Tag: radiate

the reflection of Love

Karla Lees

God loves you.

No only does He love you, but He is Love.

And He is whole.

God’s not broken like you & I, and all those broken ones who love each other in ways that hurt.

For all of us are broken until He makes us whole.

Like He is.

God isn’t broken, so He doesn’t love as broken humanity does.

He loves wholly from who He is, Love itself.

And not only does Love find us, it restores us to wholeness through its continuous outpouring of love.

Love makes us worthy.

My definition of worth?

Worth = the value placed by the purchaser on the object of His desire.

His very Love came down, put on flesh & bone, and lived among us.

Showing us He is Love through the Son.

Even to the cross, taking on our sins…because He desired for us to know our true worth.

God Himself loved us worthy through Jesus’ life & death.

The perfect Lamb, the only One worthy of it all, laid down His worth to show us our value to Him.

God believes us worth His Love.

Worthy of Him.

Not because of anything we could ever do.

Because of the Son.

His Love is Himself, actively pursuing each of us.

He IS Love.

When we spend time in His Presence, we cannot help but soak in that Love.

And we are changed through the Son shining on us.

As we live out our daily lives, something fantastic happens because of our time spent soaking in His Love.

We begin to reflect it.

The Son radiates Himself, love, through us.

The Worthy One uses the ones He made worthy to reach those do not yet know their true worth, and those who need the reminder.

We reflect His Love on all we encounter.

We reflect Him.

With the sun beginning to shine more and more on me here in Southern Ontario with the arrival of spring, it is seen in the new growth, the warmth & the reflection on the water.

May we too reflect His love, Him so that others will grow, find their true Love & see themselves through His eyes: as Beloved.

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unadorned cracked pot

Karla Lees

We carry this precious Message around in the unadorned clay pots of our ordinary lives.

2 Cor 4:7a MSG

But we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us.

2 Cor 4:7 NIV

But this beautiful treasure is contained in us – cracked pots made of earth and clay – so that the transcendent character of this power will be clearly seen as coming from God and not from us.

2 Cor 4:7 The Voice

This past few weeks have been ones where a few more of my cracks seems to have become wider gaps.

I feel stretched.

As the Potter’s hand works on clay, He keeps needing to wet the clay in order to reshape it.

When i stop seeking His living water, I get too dry.

And cracks form in my pot as it hardens.

The good news?

God can soften hard pots.

But it leaves cracks behind.

I heard a story about a young gal who had to carry water in a cracked pot back & forth, day in and day out. By the time she got home there wasn’t the amount of water she started out with.

Long story short, beautiful flowers appeared on the side of the road where the water had been dripping, day after day.

God never wastes, not one single drop, from our cracks.

I have often wondered if I didn’t have the flaws & foibles I had if God would use me as much….because i suspect i wouldn’t feel the need for Him as acutely as I do throughout my days.

Today, I felt the cracks, after a few days of God soaking & spinning & pressing & smoothing.

I know how much I need Him, the more He sets me free & guides me.

To Him, I am chosen.
To the world, I appear a pudgy married mom of two young adults, with curly red hair & glasses, with a zany sense of humour, who loves words, tea and right now in this cold spell, her heating pad. 🙂

An unadorned cracked pot.

Yet God chooses to use me…

I know that when I have met someone who radiates Jesus, I don’t pay as close attention to their cracks or flaws….I see Jesus pouring out through them.

That’s my heart’s desire.

To be cracked in all the right places for Jesus to shine through me, so although I am humble clay, the Almighty can use me for His glory.

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The Good News Message for us all?

God can use all of us, despite our cracks, chips & holes.

It’s about our availability, our holding out our hands to be filled, not about our capability.

It’s about His ability, to use the cracked, broken & lowly to shoe the world just how loving, graceful, kind, mighty & powerful He really is!

I’m a cracked pot, how about you?