Wednesday, July 9, 2014

A Fake or the Genuine Article?



Everybody hates fake things. A fake Rolex watch that didn’t last three months on your wrist; a car spare-part that took only a month before it outlived its usefulness; or, that cheap DVD player with a familiar sounding name that worked as badly as its name sounds (the manuals usually come with very bad English too). The worst fakes are humans who pretend to be something they are but are not. Like the one who pretended to love you but did not. Yes, the one who said he/she loves you if you only could do “a little something” for them, you know. And the moment you did “a little something” for them and they got what they wanted, you were no longer high on their priority list. Fake!

Needless to say, there are fake Christians: those who come to God because all they need is their healing, their financial breakthrough, their marriage to work, or to be delivered from their addictions. And so they act like friends of God until their “blessing” comes and they no longer have a need for God. Then they proceed to pick and choose, buffet-style, the things that they will do for God and God no longer is high on their priority list. They want what God has but not who God is; they seek His hand but not His face. Fake!

Are you a fake?  John, Jesus’ homie, tells us how we may know if we are fakes:
“And by this we know that we have come to know him, if we keep his commandments. Whoever says “I know him” but does not keep his commandments is a liar, and the truth is not in him, but whoever keeps his word, in him truly the love of God is perfected. By this we may know that we are in him: whoever says he abides in him ought to walk in the same way in which he walked.” 1 John 2:3-6, English Standard Version

Don’t be a fake today. Orient your life towards keeping his commandments to “love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind” and to “love your neighbour as yourself” (Matthew 22:34). May you be the genuine Christian article that your world desperately needs today! May people around you know that they are standing in the presence of the salt of the earth and the light of the world today! May you exude the rich sweet-smelling fragrance of genuine faith in Christ!

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