of God is made manifest for all the world to see because when Jesus left this world physically to be at the right hand of the Father, He left us His inheritance which was for us to be His emissaries here on earth to continue His works so that others could see how much God loves them.

So Church, rise and shine!!  Wake up!!  We may not be occupying the pews of a church right now but because of this we are being forced to reach others in other ways.  This is what Jesus did.  He reached out to the people so we should too.  Whether it be by phone, Facebook, other social media, just do it in whatever way God has directed you to do.  There is a minister of the Gospel who recently said that God gave him a vision that there would be a billion souls won because of this scourge that we are now experiencing.

RISE AND SHINE!