A Calling To Shine: Lighting the Way For Others to See Jesus

What does it mean to be called to shine? 

Just as Paul challenged the Philippians to shine like stars in the universe — we love the powerful visual to shine and the heritage it comes from.  Light is talked about in 200+ passages in the Bible. It begins early in Genesis and continues through Revelation. In the book of John, we see light all through hitting a peak and crescendo when Jesus said:  “I am the light of the world; he who follows me will not walk in the darkness, but will have the light of life.” John 8:12 

And John also says “The light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it.” John 1:5 This aspect is important because darkness is heavy.  Light is truth revealed. Darkness is truth concealed.   Light and Darkness in the Bible describe physical truths and physical dynamics but are metaphors for Spiritual Truths and spiritual dynamics as well.

AND Not only is Jesus the light but in Matt 5:14-16  Jesus says “You are the light of the world—like a city on a hilltop that cannot be hidden. 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. In the same way, let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in Heaven.” We are blown away that not only is He the light but He passes the baton to us, saying I am making you a light to the world — to take the light, to show others the way.

What are the motives here? To give light and life——who would not want to share a precious resource?!

Sometimes it’s tempting to try and make ourselves shiny for people: to  look good on the outside, so others will notice us— thinking we are taking the light to the world. But that is not what we are talking about here.  God has called us to “shine from the inside out. How do we do that?   Follow along and explore with us the ways to shine.

So This Season we will talk about walking with God and being a light that shines out his love. We will look at two things Jesus called us to: Loving God & Loving our Neighbor. It might sound easy, but reality is that it’s anything but easy. We look forward to sharing our failures and our successes in Loving God and Loving others as well as hearing yours. We hope to hear from you on the called_toshine instagram account.

We will be talking much about neighbors, and you may wonder “who is my neighbor?”  Is this my literal next door neighbor or down the street neighbor?” And our answer is yes, plus.  So when we talk about neighbors— we mean anyone in our path that we can show mercy and love:  could be where we live, or work, or play,  or the coffee barista even.  God has blessed each of us with unique personalities, gifting, resources as well as capacity and divinely put people in our path so we can reflect His Love toward them.

So, buckle up for an exciting journey this season as we uncover what it truly means to be 'Called to Shine'.

SOCIAL MEDIA: @called_toshine Instagram.
Follow us on Instagram and enjoy the community as we spur each other on through inspiration, encouragement, and equipping.

And always you can find resources to help you connect to the people around you at NBS2GO! (nbs2go.com)

— A ministry of NBS2GO: Neighbor Bible Studies to Go and Cru

Episode Transcript

Pam McCune (00:05):
Hey Jess lyn here and Pam, welcome to the
community where we know Jesus isour light.

Jesslyn Adams (00:11):
And we are here to spur each other on to love
God and others right where welive.
We are called to shine.
It's time.
Season one is here.
Welcome everyone to called toshine.
On this podcast, we'llintroduce ourselves, give an
overview of the season andexplain the meaning of called to
shine.
I am one of your hosts,JesslynAdams, an avid pickleballer,

(00:34):
wife and mom of two fun boys,here with my friend, Pam McCune.

Pam McCune (00:39):
Jesslyn, it's so good to be here with you.
I love being a co-host with you.
So, pam, here, a recoveringperfectionist, a wife, mom and a
grand mom.
My grandma name is Bamie and Ihave two precious grand littles.

Jesslyn Adams (00:54):
I love it, pam.
I'm so glad that we get to behere together.
Pam and I actually had theprivilege of working together
with Cu City, with the NBS to Goteam Neighbor Bible Studies to
Go.
That's what it stands for, andwe have a lot in common as we
are both Texans and we bothgraduated from Texas Tech,
although in differentgenerations.
No big deal Now.
Pam called to shine is a newpodcast, but it has actually

(01:17):
been around for two years as anInstagram account, sparing
people on to love God and otherswhere they live, and, as you
are a part of that launching,where did the name called to
shine come from?

Pam McCune (01:26):
And we considered hundreds of name options to kick
off the Instagram account.
We wanted it to be a safe placeand a safe name for millennials
and Gen Z's and we landed onthe name called to shine because
it resonated with all the team,from all generations.
We love the motivation that itheld out, that the heart of
wanting to be a light to otherscame down to a calling.

(01:49):
It was just as Paul challengedthe Philippians to shine like
stars in the universe.
We love the powerful visual toshine and the heritage that came
with it.
Lights talked about in over 200passages in the Bible.
It begins early in Genesis andit continues all through
Revelation.
In Genesis one we see the earthwas formless and empty,

(02:10):
darkness was over the surface ofthe deep and God said let there
be light.
It was the first thing to letthere be.
And as we continue we see inPsalms all kinds of
encouragement about light.
My favorite the Lord is mylight and my salvation.
Whom shall I fear?
And if you fast forward you getto the book of John and we see

(02:30):
a central theme of light in itthat pinnacles.
It hits that crescendo whenJesus does his second I am
statement and says I am thelight of the world.
He who follows me will not walkin darkness but will have the
light of life.
Just when I love that visual ofthe light of life, it's such an
encouragement to me of fourwords that I can't get over.

(02:54):
What stands out to you when youhear that?

Jesslyn Adams (02:57):
You know, right now I'm getting this picture of
me walking on a path in the darkand I have this flashlight
that's leading me and guiding methrough this darkness and it
inspires me to have faith and tokeep taking that next step.
And, pam, it also actuallyreminds me of one of my first
ever camping trips as, like asingle adult out of college, I
have to tell you about it I wentwith a bunch of friends.

(03:18):
We thought we're going to gocamping.
I've never been before.
And so we went on this campingtrip and the guys near where
they were going thank God wearrived at night had no lay of
the land showed up.
They told us where to pitch ourtents.
I'm looking for the restroom andguess what?
There really isn't one.
We just have to go out and finda spot to go.
And I'm thinking I don't evenknow how far to go away with

(03:41):
this flashlight, so that we canbe in private.
And so my friend Tracy and I,we just started walking out
there and I'll tell you, youknow, normally being outside
doesn't scare me.
When it's pitch dark, I don'tknow why I'm about to walk on.
Is it a snake, is it a spider?
And so that flashlight.
It actually brought me comfortand peace as we tried out to go
to the restroom that night.

Pam McCune (04:00):
So I get the reality that when you don't know the
lay of the land, there could beanything under you.
The one thing we don't want tobe surprised by is extra guests
when we're doing our own privatebusiness.
So praise God for phoneflashlights or anything else
that brings light in the middleof the darkness.
John talks about the darknessand light.
He says the light shines in thedarkness and the darkness has

(04:24):
not overcome it.
I think you experience thedarkness not overcoming you in
those scary things, but theaspect is really important about
how darkness can be heavy.
I even go back to thinkingabout the 10 plagues and how
they built on each other.
It is interesting that the 10thplague is the plague of death
and the one right before that isthe plague of darkness over the

(04:46):
entire land.
Darkness truly can be heavy.
I'm studying Genesis in theBible study.
I'm involved in this semesterand so I'm getting to study all
about light.
Jerry, my husband, he's inBible study fellowship and
they're studying John.
We've been talking togetherabout this light and this
darkness and so I asked him.
I said what does this mean toyou, this verse?

(05:08):
The darkness has not overcomeit.
He gave me this blurb.
He said light is truth revealed, darkness is truth concealed.
I love his little quip Light istruth revealed, darkness is
truth concealed.
It makes me think how light anddarkness that are all through
scripture are physical truths,maybe physical dynamics, but

(05:31):
they're also metaphors forspiritual truths and spiritual
dynamics as well.

Jesslyn Adams (05:36):
Pam.
I like that.
It does make me think of ametaphor that a mentor when I
was in college shared with meand she told me Jesslyn, hey,
you need to bring your strugglesout into the light.
And I'm like, what is shetalking about?
You know, just turning thelights, she goes.
Look, when we struggle with sin, we tend to have guilt and
shame, as we're trying to hidethat and keep it in the darkness
of no one else knows that it'snot a problem.

(05:58):
But she encouraged me that onceI confess that to God and to a
friend out in the open, theenemy no longer had a foothold
over me and there was freedomand grace and forgiveness.
When that truth is revealed andbrought into the light that is
powerful.

Pam McCune (06:12):
As the season goes on, I hope we get to share what
that looks like, to have a safefriend to share those secrets
with.
I kind of laughed because onetime in a prayer group a friend
of ours didn't know thebeginning was silent confession.
So when they opened it and saidnow we're going to confess our
sins, she just opened up andconfessed all our sin before the

(06:33):
whole group and Jerry, myhusband, was leading the group
and so after she shared, he justsaid and in God's name, we pray
amen.
Truthfully, you and I lookforward to this podcast being
very authentic and real, notjust here of you and I sharing
together, but we really hopethat an audience y'all will
engage with us too on theInstagram account.
That's why we love them beingin partnership, because we're

(06:56):
hoping it is a conversation allthe way around, not just just
one and I talking, everyonegetting to hear from each other
and to truly be in communitytogether.
As we finish looking at thelight verses and we look at the
last one it goes back to notonly is Jesus the light, but in
Matthew, jesus hands the batonto us and he says you are the

(07:18):
light of the world, like a cityon a hilltop that cannot be
hidden.
No one lights a lamp and thenputs it under a basket.
Instead, a lamp is placed onthe stand, where it gives light
to everyone in the house in thesame way.
Let your light shine beforeothers that they may see your
good deeds and glorify yourFather in heaven.
I'm blown away that not only ishe the light because he is the

(07:39):
light, he's what shows us whatpath to take but that he's
actually passing the baton, notfor us to be God, not for us to
be Jesus or the Holy Spirit, buthe's passing the baton for us
to light the way to others, totake the light that's within us,
to show the way to others aswell.
Jess, and what stands out toyou in that passage?

Jesslyn Adams (07:58):
Man, I love that passage.
What stands out to me is thefact that the lamp, the small
little lamp, gives light toeveryone in the house and it's
crazy to think about how onelight say the light that I have
can affect not only my life butcan impact so many others around
me.
It's a ripple effect and, likeyou said before, I think you
told me the history behind thisthat no one, especially at that

(08:19):
time when this was written,would light a lamp and put it
under a basket because it wassuch a precious commodity.
So what are the motives here?
They wanted to give light andlife.
Who would not want to share aprecious resource like this?

Pam McCune (08:31):
So I'll be honest, Jess, and sometimes it's
tempting for me to try to makemyself shiny so I look good on
the outside, so other peopleactually want to notice me and
get to know me, to get to knowthe God inside me.
But actually that's not whatwe're talking about.
We're talking about taking thelight to the world so others
will notice, so that God isshining from the inside out in

(08:53):
us.
How do we do that?

Jesslyn Adams (08:56):
Great question Pam.
As we're in relationship withJesus, he gives us His Holy
Spirit and His light and as wewalk with Him he shines from
inside us out to others.
We're to shine the light ofChrist from our lives into their
lives, not with an ulteriormotive, but with the heart of
inviting people into ameaningful relationship with us,
so that Jesus can invite theminto a relationship with Him.

Pam McCune (09:20):
So this season we are going to talk about walking
with God and being a light thatshines out His love.
We'll look at two things thatJesus called us to specifically
loving God and loving ourneighbor and it might sound easy
, but reality is that it'sanything but easy.
We look forward to sharing ourfailures, of how it didn't quite

(09:40):
work, and our successes inloving God and loving others.
As well as hearing yours, wewant to encourage you to go find
called to shine it's called theunderline to to shine Instagram
account and friend us and beginwith us on this journey, and
we're going to continue to talkmuch about neighbors and you may

(10:00):
wonder who is my neighbor?

Jesslyn Adams (10:02):
Is this my literal next door neighbor that
I see all the time, or down thestreet?
And our answer is yes, pluscould be the person that you
encounter at the store.
We will use Jesus' definitionof neighbor when he was asked
who is my neighbor and he toldthe story of the Good Samaritan.
Do you remember the story inLuke 10?
A couple of men passed by a manon the road who had been beaten

(10:23):
badly and left to die, but theGood Samaritan stopped and
showed mercy to the man.
The Good Samaritan took thetime to stop and see his needs.
He offered up his oil and wineand shared his resources, like
his donkey, to carry him to aplace where he could recover.
Jesus calls us likewise to showlove and mercy to anyone in our
path, not just our physicalneighbor next door.

(10:43):
So when we talk about neighbors, we mean anyone in our path
that we can show mercy and lovecould be where we live, where we
work, play the coffee barista.
Even God has blessed each of uswith unique personalities,
giftings and resources, as wellas capacity, and divinely put
people in our path daily so thatwe can reflect his love toward
them.

Pam McCune (11:04):
I'm curious when did God first nudge your heart to
notice and care and havecompassion for the people around
you?

Jesslyn Adams (11:11):
Pam, I must confess and be honest that in
grade school I didn't think ofothers.
Often, in fact, my motherlaughs about how I took an
aptitude test in servanthood wasthe lowest.
In fact they had said I'venever seen a child score so low
on an aptitude test forservanthood.
So Jesus, kind of hold my heart.
Thankfully, and it was so I wasright out of college that I
began to think oh, there's otherpeople besides me.

(11:32):
I was recently graduated,living in H-town, otherwise
known as Houston.
Me and two other girls wereliving, starting our new jobs,
and two other guys lived in thefloor below us.
We were on the third floor ofan apartment.
They were on the second floorand I noticed we passed each
other often in the stairwaygoing up and down, and God began
to burden my heart just to prayfor them to actually not be in

(11:53):
a hurry.
When I engaged with them Inoticed when I come home, hey,
if I see them, don't be in arush to get inside, just give
them a couple minutes.
And I really started to get toknow them.
Then also fast forward thepandemic we all know literally
our next door neighbor mighthave been all we had around us
when we were in quarantine and Igot to see my neighbors outside
.
People started coming out oftheir homes walking their dogs,

(12:14):
playing with their kids andslowly, as they shared the highs
and lows of their life, godburdened my heart to really want
to pray for them and to knowthem and to love and care for
them.

Pam McCune (12:23):
That is so powerful.
It's the power of a burdenedheart stopping to see them and
then stopping to engage.
Most of us want to care forothers, but it usually comes
down to our schedules Needing tobe somewhere at a certain time.
It could be those two otherguys that walk past the hurting
and bleeding guide, not becausewe're uncompassionate, but

(12:43):
because we just don't havecapacity and time in our
schedule.
We need to see people with ourJesus glasses on, to see them
through Jesus' eyes and havecompassion and see.
Oh, this may be the one timethat somebody stops and cares
for them on their path, andthat's what you did.
That really stands out to me.

(13:03):
I do not have anylife-shattering big stories to
share, but I do remember back toseventh grade and, believe it
or not, I was a really shy childthat didn't talk much in
elementary and I certainlydidn't talk much in junior high,
because I was one of 10% of myelementary school that was sent
to one junior high where 90%went to the other.

(13:25):
I did not know a single soul inmy classes and I felt all alone
.
I walked around with that deerin the headlight all the way
through class to class thosefirst few days and I remember
being pretty nervous to talk topeople.
I talked internally to Godoften I just had a rambling
conversation of saying get methrough this, help me.

(13:47):
I want to survive this.
Let's not even get into thelunch period where I was going
to sit, because I certainlywasn't going to be the person to
make a new friend andexperience rejection.
But I went to my new home roomand God nudged my heart to
befriend a girl who lookedconfident on the outside and
this was big for me because Iwas anything but confident, but
God had been pressed upon methat she actually needed me.

(14:09):
I had never had that thoughtbefore.
As I befriended her in time, Isaw the light in me pass on to
become the light in her as shesaid yes to Jesus.
You know, jesslyn, we becamefriends, good friends, for many
of the next six years of juniorhigh and high school and I just
think, lord, thank you fornudging my heart To reach out to
her.

(14:29):
It was nothing I did except forbeing willing to say hello and
let a friendship begin.

Jesslyn Adams (14:35):
Wow, pam, that was so brave of you, and what
faith it took to step out ofyour comfort zone and follow
God's nudge.
It's crazy how just a simpleconversation can change
everything, and that's the kindof stuff we want to talk about
this season.
In season one of Called toShine, we will journey together
on how to shine out God's lovethis fall through the big three
holidays and through living reallife.
It will look different for eachof us depending on our capacity

(14:57):
, gifting and season of life,but all of us have a calling to
love God and love others.
We will dig into what the Biblesays about our calling, what
that looks like and what itdoesn't look like and what do we
know about stars?

Pam McCune (15:09):
We know that stars shine brightest that are closest
.
Proximity is everything.
Consider the sun.
It's not the biggest star, butit is the closest and it gives
us light and warmth.
We'll not only look about whoare the people around us that
God's going to put into our path, about location that we can
just shine out using theholidays.
We're also going to look at howstars shine brightest when it's

(15:32):
darkest, and so as we hit thoseholidays, that might actually
be a negative trigger of who'snot with us.
What has changed?
Not being able to be withfamily, or maybe not wanting to
be with family Any of us can bein a dark season.
So how do we get through thatand how do we actually help the
people around us get throughthat as well?

(15:53):
And then we're going to look athow stars shine brightest in a
cluster and how can we take whatour gifting is and pair it with
somebody else's gifting toshine even brighter.
And another thing that standsout is that stars shine
brightest that are the mostluminous, the ones that have the
most power within.
So for us, how do we let thespirit be the power within us

(16:14):
and shine out, and not try toadd too much more to our
schedule, but just takeadvantage of the nudging that
God puts on our path that we canuse our giftings to do who are
the people around us, that wecan shine brightly by just
walking through life andrelationship with Jesus and
shining out of his love.
Join us on this journey as wespur each other on.

(16:35):
Let us not grow weary in doinggood, for in due season we will
reap if we do not give up.
Justin, when we moved in to ourhouse 30 years ago, two of my
friends actually bought piecesof land nearest and started
building their house.
When they moved in, we gaveeach of them this two foot

(16:56):
magnolia tree.
It was kind of fascinatingbecause one of them grew really
quickly and the other did not.
As we watched them, we kind oflaughed at my second friend what
are you doing to this tree?
Maybe you need to go talk to it.
And she's like I'm watering it.
It's in the sun, it'severything that it's supposed to
be.
But it took 15 years for thattree to ever grow.

(17:19):
It wouldn't break through theground where the other was as
tall as the house.
And so what we've learned aboutbuilding relationships is that
our part is that we pour in andwe care, we engage, we
authentically share our life andwe try to relate to people.
But how they respond, how theyflourish in our relationship, is

(17:40):
not up to us.
But we want to encourage.
Don't give up.
It might be scary but it mightbe 15 years before that tree of
life friendship breaks throughand that you get to see what
God's been doing through therelationship.
And the truth is we can'tcontrol what people take from
the light that we're shiningthem.
Our part is just to guide themin the path and trust God with

(18:03):
the rest of the part and theirpart as well.

Jesslyn Adams (18:05):
I love that, Pam, God's part and our part.
We're just there to sow seedsand God does the growing, and
that's exactly what we want todo together with you guys this
season.
Journey with us on season oneof the podcast.
Subscribe anywhere podcasts arefound.
We are called to shine.
Let's do this together.