Keep Up the Quality of Your Life (2)

Matthew 5:14-16 >>

14 “You are the light of the world—like a city on a hilltop that cannot be hidden. 15 No one lights a lamp and then puts it under a basket. Instead, a lamp is placed on a stand, where it gives light to everyone in the house. 16 In the same way, let your good deeds shine out for all to see, so that everyone will praise your heavenly Father.

Matthew 6:22-23 >>
22 “Your eye is a lamp that provides light for your body. When your eye is good, your whole body is filled with light. 23 But when your eye is bad, your whole body is filled with darkness. And if the light you think you have is actually darkness, how deep that darkness is!

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1. Based on the verses above, my role as the light of the world is to let my good deeds shine out for everyone to see, so that everyone will praise my Father in heaven (v.15-16).
2. I am aware of the darkness that’s found in my family, school, workplace, and city where I live. There’s refusal of acknowleding the Lord, sexual sins, selfishness and more.
3. I have been a light in the darkness by living my life against the culture of those around me. For example, when others take God’s name in vain, I speak out against it. Or when couples choose to live together premaritally, me and my fiance don’t want to.

The Acts of Children of Light

Ephesians 5:8-14 >>

8 For once you were full of darkness, but now you have light from the Lord. So live as people of light! 9 For this light within you produces only what is good and right and true.

10 Carefully determine what pleases the Lord.11 Take no part in the worthless deeds of evil and darkness; instead, expose them.12 It is shameful even to talk about the things that ungodly people do in secret.13 But their evil intentions will be exposed when the light shines on them,14 for the light makes everything visible. This is why it is said, “Awake, O sleeper, rise up from the dead, and Christ will give you light.”

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1. Characteristics of the life of Children of light is that they produce only what is good and right and true. They do not take part in or even talk about worthless deeds of darkness, but when the light shines on darkness it exposes them. Our words and actions are good.
2. I need to make sure that my lifestyle is in accordance with the characteristics of the children of light. Some changes I can make so I can put God’s Word in practice in my life is to not even read or see things that those who aren’t in God do in darkness.

Suffering Makes Me Learn to Rely on God

Jeremiah 17:5-10

5 This is what the LORD says:
“Cursed is the one who trusts in man,
who depends on flesh for his strength
and whose heart turns away from the LORD.

6 He will be like a bush in the wastelands;
he will not see prosperity when it comes.
He will dwell in the parched places of the desert,
in a salt land where no one lives.

7 “But blessed is the man who trusts in the LORD,
whose confidence is in him.

8 He will be like a tree planted by the water
that sends out its roots by the stream.
It does not fear when heat comes;
its leaves are always green.
It has no worries in a year of drought
and never fails to bear fruit.”

9 The heart is deceitful above all things
and beyond cure.
Who can understand it?

10 “I the LORD search the heart
and examine the mind,
to reward a man according to his conduct,
according to what his deeds deserve.”
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1. The difference between people who rely on God and those who rely on man when they have crisis is that the one who relies on man is cursed because our flesh and strength fail, and that means this man’s heart is turned away from the Lord. He will not see prosperity when it comes. However, those who trust in God and whose confidence is in God is blessed. They do not fear when heat comes, they do not worry and they bear fruit.
2. Words and actions that come from a sly and hardened heart are deceitful and produce unrighteous deeds and acts. An example is if I sinned, not confessed and yet become hurt, in the past I’ve tried to play it off and be mean to other people. I want to guard my heart so that it won’t become sly or hardened and so this doesn’t happen. When my heart is hardened, God’s light cannot shine through and I won’t have that!