As you walk with the Lord you never stop growing. He never stops nudging!He never stops probing into the deep crevices of our lives.
It’s crazy to walk with the Lord forever and Him expose something that you had never seen before. Something that..when He exposes it your response is, “Wait..what?”. Such is the case for my life as a Pharisee.
A few years ago God started exposing some deep things to me. I need to be transparent in how He started digging deep into my heart.
God was sly.I know it’s probably not spiritual to call God “sly” but let’s all not be “super spiritual” and just own that He is.I have found God takes me the long way to expose stuff in my life cause I would never in a million years hear it straight the first time.He was working in my life in the way He knew I could process it.
God started exposing things to me about “the church”.When I say the church I mean the global church.No. I am not super spiritual and God just decided to give me a divine revelation. He knew this is a lesson I needed to learn so He started slowly casting a wide net in front of me.
I started sensing that the church was not impacting the next generation as it should. My eyes began to be opened to “all we are” and “all we are not”.I began to see how we lacked love.I began to see how we don’t love the sinner.I began to see the arrogance of the church.
We say we do but come on really….
We love them once they have left their horrific lifestyle but before then we just look down upon them as a wretched sinner then we applaud them when they turn to Christ.But let me make it clear.. ain’t nobody sitting with the prostitute on the street corner like Jesus did with the woman at the well.So there’s our accountability…
I became extremely frustrated and was pretty vocal about how the “church” acted toward the world. I asked myself tons of questions.I’ll give you a little taste of what I’ve been processing. Scripture tells us to be in the world but not be of the world. Scripture tells me to abstain from all appearance of evil. So how was I going to sit with the sinner and make a difference but not be seen as a sinner myself.
Y’all!
Country girl talk here…
my mind was swirling.
God began to expose even deeper things…
The last several years has been a long trek of searching for what I believed from reading about the life of Christ versus what I saw from the global church.
My spiritual upbringing in church was strong.Strong word and good accountability but as God began to question me and make me dig, lots more questions came.
Here was the revelation.In all my frustration with the church, God slowly exposed..wait for it..…
I WAS THE CHURCH !!!!!!
The putrefying stench of arrogance and piety that is in
“the church” was “in me”.
For the first time, I began to pick my life apart and look at it in depth not against the picture of holiness the church fanned but the life Christ walked.
The way Christ loved people was somehow not characterized often times in my quest to look holy.
Sure I prayed.
Yes I tithed.
No problem with church attendance.
Let me break it down for you.
Cussed- No!
Drank-No!
Ran with Those that Did- No! Because that was an appearance of evil.
Tattoos-Absolutely Not!I now have one.
Tithed- Down the Mint Leaf
Church Attendance- Every time the doors were open
Church Extracurriculars- OMG… Yes
Bible Study-Yep
Took Notes in Church-Yep
Modest in my dress-Yes
Sang in the Choir- Do you even have to ask?
Sang Solos- Of Course
Leadership-Check
Hung around with Non-Christians- no way… (appearance of evil)
Arrogant Spirit -Over the Top
Unreachable To A Lost World- In Spades
Now I did the laundry list to make a point.
Do you see it?
It’s in plain sight if you line up my life against the life of Christ.
I had a list of do’s and don’ts that made me look “holy”.They were all exterior things that had nothing to do with my heart.
If you look at the heart issues listed I tanked on those.
That’s what Christ is after….
So you see it’s easy to be a Pharisee in the church.You can check off your boxes and look holy but often times we look like a Pharisee and not Jesus.
That was me.I was saved when I was 21. I am now 49. It was just exposed to me about 6 years ago. I have been a Pharisee 99% of my Christian life. Have a made such a transformation that their is a halo around my head in this area?NO!But it has been exposed.
So you see..
I am a process!
I am a Pharisee that has been face to face with Jesus.
Jesus wants my heart not my deeds.
It takes a lot more for God to crucify your heart than to do all the externals that make you look holy.
The external deeds come, don’t get me wrong but now they come from a heart that seems to be more on track than ever in following after the heart of God.
I am ashamed that I have been a Pharisee.
I suppose my flesh will always struggle with it.
However I am so thankful that God exposed it to me. It was as if a lightbulb had gone off for the first time in my life. I was sickened by what I saw. I find myself in a very different place these days. People pleasing seems to have fluttered from my life. You write blogs like this and your friend list starts dwindling. I guess if the shoe fits.The shoe definitely fit me well.
There was a song a few years ago called, “Audience of One”. When we desire to live for the audience of one things of this world seem to slip away just like the heart of the Pharisee.
