Honesty with Ourselves

When Lila came to Christ, she was told that she was a new creation…that all the old things should pass away. She was to be strong in the Lord and have faith and to stop thinking about herself so much and serve others.

She believed on Jesus and believed His Word to be true, so why was it that she was still miserable inside? Why did certain habits and struggles not disappear when she quoted Scripture? Why was she failing just as miserably as a believer as she was before she’d met Jesus?

When Lila ever got the courage to share these concerns with her Christian friends or trusted leaders, they often would imply that the problem was her commitment to spirituality.

She wasn’t studying the Bible enough. She wasn’t praying enough. She wasn’t quoting Scripture enough. She didn’t have enough faith. She needed to ignore her feelings more and just believe what God said. She needed to come to more services and serve in more ministries.

She took countless trips to the altar and begged God to make her a better Christian. She stood in circles of Christians as they laid hands on her and begged God to make her a better Christian. She’d even had a couple of people try to cast a demon out of her.

Still, she struggled with feelings of worthlessness, shame, and despair.

After a while, Lila stopped searching for an answer and just decided that she would fake it. She continued to do all the “Christian things”…go to church, memorize Scripture, volunteer where there was a need, use “Christianeze” when appropriate, loudly condemn sin, and join in with the “Amens” to whatever the crowd was “Amening” that week.

But she locked her struggles away in a private closet, and put on a “perfect Christian” costume for the outside world. When she prayed, she put on that same costume and tried to be as holy as she could before God, so He wouldn’t beat her up too bad.

Lila’s problem actually had nothing to do with her spirituality or the effectiveness of the Word of God. Lila’s problem was that she’d failed to be honest when she’d come to Christ.

It had been implied by the people who’d modeled Christianity for her that the way to become a “good Christian” was to follow all the rules, avoid sin at all costs, and serve selflessly in whatever capacity they needed her to. To join the club, she needed to walk Biblically, talk Biblically, and act Biblically whether she understood and believed everything or not.

The people who’d led her to Christ believed that Jesus was kinda like Cinderella’s fairy godmother. He waved His wand over people and “poof” they were this magically new and perfect person. This expectation led them to harshly judge anyone who didn’t abide by all the Biblical rules from day one.

But Lila had years of ugliness piled up inside of her. She’d come from an abusive home and had experienced much loss before she was old enough to realize it was loss. This unresolved pain had led her into a myriad of sinful behaviors and methods of escape that allowed her to survive and cope with it.

When she’d come to Christ, it had been because people had told her that He could wash her clean and make her brand new. That was exactly what she wanted…for all of this “stuff” to go away.

When it didn’t change much after her conversion experience, she assumed that God was rejecting her. She knew she wasn’t good enough, so it didn’t surprise her that He would. Her new Christian family added to this deception by pushing her into more good works and implying she struggled because she wasn’t doing it right.

The truth is that Lila was actually bypassing an honest relationship with God with a façade of spirituality.

“Spiritual bypassing” is just a term that counselors use to describe dishonesty with ourselves as Christians. We often use God’s own Words to cover up our deeply rooted issues and to avoid dealing with the reality that is our own broken, sinful hearts.

Salvation isn’t magic. It doesn’t turn us from “broken us” into “perfect us”.

Rather, salvation is only the foundation, the first step in God’s redemptive work in us (Phil 2:12-13).

At salvation, we receive forgiveness, justification (just as if we’d never sinned), and the Holy Spirit into our hearts (Jn 1:12-13; Eph 1:13-14). What we don’t get is the removal of our memories, a miraculous change in what has happened to us prior to salvation and our current circumstances, or even a guarantee that we won’t face more hard stuff.

This isn’t an image of God turning a dirty, raggedy Cinderella into a beautiful, glorious princess so she can go to the ball and live happily ever after, rather this is the image of a massive restoration project. We are broken down houses. God purchases us so that He can renovate us. (Tit 2:11-13)

In keeping with this image, we have to remember that God is the holder of the design. Only He has the master plans for the project (Ps 139:16). It’s not going to turn out the way it is supposed to if we follow any other plans. We can’t make up our own. We can’t borrow someone else’s. We can’t fall in line with anyone who comes by and claims they have a better, faster, cheaper way than God’s. We will only ever be what He has created us to be if we follow His plans.

But even in following His plans, there is some demo that has to happen. We have all these walls built in the wrong places. We have plumbing that leaks and mold growing in our basement. Our electrical systems are hazardous. There is so much work to do BEFORE He can ever get to the rebuilding. This isn’t an overnight process. This is a process that takes time. (Phil 1:6)

Do you know what determines if God will be allowed to work His plan in us or not?

Our honesty.

Are we willing to face our past and what it’s made us? Are we willing to let Him tear down some walls and rip up some old flooring?

Or will we slap a little bit of paint on our exterior and walk around as if He’s already done all the work, even though we are still a complete mess inside?

The only way to get the project done is to be honest…fully, completely honest.

What did God give us to help us to be honest?

Our feelings.

Yes, I’m telling you that, as a Christian, your feelings are important.

Emotions are gifts from God. They point us to the good and the bad lurking inside of us. Shutting them down and ignoring them are ways to make ourselves sick, not well.

Instead, we need to bring those honest emotions to God.

Let me give you an example from my own life.

I have, at many times in my life, had a problem with jealousy. Instead of allowing God to renovate this problem, every time the feelings of jealousy would creep up in me, I would think “that’s sinful. I need to stop that. Candace, you are such a bad person to feel jealous of this person right now.”

Did that lead me to end my problem with jealousy? No. It actually just made me believe that I was a horrible person. I shamed myself out of feeling jealousy for that moment, but jealousy would rear its ugly head again and again and again.

When I started to apply this concept of honesty, instead of shaming my jealousy, I asked myself, “Why am I feeling jealous right now, Lord? What is this in me that keeps popping up?” The Holy Spirit began to open my eyes to my fear of being replaceable. I don’t want that person to do better than me because that might mean that I’m worthless.

Now, I can deal with the root of the issue…my belief that it’s my performance that gives me value. When I started working on this core belief and letting the Holy Spirit teach me truth here, I came to know deep inside of me that I am no more or less valuable than any other human on earth. My worth is based on the fact that I am a creation of God, made in His image, placed here for His purpose. No one can give to that or take away from it.

God is still building this wall of truth into my house, but He couldn’t do that until He’d broken down the wall of jealousy that I was protecting with my deception of myself. Shame was never going to rid me of jealousy. It’s actually only truth that sets us free.

It’s the same with any other negative emotion…anger, sadness, grief, fear…they are all pointing to something inside of us that needs God’s renovation. Stop shaming yourself and instead ask God “Why?”. “Why am I angry?” “Why am I afraid?” “Why am I grieved?”

It might be that your emotions are entirely valid and need to be listened to and addressed. We are angry sometimes because we are being wronged. We are afraid sometimes because we are in a dangerous place. We are grieved sometimes because we’ve lost something dear to us. These are things that need to be processed and maybe even acted upon.

It might be, though, that your emotions are coming from deception or a sinful root. That person didn’t do you wrong. You’re looking at the situation selfishly. That place isn’t really dangerous. You just feel as if it is because you’ve heard something about it that bothered you. That thing that you are so upset over is something that needed to be removed from your life. You loved it much more than you ever should have.

Whatever the case, it is always, always safe to bring your emotions to Your Savior. He cares for you. The Holy Spirit WANTS to help you process through all of your mess and find the truth that set you free. He doesn’t want you to only read that truth, memorize that truth, and quote that truth…He wants you to understand and believe that truth to your bones.

Because when we believe truth, it is only then that we can love the Lord with all our heart, soul, mind and strength. When we understand what He is saying to us in His Word, it wins over every part of us and we will give up anything and everything for Him.

It all starts with honesty. Bring the mess. That’s what He wants…access to your whole entire mess, so He can start making you the masterpiece that He created you to be.