The book of Nehemiah has been a wonderful reminder that God restores and builds up His people so that they can be a powerful witness for Him to the world. As the church today, we are called to carry the torch of the glory of God and the gospel of Christ. The book of Ephesians will reinforce our mandate to “live as children of the light.” This is a great privilege and joy! In our Scripture for this Sunday, we will look at not only our calling to “shine like stars” in this dark and broken world, but also at two unexpected and often overlooked behaviors that diminish the brightness of our testimony. As we learned last week from the closing chapter of Nehemiah, what we do matters! And Paul will remind us from the Philippians' text this week that what we say and how we say it also matters a great deal.