Let's Be Real

My wife and I moved out of state a decade ago after I was offered a job in Colorado.  We were encouraged by friends to open a Facebook account to keep in touch, share a message or maybe a photo of our months old baby.   What a novel idea!

About 5-6 years ago, sometime after we moved back to Minnesota, we closed up shop on our Facebook account ( quit looking at it, deleted the photos, etc.) when we really started noting the one-uppers.  It really bothered me that everyone seemed to have it all together.  Amazing vacations, amazing toothpaste, amazing pets, amazing house, amazing cars, amazing parents, amazing siblings, amazing towns, amazing, amazing, amazing!!!

Maybe your circle of so-called “friends” share pithy comments and bible verse maxim’s that they found in their study or quote from an author or speaker, crafts they made, jelly they canned, deer they shot, surfing on vacation, etc.  Maybe your “friends” like mine, have it all together too?

No problems.  Life is peachy.  Kids are great.  House is clean.  Marriage is brilliant.  Kids are genius.  Dinner parties, dates, an amazingly faithful walk with the Lord, hearing His voice, finding His will!  (I hope that’s true!)

It really struck me one day when Kristen got off the phone with her really close friend from high school, her friend called to talk and was crying because she wanted to divorce her husband because she couldn’t “take it anymore”. 

Mere moments after that phone call, Kristen saw that her friend had posted something on Facebook to the effect of “Happy Anniversary to my amazing husband!” with a family picture with their two young sons, from the summer.

 Ohhh kayyy????

Not “I can’t take it anymore” or “Our marriage is broken” or “Can anyone help us?”  But so concerned that everyone think she has it all together.  Perfect.  No flaws.

I don’t have it all together.  I’m quicker to anger than I should be.  I have done a double take at something I should have kept my eyes away! (Guys!!  you know what I’m talking about!!)  I sometimes drive too fast.  I don’t ALWAYS read my bible as I know I should.  I lose patience.  I gossip.  

But I’m working on it.  Practice makes progress.  I want to be real with you and real with God, real with my wife, real with my kids.

You should have seen my kids eyes after I got upset with them for not listening, explaining I wasn’t perfect and explained to them having been cuffed in the back of a cop car!  I didn’t tell them the story, that part is inappropriate for their age, but a lesson will come when they are older.

We have family that are affected by root issues, things that we can see clearly in them and its our prayer that they see those roots still trying to maintain life within them.  Those roots need to die, to be chopped off.  I’m thankful that God sent his son and he died and I could just lose those bad roots within me.  There wasn’t any trying to “change” those roots, just His death to make me new.  He doesn’t want to bother with the old me.  The new me though … He’s all over that!  Yesssss!

During our latest sermon series on prayer (www.quarrychurch.com)   I’ve been working through the prayers in the Psalms.  Recently, I read chapter 139 and it has these verses that have now come up within my devotional … Psalm 139:23-24 “(23) Search me, God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. (24) See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.”

When I read that it led me to the thought … what am I not acknowledging to God?  Is there an area I struggle and I deceive myself, saying “I’ve got that!”?  Is there something that maybe I don’t see and I need God to bring that area to light?  So that is my prayer.  I know that I have areas where I struggle and I pray over those.  I pray that he help me to see the other areas that I have deceived myself, because God knows my true struggles.

What do you struggle with?  Do you pray for the things you don’t see?  God can see your thoughts and your actions, but you still give him a façade?