Sailing Toward His Light

May 18

"Whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through Him," Colossians 3:17.

Sometimes we are oblivious to the impact we have on others. Sometimes we are totally unaware of how many eyes are upon us because we profess faith in Jesus Christ. We cannot be like other people who express themselves as they will. We can’t fly off the handle when we’re upset. We can’t give someone who cuts us off in traffic the ‘hand signal’ that expresses our disdain for his action.

We can’t ignore the fact that when unbelievers look at us it is often with the hope of catching us in a fault so that through our imperfection, they can dismiss the claim on their lives to which the perfect Christ is entitled. We know they must not look to us, but we also know that they do.

When we fail to live up to the expectation of worldly people who have no interest in following the scriptural admonition, “Be ye perfect, as I the Lord your God am perfect,” Matthew 5:48, we are subverting our desire to be God’s instruments of their salvation. We relegate ourselves to the sidelines of faith.

When we allow ourselves to be unwitting pawns in the hand of the evil one, he will gleefully remind the lost within our sphere of influence of how abysmally we live our Christianity.

In order to beat old slewfoot at his own game, we must first of all recognize that he is right in one point—of ourselves we can do nothing, John 5:30. We cannot begin to hope to be effective witnesses to those around us on the merit of our own goodness or our own accomplishments.

But second, we must remind the enemy and be ever mindful ourselves that, “We can do all things through Christ who strengthens us,” Philippians 4:13. When we are sure of our sound footing on the Ship of Faith, we will have no difficulty in sailing forward as He leads to carry others out of the Sea of Darkness into Christ’s shining Orb of Eternal Light.