Genuine Love in a Counterfeit World
What is real?? We live in a culture where words like “imitation, artificial, and fake” describe a majority of the products around us. I use artificial sugar in my tea, I watch TV where the actresses have altered their bodies with synthetic materials, and in fact my favorite purse is a “Coach” bag that I bought in China Town from the back of a van. While I am not advocating that artificial products are immoral or distasteful, I am suggesting that along with our cultures products, we have settled for an artificial life. Just as we have come to accept the counterfeit products in our life as normal and appealing, we have settled with our imitation relationships with others and with God.
You might ask me, how do you have an artificial relationship with someone? Webster’s dictionary defines a relationship as being “the relation connecting or binding participants in a kinship.” More often than not, our relationships with each other consist of small talk, laughs and occasional get-togethers. Where is this ‘binding’ or ‘connecting’ union in which there is genuine, real and honest interactions with each other? If you are like me, you are probably entirely too proud to admit the struggles in your life to others, whether it’s that you haven’t read the Bible in weeks , that you doubt God’s sovereignty, or that you are drowning in self doubt and insecurity. These things are way too personal right? Instead, you choose to play it safe and bypass the judgment and embarrassment, offering instead an artificial picture of yourself to others, revealing only the aspects of yourself you feel are beautiful and love worthy. A relationship that never goes deeper than talking about the weather, the latest cooking disaster, and this season of the Bachelorette, is not only not a relationship, its better defined as an acquaintance which is “one’s slight knowledge of another person.” By refusing to be real with others, you are missing the stunning beauty of genuine fears, hopes, desires, and living in abundance of relationships with others.
What is worse that forging counterfeit relationships with people, is faking a relationship with our Almighty Father. Your brief prayers to God in traffic to urge Him to switch the light to green, or a tear in the back of a church when a song is beautiful does not qualify you as being in a relationship with God. It’s the real moments with God where you cry out to Him in your car exclaiming that you are done running from His love, it’s the morning you are awoken with desire to read your Bible or to simply to talk to God, and it’s the brokenness laying on the floor with tears streaming down your face asking God how He could possibly still love you. I want you to know that a genuine heart is beautiful to God! Pride hinders repentance, and without repentance, there can not be relationship. The most beautiful verse to me about running back to Jesus after straying for so long, comes from Romans 8:38 and says “For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” This verse gives me offers hope to every person on earth who desires to be loved with a Love more true and real than any other thing. Remember that you have never run too far, sinned too much, or fallen out of grace from the Lord who desires to be intimate with you.
Lord, I ask you to make me genuine. Give me an authentic desire to be in constant relationship with you, seeking your heart and learning to be more like you in my relationships with others. Lord I pray that you would not allow me to miss opportunities that you have for me to be genuine with others, setting aside my pride, and humbling myself to others in the way you humbled yourself to me. I pray that you would remove my tendency to be counterfeit with you and to settle with an imitation relationship. I desire more from you God, it is my heart’s longing to be AUTHENTICALLY YOURS.
