reflecting God

Letting go of your life and saying yes to God’s plans for you, starts with becoming a reflection of Him in your life. The real question is what is actually a reflection? Because I’m pretty sure we are all good at fake it till you make it and try to do everything ourselves and make it look like God has been working in you. In reality you’ve gotten to the end of yourself at some point and you are left with a burden too heavy to bear. Instead of operating out of the overflow of the Holy Spirit within you, you’ve been striving to be God in some way or area in your life and then you realize you haven’t been a reflection at all, but instead trying to do His work… In reality God does the work and we just say yes and are present for it, following where He leads. So, what is truly a reflection of God when we look at our lives? I’m still figuring that out, but I will share what I know about reflections and the funny picture they give us. But first, we have to let go of something, or what may feel like everything.

Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children. And walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God. But sexual immorality and all impurity or covetousness must not even be named among you, as is proper among saints. Let there be no filthiness nor foolish talk nor crude joking, which are out of place, but instead let there be thanksgiving. For you may be sure of this, that everyone who is sexually immoral or impure, or who is covetous (that is, an idolater), has no inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God. Let no one deceive you with empty words, for because of these things the wrath of God comes upon the sons of disobedience. Therefore do not become partners with them; for at one time you were darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Walk as children of light (for the fruit of light is found in all that is good and right and true), and try to discern what is pleasing to the Lord. Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them. For it is shameful even to speak of the things that they do in secret. But when anything is exposed by the light, it becomes visible, for anything that becomes visible is light.

Ephesians 5:1-14

First thing to remember is reflections shine light. In order to be God’s reflection in your life you have to lay down things of the dark, any and all sin that you actively participate in as well as any lies you tell yourself about your life. In Paul’s letter to the Ephesians above he’s addressing just a small handful of sin, but sin that I would say most people get caught up in the most often. The part I want to focus on really lies in being imitators of God, walking in love, and allowing ourselves to step into the light so God can pull the darkness from our backs. God wants to relieve you of the fake image you hold up of yourself to the world, and show Himself through you and then by extension let the world see who you were really created to be.

So lets talk about reflections in the most basic sense, because a good analogy goes a long way. I’ll start off by saying that to be the Father’s reflection, we must reflect Jesus, because Jesus reflected the heart of the Father perfectly. (Hebrews 1:3) Now we have the Holy Spirit within us to guide our souls and shape us in the image of Christ, so spiritually we want to reflect the image of Christ. Here’s a few dictionary definitions of reflection and being reflective….enjoy.

Those are just a few ways to look at the definitions of reflect, reflection and reflective. We will start with the first definition of reflection of bouncing light back without absorbing it. The word I want you to see here is that we are NOT MEANT TO ABSORB OR CARRY WEIGHT, only allow God’s plans and works to ‘bounce’ off of us and operate outwardly to the world around us. Second definition relates to reflection being a deep inward self awareness to develop a better understanding. God desires us to reflect inwardly to see Him and how He is working in us, and is shining light on all of our dark places. God helps us meditate on those ugly parts of our souls and will change them if we come to Him with reflective listening. Reflective listening is shown here by hearing, understanding, and letting the other know HE IS UNDERSTOOD. Active reflective listening to God is a TWO WAY street, also known as some good old listening prayer. God needs you to speak to Him about those places that need to be brought to the light. And He will focus all His attention on you while you speak, but He also requires that you focus on Him with your complete attention. This definition actually says that active listening requires using all five senses. God comes to us and speaks to us through all five senses, so your complete and total attention is vital to reflective listening with Him.

We now know what reflections by the dictionary standards are defined as, now on to mirrors and being light. We are called to be a mirror image of Christ and operate in the Light.

Mirrors are smooth for a reason, because they can’t reflect a perfect image without being smooth. The challenge is that we need to let God smooth out our rough edges instead of trying to cover them up with our own image we impart to the world. We can’t cover up our ugly, it always comes back, Satan’s a sneaky jerk that way. He’ll take your worst parts and keep bringing them to the surface no matter how deep you bury them. But God can heal those places, change those places, shine light on them with His own image and burn away the bad, so you shine the good. Melts that mirror and quiets that raging river to a tranquil place where only He can be seen. We can only reflect light when He is at work, because light is only reflected at the same angle as it hits the surface. God, you, then the world sees it, if you aren’t operating at the same angle as God, His image won’t be bouncing off you outwardly to the world. Light is also invisible in the dark, and reflections don’t exist in the dark, thats why God doesn’t live in the dark. We would never see Him, we only see Satan there. The ugliest darkest places of your heart, is where Satan is chilling hoping you will operate out of, because its easy, comfortable, and readily available. Satan tempts us with what is easy and usually ugly, but packaged as a beautiful bow. He distorts the view and creeps in until we are somewhere we didn’t want to be. Well God isn’t that way, God may bring initial pain, or something may seem impossible, but God wants to shine light on it, burning away the darkness. Burning hurts, but guess what it heals with growing something fresh and new. That old ugly, is gone, but first you may be presented with something hard.

So God brings light and bounces it off our eyes and we have to choose to look at it. Then we have to choose to do something with whatever we see, good or bad. That’s where God is at His best work, when we say YES to responding to Him in what He’s showing us. He wants to bring you to a place where you can be His mirror image. First we are usually seeing us as a mess in that mirror, whatever Satan’s flavor of the day is. A mirror image is a light print of you, not a reflection of you from the mirrors perspective. LET ME REPEAT THAT AGAIN. You ARE NOT a reflection from the mirrors current perspective, aka Satan’s uglies that He tells you and somehow identify with. A mirror image is a light print which is like looking at the bottom of a stamp and seeing that it is backwards and not understanding the full picture, it is distorted. In reality it is just our perspective, not God’s, and it just hasn’t been stamped on paper yet. We just don’t see God’s reality, His stamp, His print, us living in the light of Jesus blood on the page. WE ARE A LIGHT PRINT OF GOD, stamped with the redemptive blood of Jesus Christ, not Satan’s ugly reflection of you that he shows you in the mirror.

I’ll close with this, be the Father’s reflection. Do not strive to run ahead making your own path, because that is not where God is. When we run ahead we blur His reflection, and then we can’t truly see Him, just some messy version of ourselves we try to clean up when we slow down enough to look. You also can’t go dumping weight on that reflection, like throwing rocks in the water or at the mirror. We aren’t to carry the weight of God’s mission and calling He has on our lives. When we pick up ‘rocks’ we get weighed down and once again mess up our view of God and start to become tired looking for Him and only seeing ourselves. Then we prop ourselves up on our own strength and try to cover up our shortcomings and tend to revert to our sinful nature. We can’t help it, because we weren’t created to carry the burden of our identity, life, and future, and when we do, we self sooth with some ugly lies and ideas. Don’t distort your view of the Father by running ahead or carrying the weight of your identity. Just reflect Him, that is enough; it was enough for Jesus, and look at the life He lived, total badass. He died so we would have the same opportunity to shine for a Heavenly Kingdom, even when we screw it up. So shine on, reflect God, and be a light print. That was enough for Jesus, so it is enough for you too. He didn’t put His worth, value, or identity anywhere else.

Therefore, having this ministry by the mercy of God, we do not lose heart. But we have renounced disgraceful, underhanded ways. We refuse to practice cunning or to tamper with God’s word, but by the open statement of the truth we would commend ourselves to everyone’s conscience in the sight of God. And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing. In their case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. For what we proclaim is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, with ourselves as your servants for Jesus’ sake. For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.

2 Corinthians 4:1-6