The problem with acting is when it becomes a part of regular life. We've all done it. Pretended we were something we weren't. Maybe we were trying to impress someone; maybe we were showing off for friends. Maybe we were scared to be ourselves because we were afraid of rejection. Maybe at times we can get away with this, but it is no way to live a life. Shakespeare said the whole world is a stage and we are all actors on that stage. This is true in the sense that people watch our lives. Jesus, in one sense, supports the practice of watching lives, our own and others -- we are to watch and learn. We can learn about God by seeing how He enters our lives and what He does in other people's lives. Oh boy, I am not getting my point across.....Let's start over.
This morning I read Exodus 29:46 which says, "And they shall know that I am the LORD their God who brought them out of the land of Egypt, that I might dwell among them; I am the LORD their God."
Do you see what I see? God brought them out of the world (Egypt stands for the world's system in the Bible) so He could live with them. God offers Himself. The world offers itself. We can't have both. Often we have one and play act the other. The Apostle John says it like this:
"Don't love the world's ways. Don't love the world's goods. Love of the world squeezes out love for the Father. Practically everything that goes on in the world -- wanting your own way, wanting everything for yourself, wanting to appear important -- has nothing to do with the Father. It just isolates you from him. The world and all its wanting, wanting, wanting is on the way out -- but whoever does what God wants is set for eternity." 1 John 2:15-17
The world is full of distractions and noise. God has to cut through all that at first to show us Himself, to offer us a different way. His way of life and Himself. There are people who might say they choose Him by attending church and going through the motions that the world says is what a Believer does, but if it isn't what is real inside, then those people are just play acting. And there are probably people who are actually God's but have walked away from Him for a while. Maybe they are dabbling in the world's ways but their hearts aren't really in it. These kinds of lives are not authentic and a person can't grow if he/she isn't authentic. We gotta choose.
God has chosen us. He says, "Be still and know that I am God." Jesus offers us His gentle and quiet ways. He says in Matthew 11, "Embrace this God-life. Really embrace it, and nothing will be too much for you."
In Revelation Jesus tells us He wishes people were hot or cold toward Him -- not lukewarm. All in or all out.
God doesn't say we need to choose because He is being mean or controlling. There is just no way we can have a relationship with Him if we choose the world's ways and doing this for ourselves. It is doing life for ourselves or doing life for Him. He's given the invitation. We just have to accept it.
What do you have to lose? Choose Him and you gain it all. Choose the world and the more you choose the world the more you lose your very soul. In Him is where you become alive within. The world can't give that no matter what it promises.