It begins with God Who carefully designed you, dreamed about you and crafted an intricate and unique blueprint of you.
Could you enter this magnificent piece of architecture without its key? You could peek through the windows and marvel at it, but you could never inhabit it. Would you see the splendour without light? Would you know about the hidden treasures, the décor, the colours, the atmosphere divinely orchestrated, without light? You can feel your way, sure. You can imagine some things, but you would not be able to experience that what was created for joy. The joy of being in it and for sharing it with others.
So the obvious questions are: What is the key or where do you find it and what is the light?
Love is the warm light that enfolds you as you enter. Imagine that your mansion has motion detector lights. It lights up as you move through it. As you start to inhabit and embrace who you are, the more you love it, the more light you reflect until the light streams out of the windows bright, abundant and inviting.
Let me ask you this: If you don’t like your house or if you don’t feel at home in it, Would you invite people to share your space and enjoy it, if you don’t?
What I’ve experienced in my own case and have seen in others is that we have this beautiful, magnificently designed mansion, but we choose to only use part of it. We move into a few select rooms, thinking that it’s who we are and what we deserve. If you only love one or 2 rooms, and the rest is still locked or kept in the dark, you would only invite people into those 2 rooms, would you not?
You can only give love and receive love with the measure with which you love and accept yourself. You can only give what you have to give. And that also applies to grace, since grace is love in practice. “Love your neighbour as you love yourself” has bigger implications than we think.
I have lived in 2 rooms with candle light for quite a big part of my life. I knew that I was loved by God, by my family, hubby, etc. I grew up in a beautiful loving home, filled with light and laughter and belonging. The area of my life where I have been attacked, however, was self-worth and self-love. Molestation stole a whole lot of my light (as trauma often does) and I was an extreme introvert. (I’m still wondering if I was born an introvert, or if I became one because of my lack of self-worth and confidence.) Every bit of criticism I took as truth and I added it to my store room. Comparison became an art and my mind my enemy. (The most effective place the enemy can attack us, is in our minds and beliefs). So in the end my “house” was filled with dusty boxes with lies , leaving little room to move, live and thrive. My self-love determined the measure in which I could receive love – what I believed I was worthy of receiving. It also determined the measure in which I could love others. As I did the inner work, I realized that the more I embraced His love and grace, the more I embraced who He made me to be and the more I stepped into the Love, the lighter I became. The light has to be on in the inside!!
James 1:17,18 – “Every GOOD GIFT and every PERFECT GIFT is from above, it comes down from from the Father of all light, in the shining of Whom there can be no variation or shadow. And it was of His own free will that He gave us birth by His Word of Truth so that we should be the firstfruits of His creation”.
His Truth is that you are
wonderfully made, that your design is a good and perfect gift to the world and
that you are the creation of His will.
If you allow Him, He will love you back to life.
Luke 11: 34, 36 – “ Your
eye is the lamp of your body; when your
eye (your inner conscience, inner knowing, vision of self) is sound and
fulfilling its office, our whole body is full of light.” “If then your entire body is illuminated, it
will be wholly bright…”
Prov 15: 30 – “The light in the eyes of him whose heart is joyful rejoices the hearts of others…”
As the old adage goes : The eyes are the windows to your soul! Are there lights streaming from your windows? Are you so filled with love and light that you can rejoice the hearts of others?
Matt 5:14 “You are the light of
the world. A city set on a hill cannot
be hidden”.
You are part of the city of God. Collectively we are the light of the world. Imagine you drive to a look-out point one evening to look at the city lights, expecting light bursting brightly from every home, but all you see are a few dimmed lights hovering in the windows, barely reaching beyond the windowsills.
Your design is only partly what you see in your mirror. It’s about who you are, what you have to give. It’s your gifts, talents, character, personality, etc. Luke 11:40-41 – “Did not He Who made the outside make the inside also? But give [dedicate your inner self] as donations to the poor of those things which are within … “
Eph 1:18,19 – “ By having eyes of your heart flooded with light, so that you can know and understand the hope to which He has called you, and how rich is His glorious inheritance… “ “and so that you can know what is the immeasurable greatness of His power in and for us”
The world is filled with
the physically, emotionally and spiritually poor. If we are the light of the world, loving fully, understanding the depth of
grace fully, imagine the world we can help create! If we GET IT that love and grace are His immeasurable greatness
within us and if we understand the hope to which He called us, we can collectively become the city of light
on the hill that can not be hidden.
