EncouragHER

Stained Glass Lives: How God's Light Illuminates Our Brokenness

Joanne Sharp Episode 180

Reach out! I’d love to hear from you!

What happens when decorating for a women's ministry event turns into a profound spiritual revelation? Join us for a heart-warming exploration of how stained glass becomes the perfect metaphor for our spiritual lives.

Joanne Sharp takes us on her journey from Pinterest rabbit holes to divine inspiration, discovering that stained glass—unlike any other art form—requires light to pass through it to achieve its full beauty. This simple fact unlocks a powerful truth: we are like pieces of stained glass, each uniquely shaped and colored by our experiences, yet dependent on God's light shining through us to radiate His glory.

The custom-made illuminated cross becomes a centerpiece not just for the event, but for understanding our connection to each other. When one piece of glass cracks or breaks, the surrounding pieces hold it in place. Similarly, even in our darkest moments, our sisters in Christ alongside us provide strength, support, and an unbreakable connection to the source of light.

From Genesis where God first created light to Revelation where His radiance eliminates the need for sun or lamps, Joanne guides us through Scripture's consistent message of divine illumination. Jesus declared Himself the light, then called us to be light-bearers too. This gives us reason to sing even in darkness, knowing His unfailing love continually illuminates our path.

Whatever shadow you're facing today, remember that God's light transforms brokenness into beauty. Together, we become a living stained glass masterpiece—colorful testimonies to God's redemptive work. Subscribe to hear more inspirational messages that help you find light in life's darkest corners and join a community of women supporting each other in faith.

Now get out into the world and be a woman who intentionally encourages another!

#women #podcast

Speaker 1:

Hi ladies, hi ladies, come on, it's 1 o'clock. Last year it was 9 am. That was okay, but no, it's 1 o'clock. My name's Joanne Sharp.

Speaker 1:

If I haven't met you, I get to serve here as Women's Ministry Director Huge blessing in my life and lots of women in my life as well because of it. So happy to see your face today. This is one of our favorite days around here. It's just amazing to see what God does, and we would love to hear afterwards from you about what God does. So if you want to keep it with you and God, that's fine, but if you're willing to share, please email me and let me know what God does today. We'd love to hear that. It blesses us immensely.

Speaker 1:

So I don't know if you're like me, but this event my favorite part of this event is the decor, and I get a little too into it. You can ask anyone on the team or my husband. That is true. I start thinking about it like this will end tomorrow, I'll start thinking about next year and I have a Pinterest page for whatever event we're doing and I just you know add things to it throughout the year. So I don't know again if you're like me, but I tend to go down rabbit holes and spend way too much time on Pinterest. So maybe that's like Facebook or Instagram for you. For me it's Pinterest. It gets me every time.

Speaker 1:

And as I was doing that, we were starting to prepare and plan and when Ginny Owens, you know, said yes, thankfully, I got her book and immediately on the cover of her book it's like a black cover. Oh, I think if you guys put the first slide up, they'll see a little taste of it. It's a black cover and it has flowers on it and I don't know why. Well, it was God, but at the moment I didn't know why. I saw stained glass and I told Ginny that and you'll get to meet her, she's very sweet and she was like that's so cute. That's not what I was thinking at all. She said it way nicer than that. But I was like, oh, cool, so. But she said run with it. I love that, you know, singing in the dark stained glass, yeah, I could see that.

Speaker 1:

So we did run with it and as I was, you know, like I said, rabbit trail, rabbit hole, whatever it's called researching stained glass, I hope I one day get to be on Jeopardy and like the final question is on stained glass, because I know really unnecessary things about stained glass now, including how to make stained glass, because what the Lord did in my heart is he gave me this vision for a glowing cross. So I was all over Pinterest glowing cross and most of it's like little kid, you know crafts and I saw a really beautiful, cool acrylic glowing cross and I was like I said to the team this might sound crazy, but here we go. You know, this is what God does and we started this journey and he had something far more beautiful in mind. A woman named Rachel and her husband, josh, made this cross for us and this is like the most amazing cross. If you had seen mine. Okay, I'm just grateful that God didn't allow me to continue on with my stained glass cross.

Speaker 1:

But as I was researching, really one detail of stained glass really stood out to me and I felt like Pinterest began to preach to me. And that sounds cheesy, but it's true, because when you make stained glass, it's the only art form that requires light to be transmitted through it, where most artwork, if this makes sense, bounces off of the artwork and your eye catches it or it absorbs, but stained glass it's called transmitted light. So the light comes from behind or another source. Okay, and this is where I started to preach, and this is where I started to preach I'm not preaching, but Pinterest was Another source is required for the stained glass to be effective and for the stained glass to radiate. And I was like, wow, that's really incredible knowing what we're going to do here today.

Speaker 1:

God is our light and Ginny talks about that in her book, that his love is what illuminates our life. And I started to see this cross really differently. First of all, it was just getting exponentially better than my original vision day by day. But also I started to see us as sisters, as believers of God, as this cross. We're all different shapes, we're all different sizes, we've all had different things color our life or add filters to the way we see the world. A lot of that does come through hard things and darkness and we're going to talk a little bit about that, ginny's going to talk a little about that. But what a gift that we have a love, a light. That is God that illuminates our dark places. And here we are together and this is actually aluminum. But Scripture says that iron sharpens iron, that as sisters in Christ, we can strengthen each other, build each other up, even correct each other, if needed, in love. So I may never. So let's say I'm going to choose this one here. This is me, okay. Maybe this is you. Maybe we never actually ever interact in life, maybe our stories never collide, but we share the same spirit, right? And let's say I broke, I had a season where I got a crack or I broke. I'm still held up by my sisters around me and by the Lord.

Speaker 1:

In John 15, it talks about the vine. We're going to talk about that later today. And if you know what a trellis looks like, what vines hang on, it looks like a cross and I started to see these lines as like almost vines, like we're all clinging to the cross together and together we shine for God. And we do that differently. Our lives are different, our stories are different. Our stories are different. Our personalities are different. You don't all go down hours of Pinterest rabbit holing like I do, but we're different and God is going to use all of us and he is using all of us. And today we get to shine together. And he said to me remember this light has always been there.

Speaker 1:

In Genesis, genesis 1-3, it says Let there be light, and there was. He created light. He is the creator of light, he is light himself. We see in Exodus where Moses is with God, on Mount Sinai, where they're writing the commandments, and after Moses is with God, he's glowing with light because it's the glory of God that's shown upon his face. So this light, this glory, we get to bask in this today as you go through scripture.

Speaker 1:

Running further along into the New Testament, we hear that John the Baptist came as a witness to the light. He wasn't Jesus, but he came as a witness for Jesus to the light. He wasn't Jesus, but he came as a witness for Jesus, who was referenced as the light. Then Jesus himself, while he walked the earth, said I'm the light, I'm the truth on the way, and then he started calling us the light. So we have this light inside of us now that he left his Holy Spirit, his helper, here with us. It's inside of us, it dwells inside of us. We get to shine for him. Even if we have cloudy, stained glass lives, he can shine through us. So I know some of you are here with hard, dark seasons. I've been there. I might be there tomorrow, but we have a reason to sing when you get to Revelation, at the end, where it talks about the future.

Speaker 1:

I was really struck by this and this is the last thing I'll say. I'm talking too long. Revelation talks about the end of times and the new Eden, the new Jerusalem that is to come, the restored Eden, and it talks about the city. And it's so cool If you think about my rabbit hole, stained glass journey. The foundation of this city is layers of colors, of jewels that represent the 12 tribes from the original tribes, and it's colorful, clear jewels, and it says the streets are like clear glass. I was like it kind of sounds like heaven's like stained glass how cool.

Speaker 1:

But then it says that his love will be with us and all around us and singing, and there'll be glory and there'll be light and we won't need the sun and we won't need lamps. Right, he says his word is our lamp to light up our path. We won't need that anymore because we'll be in his presence and we'll all be glowing together. So that's reason to sing, right, am I right? Come on, it's one o'clock, so I just want to encourage you that we know we're going through maybe some hard things. We're here to pray with you, to hug you, just to give you space for that. That's welcome here. We can also be joyful and have a good time together. So let's shine together today and enjoy Ginny. We're so grateful she's here and I'm going to just end with the lyrics of her song called Sing in the Darkness, and then we're going to worship God unfailing, never changing your love illuminates. You're the lamp that lights the way. God unfailing, never changing your love illuminates. We lift our hearts and praise.

People on this episode