Week Three: Learning to be real

"In every degree in which you are not real, you will dispute rather than come, you will quibble rather than come, you will go through sorrow rather than come, you will do anything rather than come the last lap of unutterable foolishness - 'Just as I am.'  As long as you have the tiniest bit of spiritual impertinence, it will always reveal itself in the fact  that you are expecting God to tell you to do a big thing, and all He is telling you to do is to 'come'....

...anything at all that will put the axe to the root of the ting which is preventing you from getting through.  You will never get further until you are willing to do that one thing."

~Oswald Chambers

To be real, to be transparent, should be the aim in my life...to be honest and vulnerable about my struggles and flaws.  Instead, I'd rather hide behind the front that says "I'm ok.  I'm doing well. Everything is fine."  But is that front really going to enable me to draw closer to God or will it keep me stagnate?

I read many accounts of brutal honesty in the Bible.  Honesty that could alienate.  The Gentile woman begging for her daughter's healing and then being compared to the dogs who eat scraps from the table...and yet she still has faith to be honest with Jesus (Mark 7:24-30).  The Samaritan woman who shouted throughout the town about what Jesus knew regarding her life (John 4:1-30).  The woman who dared to go into a crowd just to touch the hem of Jesus' robe.  And then when she was confronted about it, she was honest before Jesus AND the large crowd (Mark 5:21-34; Luke 8:43-48).

"The whole crowd heard her explain why she had touched him and that she had been immediately healed." (Luke 8:47)

What about the disciples in Acts, who spread the Good News while being mocked, ridiculed for being honest and real with people? 

Honesty is difficult.  It is risky.  But it is life changing and can loose the bonds which hold me captive.  To be honest and real first with God, after all He already knows it all, and then to allow Him to work on those areas that need refinement.  Then I need to be honest and transparent with others because that will produce a healthy life lived for Him, where His glory can shine through. 

In each of the examples, with the women and the disciples, God got the glory.  His name was praised.  People came to know Him because of the brutal honesty of the women and the disciples.  Transparency can create a beautiful testimony of a life lived only for Him. 

So instead of hiding behind my walls and facade of "I'm ok", I need to begin to be real with people...be honest, and share my struggles and share the pain so that His healing can occur and He can have the glory.

"I'd been hurt and scarred and banged around a bit in the past year, but God was using all those things to help me become real.  My stuffing was coming out because I'd been loved to tatters.  I was coming to understand that what it means to be real is to love and be loved until there is nothing left.  And when there's nothing left, and we feel we're all in pieces, God begins to make us whole.  He makes us real.  His love sets us free and transforms us."

~Katie Davis