Can you fake the lifestyle of a Christ follower? The apostles were familiar with idols that were thought to have some power over life, as long as you performed or paid your dues. Is any different today? What fake religious ideas and idols do we think will get us farther in life? How could a person attend church their entire life yet miss the need to be transformed from the inside out? I’m relearning the truth that reality of following Christ is a process of character change, that is often in conflict with putting on a fake face that I have it all figured out.
“Prayer requires that we stand in God’s presence with open hands, naked and vulnerable, proclaiming to ourselves and to others that without God we can do nothing. This is difficult in a climate where the predominant counsel is “Do your best and God will do the rest.” When life is divided into “our best” and “God’s rest,” we have turned prayer into a last resort to be used only when all our resources are depleted. Then even the Lord has become the victim of our impatience. Discipleship does not mean to use God when we can no longer function ourselves. On the contrary, it means to recognize that we can do nothing at all, but that God can do everything through us. As disciples, we find not some but all of our strength, hope, courage, and confidence in God. Therefore, prayer must be our first concern.” - Henri Nouwen
“Christians live in an atmosphere of reality. Most unsaved people live in an atmosphere of pretense and sham. Christians have been given spiritual discernment to know the true from the false, but the unsaved do not have this understanding. Christians do not simply choose between good and bad; they choose between true and false. An idol represents that which is false and empty; and a person who lives for idols will himself become false and empty.” - Excerpt, Be Real (1 John) by Warren W. Wiersbe
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