I love God. I love how He drew me, rescued and saved me and I’m especially grateful for His unending grace. I am grateful for any opportunity I have to share His love with others but I have a confession to make: sometimes I feel pretty inadequate for the task. Do you ever feel that way? Sometimes, after I share with others about God, I second guess most of what I said – feeling a little foolish for poorly communicating the magnitude of such great truth. Maybe that’s why they call it “inexpressible joy”. I clumsily fumble around for words that are just out of reach when trying to describe God, His love & His truth. I’m just a weak, imperfect person after all and Jesus is – well – amazing! I can come away from those interactions feeling rather foolish and a bit intimidated, potentially hindering my future attempts at sharing God’s truth with others. But all the while, He grants me grace and continues to impart His life and love into my heart, causing it to well up like a river needing an outlet.
Today, the Lord began to speak into this struggle for me during worship. It was one of those moments of transforming encounter and here I am again, in a place of wanting to share His love with others. (That’s you!) The Lord showed me several different pictures and spoke to my heart about each one.
The first thing I “saw” was a butterfly. “A butterfly has lovely, colorful wings because I spilled out My glory and splendor on that tiny, graceful creature. It would be wrong for a butterfly to stay wrapped up in her cocoon when she has such pretty wings, not to mention her new ability to fly! Spread your wings, daughter. When you do, you display My Glory. It’s what you were made for.”
Next, I saw a gorgeous, intricately jeweled, purple necklace. I felt like the Lord Himself had prepared it for me and was moving toward me, to place it upon my neck. (He knows how much I like the color purple!) I certainly felt overwhelmed and humbled to be so blessed by Almighty God and I was tempted to draw back. In that moment, I felt the Lord speak to me again, “This necklace is a picture of My glory and My love for you, personally. It is My desire to grace you with it – but you’ll need to yield to this gift, to wear it freely, and allow the splendor to shine for others to see.”
A few moments later, I saw a gold decorative plate holder. Do you know what I mean? I’m talking about those small, gold easels that people use to display their hand-painted collector's plates. “The easel itself may glisten in the light, and even though it may be made of pure gold, its purpose is still to simply display the glory and beauty of the plate. You’re like the easel – let My Glory rest upon you.”
Then I saw a large feather – the kind they used to use as quill pens. “The life of the story is not INSIDE the feather, it’s inside the heart and comes out as the tip of the quill is dipped into ink and words are written out as the heart directs. Yield yourself to My heart and My hand as I write My story through your life.”
Finally, the Lord spoke to me about the paper upon which His story is written. Similar to the feather quill analogy, He encouraged me to allow Him to write His love story on my life, so that others could read it, find hope in it, and discover His lavish love for them as well. His encouragement to me this morning brought great personal freedom to allow the life of Jesus to flow freely through me, as He wills.
Although it really is all about the greatness and majesty of Almighty God, He delights to use weak human beings, like you and me, to reveal His glory to the world. His power is made perfect in our weakness. In Christ, we have an opportunity to get over ourselves and let Him be glorified through our yielded lives. It is not humility to resist shining with the love of God; it’s humility to submit to it. Let's do that. My friend, let's be free and live out loud.
“Let your life shine before men!” ~Jesus
