Have you seen these filters that are super popular on social media these days?
It’s incredible! You hold your camera in selfie mode with a filter in place and, voila!…
…perfect skin tone, large colorful eyes, long lush lashes, lips…teeth…hair – everything perfected!
With not one flaw in view, it’s tempting to post as if that’s really you…and people do! Of course, if you have actual relationships in real life, there’s no way to live up to that version of yourself. Even on your very best hair and makeup day you couldn’t achieve that level of perfection.
What if there were a filter that you could hold over your heart? What if instead of holding your phone in selfie mode in front of your face you could hold it over yourself and see a perfected heart?
God’s word doesn’t give us a filtered version of life. When we open it up and read the accounts we see unfiltered reality. Instead of filtered idealism, the Bible allows us to see the real, flawed, rough, even hateful, and hurtful actions of people – and not just the bad guys you expect to be awful, but the ones who were chosen to be God’s people!
They shock us with their reality. They manipulate, hurt, lash out, and we are not kept from any of it – we see it filter-free. And right there we also see God reaching, moving, loving, and saving these people – as is. Not working with them once they get their act together but “while we were still sinners…” It’s amazing when you really see it.
What about our lives? Well, God doesn’t reach down and give us a filter to fix our lives either – instead, He gives us a life to fix our filter. That filter is His life and His Word. “For the word of God is living and active and sharper than any double-edged sword, piercing even to the point of dividing soul from spirit, and joints from marrow; it is able to judge the desires and thoughts of the heart.” Hebrews 4:11
We need to see and live in God’s way – fearing and trusting Him – and then we have a filter that allows us to see how things really can and should be in His grace, His power, His lovingkindness, and strength.
What a difference that makes, and it’s the only before and after that actually matters.
Heavenly Father,
Help me see you more clearly today. Increase in me a hunger for truth and reality and reveal the ways I’m prone to want a filtered life. Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit in me.
Amen.
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Thanks for reading today’s blog. I’d love to hear from you. Leave a comment below and share this post if it was meaningful to you. Blessings! ~Jennifer
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