Burning Bushes

My friend asked me the other day, "Don't you just wish sometimes that God would just make things a lot easier. lol. Man, sometimes obeying him is sooo tough!" She is in a transition period now where she feels God is leading her down a specific path and she is trying to discern which path that may be. She wants nothing more than to follow His will.

Why can't God make it a little easier? Maybe it is so easy we find it complex. We have a habit of overcomplicating matters a lot - Especially when it comes to God. We want burning bush experiences, where God reveals Himself to us and points us in the right direction. But we forget that part of our discovering God's call for our lives has a great deal of ROMANCE!

There is the element of pursuit, courtship, and discovery that keeps the blood pumping for another adventure in God. Something's waiting to be found. A treasure, a reward, a piece of God. And to obtain these things, we must be willing to get a little dirty and head out into the great wild adventure, with only God as our compass.

We are in the business of love. We are told to love. We have the heart of God pumping within ours and God leads us with that love. We have the privilege to encounter and associate with forgotten people and love them. We have the honor TO BE PART OF GODS STORY and see the transformation happen in those lives. We get to see great treasures immerse out of the wreckages of what seem to be hopeless situations. We get to witness people moving from feeling forgotten, to knowing God knows them by name and knowing they belong. All this because we do the simple task requested of us... to love.

When we love... we see burning bushes.

Mirror

I was listening to a friend of mine speak the other day about wanting to be a mirror that reflects the love of Jesus to everyone. She was really passionate about the idea of being this 'thing' that would show the people around her that Jesus is real and alive and all those good things that comes with that. I could see her heart pounding faster as she spoke enthusiastically about being used by God to his people. But as I listened, I thought to myself, "So you want to reflect the love and light of Jesus to the world but you yourself want to reject the light? That doesn't make sense. Why would you want to be the reflection of light?" You see, a mirror doesn't absorb the light it rejects it. When light introduces itself to a mirror, the mirror then bounces off the light into another direction. It's as if the mirror says, "thank you but I'm not interested. I'd rather you shine in another direction."

Jesus said, "I am the light of the world". He also said, "You ARE the light of the world". He never said, "Reflect the light", He said, "Be the light". Jesus, who is the light, wants us to absorb His Spirit so intensely that we can do not other that become lights ourselves. He wants to live so powerfully in us that we cannot contain His glory but radiate it to everyone who comes in contact with us. God is not interested in making mirrors; He is in the lighting business.

If we are happy reflecting Jesus to others, we have lost the great power available to us in our short lifetime. Jesus wants to be so intimate with us that we become the carriers of that darkness destroying power. He also goes on to say, "That whoever follows Him WILL have the light and never walk in darkness".

Have you ever been in a room that was so dark you couldn't see you hand in front of your face? What difference did it make when you lit a candle? A world of difference! Once you light that candle, the darkness retreats from that light and hides behind anything it possibly can - just to get away. The light then becomes the life of that room. Every one of us has the greatest opportunity to be the light that shines in the darkness of this world. The darker the room… the brighter the light.

"I have but one candle of life to burn, and I would rather burn it out in a land filled with darkness than in a land flooded with light" – John Keith Falconer

Scripture: John 8:12. Matt 5:14.