Miss Athena said something cool the other day that I agree with when she said that God speaks to us in our own language. Not just the language of our mouths, but the language of who we are as a person. The language of how we think in our own unique ways.

This is a great example:

There is one item that I bought for the first time a million years ago at Book People in Austin that is still a huge favorite for me: the Kikkerland RainbowMaker. It is a crystal attached to a motor that is powered by sunlight. When the solar panel catches enough sunlight then the gears start turning and the crystal starts rotating. The rotating crystal acts as a prism that refracts the sunlight in order to create rainbows moving all around the room. I love it.

Well, God used the RainbowMaker to help me understand how these verses in John 1 relate to me:

“There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. This man came for a witness, to bear witness of the Light, that all through him might believe. He was not that Light, but was sent to bear witness of that Light. That was the true Light which gives light to every man coming into the world.”

He showed me that just like the crystal on the RainbowMaker cannot produce rainbows on it’s own, neither can I produce the works of God in and of myself by my own power. If you take the RainbowMaker crystal and put it in a dark room then you will see no rainbows. Without God, I am that crystal in the darkness. I have nothing inside of me on my own apart from God that is able to penetrate the darkness of this world.

When you look at a crystal by itself it just looks like a piece of glass. Like any other piece of glass. Nothing special about it. But when you hold a crystal up to the light then the sun shines through and creates beautiful rainbows. Similarly, on my own I am just another average human. But when God shines through me then people see His beautiful brilliance. If I remove myself from God and His presence then the impact of my life is very dull. I need to stay focused on and spend time with Him in order to soak up The Son and have Him shine through me.

Simarily, if I were to take the RainbowMaker crystal and cover it in mud then no rainbows would be produced even though the sun is still shining. Likewise, the sin in my life blocks The Son from my heart and from others seeing Him through me. When I repent and stop sinning then I clean up the junk that is between me and God and the result is that I feel His presence more and others also see Him working more through me.

God also used the RainbowMaker to show me that He doesn’t expect me to work up a bunch of my own light. If the crystal is dirty and covered up then no light can shine through it. He showed me that when I cover myself in sin, people don’t experience God shining through me. They only see my ugliness. My job is to not to shine my own light. My job is to keep myself clean from sin so The Son can shine through me.

When the crystal is in darkness, it is not able to generate any rainbows by itself. The rainbows are only made when the sun shines through the crystal. Similarly God showed me that before I was a true follower of Jesus, my heart was in darkness. There was and is nothing great about me in and of myself. The good that people now see comes from me being aligned with The Son, Jesus. When I am focused on Him then He shines His goodness through me and others see it.

This is a such a no-brainer for me. For the majority of my life I was very much a loner. I felt invisible to the world. People seemed to look right through me as if I didn’t exist. It was a good foundation for reducing the possibility of the attention I now receive from getting to my head. People say things like, “You’re popular, Sarah.” No, I have never been the popular one in and of myself. The only reason God gives me favor with people now is so He can shine through me. If I was to take the favor He has given me to advance my own selfish agenda then believe me, the audience would disappear with a quickness.