Week Four: Share Without Pretending

So what does it mean to share without pretending?  As I began studying this topic, I quickly realized that there were a lot of differing opinions as to what it actually means and there were a lot of different directions that we could go.  But, I want to find out for myself what God’s word says about this, and being that I most certainly do not have the gifting of a teacher, it’s a little scary to dive in and start from scratch.  Having said that, the Bible says that when we seek God, we will find Him.  So, I’m looking forward to where God is going to meet us throughout the next week.

“When you come looking for me, you’ll find me.  Yes, when you get serious about finding me and want it more than anything else, I’ll make sure you won’t be disappointed.” GOD’s Decree.

~Jeremiah 29:13

Sharing without pretending…let’s start by defining some terms.

• The word share(-ing) means:  to partake of, use, experience, occupy, or enjoy with others; to distribute, to grant.
• The word pretend(-ing) means:  to give a false appearance of being, possessing, or performing; to claim, represent, or assert falsely.

When I put those together, here’s the definition I came up with…

Sharing without pretending means the ability to give, experience, and enjoy someone or something with others without representing ourselves (or our motives) as something that we (they) are not.  In essence, it’s taking off the social mask and walking in transparency…in the truth of who we really are…not who we’d like to be or who we think others want us to be.   It’s sharing our true selves with others…our strengths, our struggles, our victories, and our defeats.

Did that make anyone else’s heart start to race just a little?  I don’t know about you, but I’ve heard lots of speakers/authors address this topic of “taking off the masks” and “living in the freedom of transparency.”  While I’m sure that God used what they shared to touched the hearts of many in those various settings, I more often than not found myself sitting there thinking, “that sounds great and I love the concept, but you just don’t understand…you don’t know where I have been or the roads I have walked…you don’t get the excruciating pain that lies just barely under the surface that I have fought most of my life to bury just so I can breathe and function…you don’t know the things I have done…the thoughts I have thought…the hurt I’ve experienced…the things that have been done to me…the choices I’ve made…the judgments…the shame…and now you’re asking me to rip the band aid off, lay it all out exposed for all to see…and then what?

See, I think that’s the question that often doesn’t get answered when this topic comes up.  Once we expose all of this stuff and we are standing there in our brokenness and our shame, then what???  What’s next?  What am I supposed to do with all of that once I let it out?  How do I go about the business of healing?  How do I start re-building?  How do I practically do things differently?  Who’s going to walk on that journey with me?  How do I deal with questions and obstacles?

If you’re anything like me, those are all the unanswered questions that kept me stuck in a never-ending cycle of performance and “pretending” and resulted in a lot of surface level relationships and keeping people at arm’s length out of a need to self-protect. But here’s the thing…all of that was driven by two things:  1) A lack of clearly understanding who God is and how much He loves me, and 2) A fear of rejection which is one of Satan’s most powerful and effective tools that he uses to keep us isolated and stuck.

This week, we’re going to take a look at the lies that we believe that keep us in those places of pretending.  We’re going to uncover the truth about what God really thinks of us and what He desires from us.  And we’re going to (as Dr. Phil says) put some verbs in our sentences as we learn how to extend these same truths along with huge amounts of grace and love in our relationships with others.

Let me leave you with this question today and please feel free to comment as we get this conversation started:

• What has kept you from taking off those “pretend” masks in your relationships with others?

~Kris Samovitz

Protector of Our Hearts

This life....well it’s very challenging isn't it?  The last couple weeks I've been reading about Jesus…how He came here with a focus of salvation…how He conveyed His message with the Hope of being able to overcome this world and the evil in it. His heart cried out to the people, especially those hurting, physically or mentally.

He knows that when we fight with our words or desperately try to defend ourselves that there is pain…sometimes very deep pain. Just as Jesus had people voice their physical ailments, He wants us to voice our broken hearts to Him.

Today, I want to offer hope for all of us with broken hearts. Imagine with me, Jesus… standing over us just as He did with Simon Peter's mother-in-law as she burned up with fever.

“Jesus left the synagogue and went to the home of Simon. Now Simon's mother‑in‑law was suffering from a high fever, and they asked Jesus to help her. So he bent over her and rebuked the fever, and it left her. She got up at once and began to wait on them.” 

~Luke 4:38, 39 (NIV)

Jesus could've healed her from the doorway, but He chose to get close. Not only that, but He bent down close to her and offered healing.  He offers us that healing, He bends over us and He gently whispers, "I've taken this all for you, I've paid the price and now I am your defender. But, you must let go."

I just want to encourage you to continue on this journey of love, but also to realize that when we love the way He does, it does open the door for rejection and hurt. But the good news is that as we abide in Him, our Protector has our heart in His hands and He knows and understands our pain on a very personal level.  He wants to bring healing to our hearts and to restore what has been lost if we will let Him.

I pray for all of us, for courage and strength as we fulfill the New Law in love.

~Jeri Heintz

A Life of Freedom

“It is absolutely clear that God has called you to a free life. Just make sure that you don't use this freedom as an excuse to do whatever you want to do and destroy your freedom. Rather, use your freedom to serve one another in love; that's how freedom grows. For everything we know about God's Word is summed up in a single sentence: Love others as you love yourself.   That's an act of true freedom. If you bite and ravage each other, watch out—in no time at all you will be annihilating each other, and where will your precious freedom be then?”

~Galatians 5:13-15 (MSG)

Why are we as Christians supposed to focus so much on love? There are several different reasons that we are given in the Bible. One of them is that the world will know we are His disciples by our love. The passage above in Galatians is pretty enlightening too. Paul says here that everything we know about God's word is summed up in "love each other as yourself."  Paul makes another interesting statement…

"The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love."

~Galatians 5:6

The "new law" is not a bunch of rules that we keep to show how religious we are, it is simply, "love one another".

~ Jeri Heintz