Welcome to today's encouragement from Our Daily Bread.

I'm Sheridan Voizzi and I've called today's reading Shining Stars.

The first thing I noticed about the city was its gambling outlets.

Next, it's cannabis shops, adult stores and giant billboards for

opportunistic lawyers making money off others' mishaps. While I had visited many shady cities

before, this one seemed to reach a new low. My mood brightened, however, when I spoke to a taxi

driver the next morning.

I asked God every day to send me the people he wants me to help, he said.

Gambling addicts, prostitutes, people from broken homes tell me their problems in tears.

I stop the car.

I listen.

I pray for them.

This is my ministry. After describing Jesus' descent into our fallen world in Philippians 2,

the Apostle Paul gives believers in Christ a calling.

As we pursue God's will and hold to the Word of Life, the Gospel,

will be children of God without fault in a warped and crooked generation who shine like stars

in the sky.

Like that taxi driver, where to bring Jesus light into the darkness.

A believer in Christ has only to live faithfully in order to change the world, historian

Christopher Dawson said, because in that very act of living, there is contained all the mystery of divine life.

Let's ask God's Spirit to empower us to live faithfully as Jesus' people,

shining his light in the world's darkest places.

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