It’s been a long season of letting go and stripping down. It’s been a time of pruning and preening, until all the old feathers are removed and the old eagle remains perched, cold, vulnerable, and flightless. It’s a time of humility and powerlessness. It’s a time whereby I’ve become blind, deaf, and mute. I long for even the faintest whisper from the Almighty; a glimpse of his existence, and acknowledgement of my prayers.
It’s a time where others are making my decisions, not because I am a king (my time of reigning has deminised) but, because God’s interest are sonship and not kingship at this time in my life. God must have his way, or I will become too strong, too hardened, and too important. While my flesh yearns for such strength, independence, and self-importance; yet, His Spirit calls me heavenward.
So, I am sent back into the womb; into seclusion; into the hands of God to be reformed, kneaded, and made pliable, until my obedience becomes instinct, and my quality becomes refined. The purest gold is crystal clear and what we call beautiful, God calls dross.
In our human fragility and stubbornness, we cease the process of humility way too early. If it’s our own deconstructing and demolition, we blame it on the devil. If it is a friend or neighbor facing such travails, we jump in to save and to fix, and so short-circuit God’s best work in them. As singer/songwriter, Jill Phillips has so artfully penned into song,
“…God is both the builder and wrecking ball.”
And this truth gives good reason I cling to hope; amazingly, through it all, our God is in control. My deconstructing can be a good thing, if it is God swinging the wrecking ball.
Religious-populace thought, has dwarfed my perception and need for God. The extractible biblical principles and acquirable blessings “by cause and effect,” granted me the promised land of goodies without intimate relationship with Yahweh. I have become an idolater and have joined the ranks of “Christians,” who have reformed and refashioned their gold and silver into objects of worship. We call it “Yahweh,” and have found a way to satisfy our itch for deity worship and maintain our addiction to sin.
We’ve even learned to worship our worship! And crave “the anointing” more than the Anointer.
We’ve convinced ourselves and others that God as “Love,” trumps God as Justice, Holiness, and Righteousness. Oh, but how many of us do cry out for true justice, righteousness, and holiness?
Mainstream Christianity has reinvented God. He’s become a benevolent and tolerant God, full of winks, giggles, and thumbs-up at our sins.
So, I’ve been quiet and introspective. I’ve taken a look under the hood and it’s time for rebuilding and rethinking. Twenty-first Century Christianity is finally equivalent to First Century Phariseeism, only without the dark and flowing robes and phylacteries.
We’ve convinced ourselves that observances and the mastering of principals and rote make us acceptable to God. We are all white on the outside, but dead and dirty on the inside. We shut our ears and mouths to our own inner immorality and conflict; we direct the attention of others to our outward achievements and ministry appointments. We protect our own duplicity at the cost of our own identity.
We prefer to live in the shadows; not too much in the light or too much in the darkness. In the end, it is God we must convince, and He sees through our masks and into our hearts. There are no shadows with the Almighty!
We’ve become the generation who’d see to the arrest of Jesus; treat him as an imposter, a fake and a phony; his presence an annoyance, and his outspokenness a disturber of our traditions. We’d cast him out of our carpeted and high-tech sanctuaries and chase him and his homeless faction back to 73rd and West MacArthur.
We simply would not recognize Jesus of Nazareth, nor agree with his lifestyle and “unsuccessful demeanor” and lack of corporate-ness.
I’m on a quest to find the simplicity of what Jesus taught. To archeologically excavate and rediscover what decades of religious debris has covered over, like the sands of time.
So, that’s what has been going on in the inside. The outside is a different story. It must be mastered, or it will become my master. And this is my battleground. It’s an ancient battle fought by many, and won by so precious few. My prayer is to join the few, by relying on God’s grace and power, through Jesus Christ.
Our Sunday morning masquerading must come to an end. The pretense and fakery must be replaced with humility and honesty, or else we’ll become master Pharisees. We must capture our first love again and shed our sophisticated and false adult-selves and become God’s children again.
God wants us as we are and not what we pretend to be. Jesus didn’t come for fakers or liars, but for the broken and humble.
Pretenders pretend that their sins and shame are covered behind their false personas. Their so-called salvation is their masquerade, which, by the way, only assures them a full dance card outside with sweaty dogs and demons.
“Blessed are those who wash their robes. They will be permitted to enter through the gates of the city and eat the fruit from the tree of life. Outside the city are the dogs—the sorcerers, the sexually immoral, the murderers, the idol worshipers, and all who love to live a lie.” – Revelation 22:14-16
I pray, that we as a redeemed people, can leave all the religious fakery behind and get back true redemption and rejoin God in redeeming this world. Because, if you haven’t noticed, this world is headed full speed towards hell.
Blessed are those that remove their masks and cease their love affair with living a lie.
My prayer is that God will also help you fail at your masquerade. Amen
Call To Courage 