Urban Reformation

Hello my name is Bob McCall, I’ve lived down in the northeast about a year and I also attend FCC.  I’m a new contributor on UrbanReformation.com

I’ve been reading through Acts, rather slowly, and have been struck by the evangelistic life of Paul.  Wherever he goes he proclaims Christ.  He suffers persecution and exalts God, rather than his trial.  So many times we, today, are so opposite of this, we love to tell whoever we can that we have had it hard today, and often times this is the first thing to come out of our mouths when we come together.  I’m not referring to trials brought on by sin for these must stay hidden, covered up, private.  We refuse to bear graciously the small burdens of daily trials that provoke our flesh and eagerly, secretly lug around these weighty over bearing anvils of our own sin because we are too prideful to expose our weakness and allow another to help bear our burden.

Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ.  - Galatians 6:2

We neglect the command to confess one to another out of fear that is it may shatter this persona that we have been so careful to build up, this fake identity we’ve created which serves as our alter ego, absent is our sinfulness.  Ugh how disgusting this must be to our Lord, who was beaten, mocked, betrayed, crucified so that our identity would be in Him!  If we truly kept in front of us the truth of what Christ did for us that we have been seated with Him in glory we wouldn’t feel the need to create or protect our own fake identity.

Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working.  - James 5:16

This says that it is for our healing that we confess our sins one to another.  If we really embrace the word of God and exercise faith in believing it, we would embrace the means God has given us, we would embrace the body and live in true community with our brethren.  You know just by the nature of growing up in the same house as my two brothers that I have accumulated quite a list of “dirt”, so to speak, on them.  And I’m sure they could put together a pretty substantial list on me.  If I, or they wanted to, we could publish these list and seriously embarrass each other.  But I love my brothers and trust they love me.

We wish not to disgrace each other in this way.  Now this is a natural relationship born of flesh and blood. How much more should we love and trust brothers born of the spirit.  In Him we become one born again family.  We do not honor God by building fake ID and disobeying His word to be transparent.  I know all too well this struggle, and as I write I feel the sting of this conviction myself.  We must repent of this shallow “christianity”.  It will be hard to abandon our pet idenity that we have labored to construct our whole lives.  It is a fearful thing to cast off our mask in the middle of the masscarade.

Popularity: 45% [?]