sincerity with God

It has been extremely refreshing of late to talk with other Followers who embrace vulnerability, transparency and honesty in their pursuit of the Way.

These conversations have been spring water, compared to the well water that is so prevalent when speaking with many Followers today.

This is not because churches or those of the well-water variety are bad. These folks mean well. They do hunger for God, most of them. And they're nice.

Truth be told, though, I can find nice people anywhere. Out of church, in church. Doesn't matter. Nice does not directly correlate to the transparency or honesty of one's heart. I can meet a whole room of nice people and not one of them willing or interested (able?) to talk about what is really going on with the heart.

Why not?

As one of my friends said recently, sincerity exposes. Sincerity brings all the ugliness out from under the covers and puts it on the table. This ugliness, this struggle of the soul, grates against the facade of "all togetherness" which society and largely Christiandom wants us to live, or more realistically said, wants us to pretend to live.

God is okay with our warts. He knows they're there, and He wants to work through the gunk of our struggles and ultimately remove them.

Yet what lengths do we go to to hide, ignore and rationalize the warts and pimples in our lives? Amazing how we run from God in life, then come to Him in a moment of honesty for salvation, then go back to hiding and covering up the things He wants to change in us.

He wants to bring fullness and maturity to our rebirth, and we instead play hide-and-seek with things we should be taking to the Cross.

It's not difficult to veil the things we struggle with from others. And yet we do this, then go to God and expect to be intimate and close with Him. Or, as some describe this, prayers don't seem to be going past the ceiling.

As one of my transparent friends said recently, if I go to God for counsel He says "first things first, it's difficult to counsel you through that mask".

How much more, when I want to hang out with God, or be intimate with Him, He says "I really don't enjoy loving you through that mask. I do love you, but our relationship, our intercourse, is not designed to be done with a mask on."

The Lord knows when we lay down and when we get up, He knows when we go out and when we come in (Psalm 139). He knows and weighs our heart. Why do so many of us then engage in pretention, denial and cover up?

God offers a much better Way than playing this game of religious Clearasil.