Authentic

Pss. 50:15 “And call upon me in the day of trouble: I will deliver thee, and thou shalt glorify me.”

Do you know what it means to be authentic in your faith?

If we live in Christ, if we live our true identity our community, our world will never be the same. That is the message Jesus gave to Paul and Paul delivered to Ephesus. He wanted us to be authentic in what we show the world. If we are authentic then the world sees our unified Light. The more light that shines, the more illuminated the world will be during the dark times.

I often hear, “I can’t believe you wrote that, that you just put all of you out there.”

My response is, “It’s my truth.” That my friends is my authenticity. I am who I am and I don’t hide behind false bravado. If Jesus himself came knocking on my door, would someone else answer? He would see through me, He sees through everybody’s mask.  Would I put on a mask and pretend to be someone I’m not? Would I hide all the dirty dishes? No, because there are none. What He would see is the real me, just as He sees me every day. Not that He cares if you have dirty dishes, he would see you trying to hide them and your feelings of embarrassment and being caught unaware that He was coming.

Can everyone say that they were prepared for His visit? No? You attend church on Sunday, then come home, kick off your shoes and pop open a bottle or can of some booze and then go to the web and just accidentally fall upon the pornography or undesirable sites? You feed yourself junk and that includes the hate and disgust of the world until the next Sunday comes around when you put on that ‘Sunday face’ again? You then repeat the same thing over and over until each Sunday comes around? That is not being authentic.

Let me tell you another thing about me I’ll just toss out there; life’s tough. There is no easy road to being a person who is authentic in nature, God loving. That road is full of debris that hinders the path so going along smoothly becomes a rocky road and I don’t mean cheesy peasy ice cream easy, either. You might say, “What? Are you telling me you’re Miss Perfect?” And I’ll tell you right up front, in no uncertain terms, I AM NOT perfect, I am authentic! I wait for His coming and I prepare myself daily for His arrival.

Let’s say for example if you bumped into someone from Church in the grocery store, would you be the same person they see on Sunday? Suppose you have booze in your cart, would you feel uneasy, ashamed, proud, what? Let’s say a person from Church stopped by your house on a Wednesday unannounced, would you scurry to hide your mess? Would you pretend you’re not home because your place isn’t ‘acceptable’ to look at? 

Think about that seriously. Are you the same person sitting in church on Sunday as the person sitting at home the rest of the week? Yes I stumble, I fall, I skin my knees but sin is not something I commit willingly and usually I’m right up front about my sin; for some reason, hiding doesn’t seem to work. God sees all, so why hide behind a mask? If the truth is out there then it becomes easier to heal, easier to walk the path of authenticity because you’re exposed.

Nobody (except a doctor) likes to see an open wound. No one likes to share the open wound because it feels like you’re seeking self-pity. I like to put my open wounds out there to find healing. “See this scar? That was a wound that’s healed!” 

There are so many non-authentic people in the world the darkness is overloading the system. It’s like a bad virus that has corrupted the files. We want to choose a good cleaner for our system, we want the best anti-virus protecting us but our bad choices often lead us to damage the entire system. 

The authentic Christian chooses Christ to be his/her healer cleanser on a daily basis, not just a Sunday visit. It doesn’t work that way. Can you imagine turning off your firewall, your anti-virus protection on the computer every day of the week except Sunday? The vile, decrepit, sinister beast that will eventually expose your true nature will attack you. You have to have true authentic protection on a daily basis for the armor to hold up in your weaker moments.

This is MY story. This is MY authenticity shining through. Every person is different and has a different level of security set up. My choice is Christ. Has it stopped me from being attacked? Has God blanketed me from all pain? Nope, He sure hasn’t but He HAS been the one who's healed me. The only one who was there with a Kleenex to dry my tears. The only one who dove into my system to take away the crud; charges me up and emits a light that everyone sees. THAT is my authenticity in Christ shining through. 

May the lit umbrella of the Lord become your authentic nature and shine through you all! 

God bless

Eph. 6: 5-6 “Servants, be obedient to them that are your masters according to the flesh, with fear and trembling, in singleness of your heart, as unto Christ;

Not with eyeservice, as menpleasers; but as the servants of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart;”

Going Deeper with God

Isa 33:19 “Thou shalt not see a fierce people, a people of a deeper speech than thou canst perceive; of a stammering tongue, that thou canst not understand.”

Going Deeper with God

My New Year desktop image is of a sunrise peeking over the horizon. The words on the page are Happy New Year; Go deeper with God this year. I chose this image because every morning I wake and see the sunrise in a new light. This is my hope for this year, that I may see God in a new light also, instead of the same old God that I’ve spent time with in years past.

The same old God, you might ask? Sometimes we get too comfortable with our knowing God and sometimes we need to be shaken out of our comfort zone to see Him in a new light. We go through the motions day after day, read our bible in the same old way, get cozy within our skin and continue on our path of sin because, well we’re comfortable in knowing that we’ll be forgiven. 

This comfort zone should scare many. When you get too comfortable, God usually throws something out there to shake you up a bit, to wake you up and say wait a minute! I found this to be true thirteen years ago when I was too comfortable in my marriage and my relationship with God. So comfortable I allowed myself to be used and abused so much so I became a broken shard of glass seeking anything to save me and put me back together.

My family was consumed with their own lives to worry about lil ol me and God gave me the shake up of my life that would alter who I was and who I was about to become. No, God doesn’t send you a married man but he does witness a broken soul and will bring two broken souls together to become one fixable piece of artwork, His work. 

Pastor Mike said something that struck me. Someone had asked him why God protected her while not protecting others. He said, ‘because you’re a child of God, the other person had nothing to do with Him.’

When we become a child of God, we fall under the protection of a Father, a heavenly Father who will watch over us from above. Just like our dad on earth, we become too comfortable in knowing he’ll take care of us when we get in trouble but when God calls him home, we feel we’re out here on our own depending solely on God to protect us. He is our only resource.

Our mother is the nurturer while our father is the strength we turn to in our time of need. If our father has passed away, we rely on God to be our strength when we need Him. Again, we tend to get too comfortable figuring He’ll bail us out; sin or no sin, He’s got our back. 

With all of the deaths happening recently, it had me thinking, was God protecting those people from all the evil in the world and were they children of God? I don’t know, which gives rise to my second question, are they all basking in the glory of Heaven? Had they gotten so comfortable with their belief in God that they forgot to think of Him in recent months before their death?
This is why we need God daily and not just casual weekly visits to a church. This weekly visit does not absolve you of the daily need to bring Him into your day. We need to go deeper with God and that doesn’t mean memorize scripture verses, post more Godly memes or try to appear to be one with God. Going deeper with God means just that, to know Him deeply, understand His ways, live His truth and be like the Son he sent to die for you. When you get too comfortable, you begin to show signs of straying.

When I see people rambling on with hate in their mouths and conveying negative thoughts I think what that person must be suffering from. Why does he or she hold onto so much hate and ignorance while claiming to love God? I never understood the imbalance that goes on in the world and as * I * go deeper with God, I can see that even He scratches His head watching his kids destroy this beautiful creation.

Even as He placed a warm blanket of protection over me many years ago, I still fall and His fatherly strength picks me up and moves me along the way. As I shuffle forward, I realize I am going deeper with God, in meaning, in understanding, in hope and in faith. 

1 Peter 4:10, "Each of you should use whatever gift you have received to serve others, as faithful stewards of God’s grace in its various forms." (NIV)