Let's Get Real

As most of you already know, I am a huge fan of Jimmy Needham. My excitement has only increased since I went to the concert last week and as I have been listening to the new CD. Anyway, I was reading through his website the other day and noticed a cool section called “behind the music.” Here he talks about the story behind the songs he has written. In the description of the song “Before and After” he referred to a big part of his testimony, and in another part of the website he provided a more in depth look into his past. I will let you go read it for yourself later, but it really got me thinking and so I decided to share what the Lord has laid on my heart through this.

Reading Jimmy’s testimony filled me with joy, even though his past experiences were not exactly joyful. My joy is not in his struggle, but rather in these two things: The way the Lord rescued him from his past and redeemed his soul, and his openness and honesty about where he came from. This post isn’t going to focus on Jimmy directly, but considering that reading about his life started this entire thought process for me, I decided to give a little of the background. I was so excited reading through his account of his past sins and his freedom in Christ. Here is a man who I am a big fan of, who I admire greatly and who is a solid spiritual leader in our world today being completely transparent and real. Wow. It blows my mind and refreshes my soul to see such honesty; especially coming from someone in a position where honesty could be shocking to many. His story and his openness got me thinking about the Church as a whole. I am sure all of what I am about to say has been said many times before, and much more eloquently, but I am going to go for it anyway.

A problem I see among believers today is our utter refusal to be transparent before our Lord and one another. We as a Church (myself most of all) are completely consumed by a need to have it all together all the time. We have become masters at hiding our sin and struggles from everyone around us for fear that we will no longer fit into our image of the put together believer. Our focus and our pursuits are aimed at maintaining an image rather than being bare before our Father. What is wrong with that picture? Is maintaining an ideal really more important to us than maintaining an open and honest relationship with both our Lord and our fellow believers? I fear that this has become the case far too often these days. It breaks my heart that we are a people afraid of transparency. We like to be clean and covered up at all times. The only problem is that this is stunting our growth, spiritually speaking.

I don’t think that we like to get too personal with the topic of sin. We have become really good at acknowledging it as something powerful in our world today and as something that only God can free us from, but we don’t like to relate the topic too much to our individual lives. Or, if we do, we certainly don’t like to share it with anyone else. Somewhere along the way we related a struggle with sin to weakness. Well, what is wrong with that? Where we are weak HE is strong (2 Corinthians 12:9) A struggle with sin has become something that we need to deal with on our own, something we need to keep under control so no one notices, something that shouldn’t be discussed because it might reflect poorly on us. We need to change our attitude! We, the Church, need to stop trying to neaten up the mess in our lives and we need to expose it for what it is. The more we try and cover it up, the darker our sin becomes. We need light. We need freedom. We need Jesus. We can’t conquer sin. We are only human- imperfect and fallen. BUT, sin has been defeated and death has been conquered through our Lord and Savior. We need to rejoice in that, which means acknowledging our sin- naming it and claiming victory in it. Victory is ours and if we would stop trying to put on an act for the rest of the world, we could finally hold fast to that Truth and be transformed forever. So what are we waiting for?

First and foremost, our sin needs to be acknowledged before the Father. This means praying it and naming it. To me, and I imagine to many others, naming our sin can sometimes be terrifying, but I feel as though it is so crucial. It needs to be exposed for exactly what it is. Confession is our first step to freedom from whatever it is that seems to be entangling us. Next, through the Lord’s endless grace, we must repent- turn away- be changed from the inside out. Freedom.

We were not created to be alone in this world. God created Eve so that Adam would not be alone, so that he would have a helper (Genesis 2:18). We know this, so why do we still try and do life on our own? Why do we try and battle our sin on our own? Let’s talk about it. Let’s lean on one another as the body of Christ and do life together. That means all of life, not just the fun stuff. If we are battling sin in our life, we need to talk about it. I am not saying that we need to get on stage and announce to everyone our deep dark secrets, but we need to be real, be transparent, be honest. We as the Church are one. One body and one purpose. Let’s stop going to church on Sunday morning focused on acting like we have it all together if we know we are fighting between our flesh and the Spirit in us. I would rather see a body of broken and contrite people bowing before the Lord, confessing and repenting, than a body of people with a bunch of smiles on our faces. And if through God’s Grace we find that we are not wrestling with a particular sin or temptation in our life, then I pray we have compassion for those that are. If we are in a season where we are not struggling with something particular, we need to be ready to serve our fellow believers as they battle. We need to be accountable and we need to be that accountability for others. We need to pour Truth into them and be prayer warriors for them. We need to walk beside them as the Lord leads them through their struggle. We need to get rid of our judgmental hearts and share their burden. Through God’s grace and mercy we need to fight this together.

This may not mean anything to anyone reading this, but this has just been heavy on my heart. I want to stop acting. I want it to be ok for the body of Christ to admit where we are falling short in our own lives and strive together to claim victory over our sin. What people say or think about us based on our struggle shouldn’t matter. We, as believers, shouldn’t look down on our brothers and sisters based on their sin, because let’s face it, we all have plenty we have tried to hide (Matthew 7:1-3). I respect Jimmy Needham for being so real about sin in his life and I rejoice with him in the freedom and victory he has experienced. I need to work on this in my own life, I will be the first to admit, but let’s start being transparent before our God and before one another.