Speaking in the Light – 7-15

We are known to one another via the avenue of different relationships. To some I am your friend, to others I am an acquaintance, to even more I am a total stranger, and still to others I am part of the family, but to all who know me, I am definitely a unique presentation of God’s creative juices at work.
And believe it or not, so are you. The question I would like to pose today is simply this: “How much of the real you ever gets out from below the surface so that the true you may be seen and heard and understood and appreciated and most importantly loved?”
I think that to ever have an honest shot at discovering who you really are, you must not be afraid to admit to the world around you that you are going to march to a different drummer. You need to keep your feet from the heat of the beat that the majority might be attempting to keep time to.
Is what you see what you get? Are you trying to conform to the mold that society longs to squeeze its inhabitants into? Our intimidating culture shouts at us all too often, “Just shut up and get in line and keep your thoughts and ideas to yourself!” I love it when people decide that they are not going to play that tired game. I believe God loves it when his kids decide to make the maddening crowd one less crowded! I know that just settling in is one exercise of humanity that divinity never authorized as a quality to be championed.
Too many people in our day like to compartmentalize their lives. They say, “Here is the spiritual side of me and this is the secular side…” When you lean to that type of thinking, the tendency is to approach life playing many roles and wearing various masks. We allow our environment to dictate what flavor of our personality will come to the forefront on any given day. And it causes us to fall into the trap of saying things like, “This is the ‘church’ me and this is the ‘work’ me and this is the ‘family’ me and so on and so forth.” Living like that begs the question: “Which one is the real me?” For I am fearful that too many years of living like an actor on a variety of stages causes us to be confused enough that we don’t even know who we really are anymore.
I believe that everything we do is spiritual. I didn’t say that all of our behavior is good or pleasing to God. As a matter of fact, I believe that a decision to misuse the gift that we have been given with the one life that we’ve got is deeply a matter of the soul. The mistake that we make these days is that we attempt to substitute religion for genuine spirituality.
But all religion can do is force us into another predicament of playing a part that we don’t have the ingredients to pull off. I mean, I desire to please God but in the flesh I know that I am going to fall way short of that goal. So I can either allow the wrestling that needs to happen in my soul that I may someday arrive at a point where I am in an authentic relational communion with God to become part of my legacy – or I can take the short cut and just pretend like I have it all together.
There is no such thing as an EZ-pass ticket to inner peace. I would hope that you don’t buy into a form of transportation that will end up leading you nowhere.
God knows that we need to be transformed into becoming what we can not muster on our own. The Bible says in Romans 12:2, “Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is, His good, pleasing and perfect will.” The key word in that verse is “transformed.” We need metamorphosis. We need surgery from the inside out if we are ever going to be able to live in such the way that all we are is pleasing to God. The change can’t be external or it will not last. It must be internal if it is ever going to be a masterpiece that is eternal.
We must allow God to get into every nook and cranny and corner of who we are in the places in our heart. And while the process of supernatural regeneration is a miraculous work of the Holy Spirit, the process of us climbing into our new skin is the same struggle that occurs when a butterfly emerges from its cocoon. If we ever try to remove the challenge from the butterfly and externally help it to be set free from the outside, the butterfly will not only fall instead of fly, it will just flat out die!.
It needs to struggle so that it may soar never to be grounded anymore. Too many these days don’t struggle, they just settle and look to do and be just enough to get by.
It is no coincidence that the opposite of metamorphosis is our word masquerade. This means that we change our outward appearance only, covering up what we really are on the inside. And for way too many, that is all faith ever amounts to be, just something caught in a masquerade.
We go to church and look like we have it all together when in reality, we are falling a part at the seams because nothing is really as it seems. God wants us to not conform but to be transformed but for that to happen, we have to be willing to offer to him the real deal to work with and not some clever facsimile. This may be painful and it may not even make you popular but it will make your walk with God personal and practical and permanent, and it will give you the peace of mind that who you say you are is really who you really are.
Too often we blame everything around us for everything within us. Those who eventually discover life realize that the blame begins with you and me accepting the responsibility that we are not ever going to be what we want to be. There will be no perfect people allowed in heaven, only those who have allowed a complete God to take this incomplete humanity and save it by His grace.
Jesus didn’t come because we were already healthy. He knew that we were sick in our souls because we were attempting an outsider to do what only an insider could accomplish. Real change is initiated on the inside because everything we are is spiritual. Real change happens when we get honest enough to admit what is already true, and that is we can’t do this thing called life on our own.
The value of a life must be interpreted by its entirety. Have you ever watched an athletic wrestling match? Just when it may look like somebody is about to be pinned, one move can turn a loss into a win. And that one move for us may take years to come to fruition but it all starts with the first step of asking the One who designed you to be the one who defines you.
We can go on from here and foolishly look for our worth in the roles we play each and every day. But rather than looking around, maybe it is time to just look up. When the audiences of earth have walked out on our tired routines, there is still the audience of the One who loves us more than any one here ever did anyway and isn’t it what he thinks that matters most when all we have said and done has been said and done. I want to live to see and live to be more like my Lord because He’s changing me and if what you see today disappoints you, please don’t fret because the really good news to share is that God is not finished yet.
Write Pastor Rudy pastorrudytlc@comcast.net
.