Where Did I leave the Armor of God?
How often do we try to show Jesus our pious side? The one we think He prefers to see? He asks us to be real and authentic, yet we can’t help but think He would prefer the brushed up version of ourselves instead of the mess. Without wearing the armor of God, we trick ourselves into believing He is asking us to be righteous instead of wanting us to be real.
On Facebook, do any of your friends snap pictures of their kitchen in complete disarray, their dog with an upset stomach, or losing their cool and screaming at their kids? Most likely not. That doesn’t paint a very positive picture of the life we want people to believe we live.
If we aren’t raw with each other, how much less raw are we with God, the Creator of the universe?
Sometimes I feel I can’t come to God unless I am clean: I wipe my shoes at the front door, and my outfit is wrinkle-free.
I let myself believe He didn’t see me five minutes before acting faithless and buying into the enemy’s lies that I am forever a hot mess.
The One we can be 100% ourselves with is the One who I have the hardest time letting in. He is God, He is perfection, He died for my sins, yet I can’t stop sinning!
Isn’t He sick of my sins? Isn’t He tired of my storms?
Oh, There Is Where I Left It!
That’s why I hide and wait until I can show Him my good side (the Facebook version) and pretend I am doing all that He is asking me to do. I convince myself I can cover my bad side, adjust the lighting to make me look better, and smile at my perfect life.
Ever feel like that?
That is when I know I left The armor of God untouched and forgotten in my closet. It is amazing the things we can convince ourselves of when living as the world lives and believing as the world believes. Without the armor of God, we can be led to believe anything.
Jesus came here not to pick the righteous fruit from the vine and leave the rest of us to rot. He sacrificed to be in the trenches with us. He offers us hope and an eternity in spite of our sinful nature.
If we desire to see perfection, we need to lift our faces upwards to the One who is perfect. To be truly known by Him, we must look inward and discard the mask we so carefully placed on our face.
One of the biggest lies of the enemy is we should never seek the presence of our Lord unless we show ourselves to be presentable. The truth is we could never earn an audience with our Savior, yet He invites us anyway-mess and all.
Accept His truth, bury the lie, and take off the mask because Jesus can see through it anyway.
Congratulations on your books Crista! Yes I agree, the armor of God needs to be always on!
Blessings,
Jennifer
Thank you so much!!
Thx, Crista! I copied a couple lines from this to share in my blog soon. I think we need our armor but we also need common sense to stop our busyness, that’s what I’m doing of late, right at Christmas …. cutting out, disciplining. Love you and your words!
Thank you so much, Diane! It is the busyness that gets me every time. I love and admire your discipline. You have a knack for knowing what you need.