Be Like Fireflies

God gave me the best illustration!
Ok, so some (most) of our backgrounds are a bit shady, or tumultuous. Definitely not made of the stuff you want to pass along to anybody!

Perhaps you are thinking that you are just a nobody–no one particularly special. Yeah, yeah, so were the disciples, if you will–a bunch of mis-matched, regular guys who were highly independent and doing just fine, thank you very much!

And then God chose them, shook them up by turning their lives upside down, instructed and spoke life into them, and they became a bunch of ex-nobodies spreading the message of Jesus all over the place! So puh-lease, that argument is not going to fly right here, today. 

Say it with me, “I’m NOT a ‘nobody’!”

Many of us have pastors, teachers, and ministers in our lives, but we can’t leave the mission of shining God’s light to them. We are all chosen. Called from darkness into His marvelous light. Why? So we would broadcast His glorious wonders throughout the world.

Doesn’t that sound like “touch the lives of those around us”? Carry His light to those we come in contact with?

So get this illustration that came to me…
We are to be somewhat like a bunch of fireflies sparking all over the place. If God’s reflected glory in us could be seen with the physical eye, that’s what it would look like! A beautiful field of fireflies.

My curiosity led me to look up how fireflies glow and I found lots of information. As I am prone to do, I’m going to make a spiritual connection to this illustration that God dropped into my brain. 

Let me talk about oxygen for a minute. We must have it to live. It’s our very breath. God breathed life into Adam (and all of us at birth). He breathed the Holy Spirit into His disciples. Ok, to make this connection simple, would you agree that God could be said to be the very oxygen we need?

So, fireflies have chemicals in their bodies. Guess what? They must add oxygen to these chemicals in order to glow!! See where I’m going? They must take in oxygen (which then mixes with other stuff inside them) in order to glow. Without oxygen they can’t. Glow. 

See? I so totally love how God gave me this picture! Let me spell it out for you in case you haven’t had your morning coffee yet.

Without God’s breath in us, can we glow? Can we reflect God’s glory?
Without the Holy Spirit can we fulfill our calling?

Of course not. So then why would we try to do this life all on our own, in our own strength? We must have God’s presence (breath–oxygen) in our lives!

Scriptures:
1 Peter 2:9 But you are a chosen people that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light. 
Genesis 2:7 Then God formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and the man became a living being.
John 20:22 He (Jesus) breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the holy Spirit.”
2 Corinthians 3:18 But we all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord.