“Hide it under a bushel? No! I’m gonna let it shine! Let it shine, let it shine, let it shine.” —Harry Dixon Loes
I remember singing this song many times as a child. The song speaks of letting our God-given lights shine. It is a powerful message, albeit a bit lost on my six-year-old self.
As we get older and being human becomes more of a burden that we need God to release us from, letting our lights shine grows harder and harder. We start to wonder if the light is still as bright as it once was. What if the light is offensive to those around us? Is our light really needed? What if the light doesn’t shine like it is supposed to because of the darkness we find in ourselves in this broken world?
I have found in my own story that God doesn’t write in pencil. He is a lover of pens. The amazing thing about this is that he doesn’t need white-out to change our stories. He just keeps writing, knowing that he can use each sentence to create the masterpiece. There is room for each word of our stories in God’s epic.
When I arrived at the Christian college I attended, I was determined to leave all of my sin back home. That, however, is not how it works. The first night, we all gathered together in my all-girls dorm for a dorm meeting. Two of the girls got up to the mic. They shared briefly about a group they were starting in our dorm and invited anyone interested to sign up. I felt like they were speaking directly to me, and I knew that I needed to sign up to join this small group.
We started the group by each taking a week to share our stories, to ask each other questions about our stories, and to pray specifically over each person. Our leader went first, talking about how the enemy had wanted her to believe she was the only one struggling, pushing her into shame and its cycle. She explained how God changed her by helping her share with other people until she realized she was loved unconditionally by God and that her sin didn’t define who she was. Suddenly, I wasn’t alone anymore, feeling God breaking my shame even just by hearing her tell her story.
The week came to share my story. I was so scared, never having shared this part of my story with anyone, afraid of how people might see me once they knew me. When I shared, something changed. Suddenly, the enemy didn’t have anything to hold over my head anymore. It was out in the light, no longer in the dark.
“But whenever anyone turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away. Now, the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is FREEDOM. And we all, who with unveiled faces contemplate the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his image with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.” (2 Cor. 3:16–18 NIV; emphasis added)
I think each person has something in their story that the enemy uses to whisper the same lie in their ear.
“If someone knew this about you,” the snake hisses, “they wouldn’t want you around anymore. Your ministry would be void.”
Lies multiply in the darkness, but are killed when brought into the light. Sharing releases us.
The Bible talks about how our stories are so incredibly powerful. In Revelation 12, there is a story about a woman and a dragon loaded with symbolism. I won’t go deep into the imagery and allegories and vision in this story, but I do want to point out two verses. After some crazy events and fighting with angels, the dragon, who is Satan, is hurled down to Earth. ”Then I heard a loud voice in heaven say: ‘Now have come the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God, and the authority of his Messiah. For the accuser of our brothers and sisters, who accuses them before our God day and night, has been hurled down. They triumphed over him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony; they did not love their lives so much as to shrink from death‘” (Rev. 12:10–11 NIV).
They overcame him by the blood of the Lamb, that is Jesus who died on the cross for our sins, and by the word of their testimony, their stories of how God won victory in their lives. Stories are powerful! So powerful, Scripture says they can overcome the enemy of our souls!
As women who often feel like our stories must be perfect in order to shine God’s light, we miss out on the beauty that can be brought through sharing our stories with others. God uses community to shape and mold us. I sometimes wonder where I would be if my small group leader hadn’t been brave enough to bring her darkness into the light. God used her story to shape mine in so many ways, and he has used my story, since then, to help others as well. Light can only bring more light.
Our storytelling God delights in using the parts of our stories we wish we could erase to bring a fuller picture of who he is. Good, compelling stories do not shy away from those moments we want to hide, but rather use those moments to propel the characters into growth and change. God, the author and perfecter of our faith, is in the business of redemption. We can trust him to use every stanza for his glory.
What part of your story is God waiting for you to bring into the light? What moments in your life can you use to illuminate the truth of God’s goodness and redemption to those around you?
