A Personal Devotional Journal

I invite you to journey with me. Sometimes we will look at short passages of Scripture and I will give my first thoughts and impressions. Other times, I will just share my thinking about spiritual issues. Always, you are welcome to comment and add your thoughts. Together, we could learn something.

Monday, August 28, 2017

1 Samuel 16:7 "The Way Things Appear"

Church is the one place in all the world where we ought to be able to be honest, where we should be able to be real. But this clearly is not the case.

In fact, religious people might be the worst people in the world when it comes to being honest about our true feelings and what is going on inside.

Unfortunately, almost every religious person I have ever met has bought into the lie that “real Christians never struggle with sin; real Christians don’t get scared or confused; real Christians don’t stumble; real Christians don’t get discouraged; real Christians don’t doubt. And if Christians ever actually do any of those things, they don’t show it.” 

We choose to believe that it is more spiritual to hide our fears and doubts and sins and anxieties and worries than to express them and expose them and deal with them. We will not allow anyone else to know that we have problems because they might think less of us spiritually. And we don’t want people to think less of us spiritually, so we buy the lie and bury the truth.

And if we do this, you see, we invariably end up leading a life that is focused on outward appearances instead of internal realities. It can’t work both ways. If how things appear, if how they look is what matters most to us, then how things really are cannot matter much. That’s what religion without relationship does. It seeks the approval of man.

1 Samuel 16:7  "The Lord does not look at the things people look at. People look at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.”

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