Paintbrush

God is love.

Love gives life.

Self is death.

Selfish cannot bring life or love.

Selfish only wants.

Love only gives.

God’s love is out of His goodness. Goodness, when it grows to completeness, is the love of God. God’s goodness makes possible His love. Love is born out of God’s goodness. If you can’t see the goodness of God you can’t experience His love.

Imagine you are a paintbrush. In your maneuvering to paint you wiggle about, dabble or roll yourself in some paint and then roll around or drag yourself across the canvas. Your perspective is limited by your height above the paper. You can barely see what you just painted over there. You masterpiece is as enjoyable as your vision presents. You can marvel at what is just below you around your wet bristles but the entirety of your work can only be seen by one positioned above the canvass. You are forever without complete perspective.

All of that changes when we surrender ourselves to God. Jesus shows us what it is like to be a God-held and guided paintbrush. God’s will for us is to love us and use our bristles to paint a loving mastery from His vantage point. If we are truly surrendered, then His loving strokes are unhindered and a work of divine art emerges from the canvass. When we surrender to His love He gently holds us, admires our craftsmanship, removes any old paint residue and begins to move us as only a master artist can. Periodically He steps back from His masterpiece to admire His work and we get to see from His perspective. Oh how amazing we gasp breathlessly.

Then back to the canvass. All the while we are aware of the strokes of the master, we see the beautiful choices of color, we yield to His desires but our gaze is fixed on His face. Such a wonder! Such brilliance and beauty! We are lost in His face, His looks, His admiration of His work and His graceful glances at us. We realize that this picture He is painting is not possible without us, the brush. We are overcome with joy that He would choose our bristles for His work of art.  We know that we know the master can be trusted. More than that, we crave to trust Him and yield to Him just to see what the next flurry of brush strokes will create. We begin to understand that this is what true love looks like.

God loves to love us. He loves to use us. He lives to create masterpieces with us. How can we not yield to that love?  It is time for us to stop painting on our own with our pitiful limited perspective. It is time to yield to the master and enjoy His loving embrace while He makes masterpieces of his love. That is surrender. That is “Your kingdom come your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”  Want to bring the Kingdom, surrender to the master.  Want to change the landscape of the planet, surrender to the creator.  Want to bring love to all those you meet, surrender to the artist of love.  Yep, that’s right HE is GOOD.

Yay God!

Lance