i'm done being fake. corinthians says (in so many words) 'i don't want anyone to think any more highly of me than what they can actually see in my life and in my message.' and what they see had better be real. but unfortunately it's very often not. it's so easy to think of the 'christian life' as trying to look like you're perfect and making no mistakes because it would reflect badly on god. ha--whatever. he's plenty powerful enough that he doesn't need us posing for people to think highly of him. no that's just what i keep thinking i need. we aren't perfect. we never will be on this earth. if we were perfect then there would be no need for GRACE. grace is the fact that god LOVES us so much despite all the horrible things we do..if somehow we were made perfect when we became a christian then grace wouldn't even exist and god would be a liar by saying he gives it. besides, perfection is unattainable. if we're trying to tell people about the LOVE that this god has for us and them but that they can only get it if they're 'oh so perfect and holy' like us (riiiight)...they're just going to turn right around and walk away. they can't be perfect. and neither can we. so why are we pretending? we all have messes that we try to hide. that we don't want people to see because 'then what would they think of us??' but people aren't attracted to perfection, they're attracted to reality. people want to hear stories. if we have all of these things that god has helped us through, all these messes that god has cleaned up, then tell people! if we don't it just makes us fake...living lives that don't reflect our experiences and the things we've learned. how will holding all of these things inside help anyone? if we keep them in, or leave god out of the picture, then we're taking the glory for something that god's done. let him have it- he did all the dirty work. we couldn't have cleaned it up on our own. if you're trying to tell someone about this god who LOVES us and them more than anyone on this earth ever could, they're not gonna want to hear some generic bible story. sure those are effective in teaching later on but people want to hear YOUR stories. how do you know that god loves you? how has he helped you in your life? what has happened to prove his reality to you? if we open up and share our stories and the role god's played in them, others are more likely to say 'wow that person is really honest...but this god guy has really helped them out. i'm going through some tough stuff like that...i wonder if he could help me out too." that's what sharing the love of christ is all about. truth. experiences. telling people our stories. not saying that we're perfect or that we ever will be, but that yeah, we've messed up and will continue to mess up until the day we die but god loves us so much that it's okay, and he wants to walk with us every step of every day, giving us hope for this life...and on to the next. so this leaves us with a choice. we can hold on to all the messiness that we're trying to hide and that are weighing us down more every day, or we can let it all go with a huge sigh of relief and know that god will take care of it, clean us up if we let him, and use it to show others this aweseom love and grace that he has for us. so how dare we try to put on this jumping through hoops act to give the world a fake sense of god. he created the universe...he's plenty self-sufficient. he loves us because he wants to, but he knows that we're human, we're on the earth, and we're not perfect. if we can't fool god, why should we try to fool anyone else? he's the only one that matters anyway.
"melt me away till only you remain"
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