Honesty

 “If I’ve learned if I can’t be honest I can’t be healed. No point in hiding behind an image. God sees, knows, and cares.” – Lecrae

A natural reaction for a lot of us is to hide behind a false image of ourselves. Everybody wants to be seen as they have everything together and that their life is going great. But the reality is that there are things in all of our lives that we are a little embarrassed about.

After reading this quote from Lecrae, it hit me deep because my natural reaction when I sin is to try to cover it up. I don’t want my friends and family to view me differently. Also I really don’t want people that see me as a mentor to view me differently. But learning that dishonesty keeps me from being healed, there’s no point in hiding of anymore.

For example, last year I was leading a University Gospel Community. It was my first year leading a group. I was a little nervous and was unsure if people were going to come. Our first time meeting we had about 5 people come and I was excited because five are more than zero. The next week we had about 12 people come and I was excited again. Then each week it kept growing until we had about 30 people coming consistently. At the time I was trying to figure out whether or not I should be doing ministry after college, and some indicators of that in Redeemer were if you could successfully lead a Gospel Community and multiply it. Well, my Gospel Community multiplied 3 times. The first two splits were good, but by the third, my own sin started to play into the picture. I soon realized that I was using my Gospel Community for the glory of myself. I wanted people to see that I could lead and multiply Gospel Communities effectively. But after being convicted by the Spirit I was lead to confess my sins to my GC. As I confessed it to my GC, it changed the whole dynamic of the group. Everyone grew closer and they felt that we could be honest with one another.  I experienced God’s forgiveness and the forgiveness of his people. As I was going through this, I thought about 1 John 9 “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”

The truth is if we hold on to those things, they just bring about more shame and condemnation and you to get to the point to where you feel like you can’t be forgiven. But that is not scripture, that’s not how our God works. As his son died upon the cross he knew all of us were sinners. We serve a faithful God and in his character he wants to save a helpless people. So why hide from a God that loves and cares for you?

The call is this; if you are a follower of Christ, honesty is not an option. It's a response to freedom. It is a response to the Gospel. With us being honest we are saying sin does not hold us down because we have been free with Christ. 

Here are a few questions to put some handles on this, and I encouraged you to flesh some of these things out in your fight clubs.

  • In your deepest core, are you being honest with God and his people?
  • If not, what are some things that you are not being honest about?

by: Rashard Barnes

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