I Always Feel Like…Somebody’s Watchin’ Me…

My family and I were on a vacation to San Antonio. I was probably about eleven years old. I remember it well. We were close to the Alamo in front of Ripley’s Believe it or Not and the Wax Museum. As a family we chose to head into Ripley’s instead of the Wax Museum. Somewhere close to the beginning of the exhibit there was this mirror. Next to the mirror were instructions on how to roll your tongue. The trick was to see how many folds you could get your tongue to make. Well, me being ever so daring, I sat in front of that mirror just trying and trying to get my tongue to make at least three folds. After about ten minutes and some incredible determination I realized I just didn’t have what it took to get the tri-fold tongue like the picture and instructions showed. Oh well… We went through the rest of the exhibit and I didn’t give my tongue fold failure another thought. That was until I got to the end of the exhibit and discovered that what I thought was a mirror was not. Instead I realized that it was a two way mirror and I probably gave the crowd on the other side a very good ten minute show.

I bring this up because I desire to be transparent. I have realized that the older I get the less transparent I get. The older I get the less likely I am to put myself out there and try a stunt in front of a two way mirror. After doing some inward reflection I realized that the older I got the less likely I was to try new things, refusing to let myself look like a fool. I’ve never been a fan of self preservation. In fact I’ve always tried to put myself out there. I’ve always tried to be transparent, but it seems that the more that “life happens” the closer to the vest I hold my cards. I sat in traffic on a random Wednesday night just marinating on this thought of “how can I be more transparent” when on the radio I heard one of my favorite pastors. On this particular station, Chuck Swindoll talked about the supremacy of love. In his introduction, however, he spoke about reading through a book called “Letters to God.” The letters were, in my opinion, some of the neatest things I’ve ever heard read aloud on radio. How transparent these children are. One child wrote, “Dear God if we come back as something, please don’t let me be Jennifer Horton because I hate Jennifer Horton.” Another writes, “Did you really mean do unto others as they do unto you? Cause if you did I’m gonna fix my brother.” I laughed aloud as Chuck read these, but then he got serious about it and called to attention the fact that while we as adults find it funny, if these letters were read to children, they wouldn’t laugh. They would “get it.” The fact is that these children haven’t been jaded by the world. They are very black and white when it comes to God. In fact, you might say they are incredibly transparent.

I started to wonder why it is so very hard for me, for us, the older we get to be transparent. It is that we’ve allowed the world to come in on us. We’ve allowed hurt and all sorts of other emotions turn to fear. Sure, we can act tough, like we’ve got it all together, but what it really boils down to is fear. I’ve heard it said that the one who fears is not perfected in love. We love because He first loved us. I will ask again, why are we not transparent? It’s because we fear being judged, because we fear what others will think of us. We fear that being transparent will allow all others to see us. They will see us, that they will see everything we’ve so desperately tried to hide or stuff down deep inside. I say this because its true of myself. I’ve also come to realize that better it is to look like a fool and be transparent than to prove your foolishness to God by pretending that you’ve got it all together. I like how the New Living Translation puts it in Matthew 16:26 “And what do you benefit if you gain the whole world but lose your own soul? Is anything worth more than your soul?” Well, when put that way, no, not to me.

I am often inspired by the great C.S. Lewis. In fact one of my favorite quotes of brother Lewis deals with vulnerability. I believe that another reason we don’t allow ourselves to be transparent is that it makes us vulnerable. Being transparent will allow us to be on display. We will be vulnerable, and being vulnerable means we can be hurt. Here is what C.S. Lewis has to say on that, “To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket- safe, dark, motionless, airless--it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable.” Ouch. I’ll say it again…ouch. Isn’t that what we do? Rather than allow ourselves to truly be transparent, we busy ourselves. Sure, on the surface, it can give appearances that we are out there, people see us, know us, will judges us according to our hobbies, but what are we really doing? We are defining ourselves by the works of our hands rather than letting ourselves be defined by our hearts and by who God says we are. To be transparent we have to be, I have to be real. I have to sit down and be real with myself and with my God.

Being real consists of being honest, being true to God and being true to yourself/myself, and truly understanding that the call of a Christian isn’t the call to live a safe life, it is a call to live a life for God. There isn’t anything “safe” about that. Again, I will quote C.S. Lewis when referencing Aslan (an allegory of Christ) “He’s not safe, but he’s good.” Following Jesus isn’t safe. Jesus says to his disciples in Matthew 10:39 “Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.” That is upside down thinking and it isn’t safe, but it is what we are called to do. We must choose the road less traveled and be transparent. Before God can do a work in us we must fall before the Lord, completely exposed before Him. David did this when the ark of the Lord was brought into the city. He danced and rejoiced and his own wife despised him for it. His response to her criticism was “I will become even more undignified than this…” That needs to be our response to the critics as well. Don’t be afraid to be transparent and vulnerable. God needs us to be that way and the only way we can be used by Him is if we pursue a life like that.

You see, life is a lot like living with a two way mirror. We can try to act like we’ve got it all together, and give a great act for our entire lives, but no matter who we think is watching, God is always watching. Like Adam and Eve in the Garden, we cannot hide ourselves from the Lord. He knows our deeds and knows who we are. We cannot hide ourselves from Him. We can try, but it will be a battle that we will not win. We will just limp trough life, from failure to failure, wondering “why me?” God’s desire is to richly bless our lives and for that to happen we have to be able to be used by Him. If I choose self preservation, God cannot use me. It’s when I choose to lay down my life before the throne of grace that God can collect the pieces and put together something more magnificent than I could have ever imagined. The same goes for you.

So don’t be afraid of who is on the other side of the mirror. Laugh, curl your tongue, make a face, be bold and be transparent. Don’t let the fear of judgment or of being “found out” keep you from reaching your potential. God has a plan for your life and let me tell you, it is a plan to prosper you. I’d rather face hurt and ridicule from time to time than to miss out on the Lord’s great plan for my life. I desire to be transparent. So even though “I always feel like, somebody’s watchin’ me…and I get no privacy” that’s just fine with me.

Fall on His Righteousness

"There is no one righteous, not even one..” Romans 3:10. Did I just hear you say “ouch?” I know I said it…and say it every time I read this. Ouch indeed. I thought the subject of righteousness would be pertinent in talking about the life of Saul. I’ve been spending a good deal of time in the book of 1 Samuel. In reading about the life of Saul, I can say without a doubt that you and I have a lot more in common with Saul than we’d care to admit. Did I hear you say “ouch” again? Well, I said it again too. Now I am not saying we are identical to Saul, but if we don’t watch our step we very well could find ourselves walking down a dark road of self-righteousness.

Saul was hand picked by God to fill the role of king for the Israelites. The entire story of how Saul happened upon Samuel to be anointed as king could only have been authored by the only perfect Author. A lost donkey of his father’s led Saul to Samuel and rather than finding the donkey, Saul found his role as king. Early on in Saul’s reign as king he did great things. He led the Israelites to defeats and appeared, at least on the surface, to be a strong man of God. Soon, though, Saul’s true colors shined through.
1 Samuel 13:8-13
He (Saul) waited seven days, the time set by Samuel; but Samuel did not come to Gilgal, and Saul's men began to scatter. So he said, “Bring me the burnt offering and the fellowship offerings.” And Saul offered up the burnt offering. Just as he finished making the offering, Samuel arrived, and Saul went out to greet him.

“What have you done?” asked Samuel.
Saul replied, “When I saw that the men were scattering, and that you did not come at the set time, and that the Philistines were assembling at Micmash, I thought, ‘Now the Philistines will come down against me at Gilgal, and I have not sought the LORD's favor.” So I felt compelled to offer the burnt offering."

"You acted foolishly," Samuel said. "You have not kept the command the LORD your God gave you; if you had, he would have established your kingdom over Israel for all time.

Saul began to rely on his on intuition, on his own righteousness. Rather than wait the full appointed time God had given him through Samuel, Saul decided to jump on it…and possibly just a few moments too soon. Had he trusted the Lord to come through, had he trusted in God’s righteousness, he would have waited just a few more moments to see Samuel approach. This happens so often in our lives. I know it happens in mine. We get to a place where we see God moving and yet we don’t like the speed at which He is moving, so rather than relying on His righteousness, we lean on our own. Inevitably we fall because as was said in Romans, none of us is righteous. Later on in 1 Samuel, Saul doesn’t fully keep the Lord’s command when defeating Amalekites. As Samuel rebukes him he begs and pleads for forgiveness, but at this moment it is too late. Once again Saul leaned on his own righteousness and didn’t trust in the Lord’s.

I wish I could say it got better for Saul, but it didn’t. His living in self righteousness continued for the rest of his life. He grew angry, bitter, untrusting, and unredeemable because by embracing his own righteousness, he rejected the Lord’s. Isaiah 64:6 says this about self-righteousness:
All of us have become like one who is unclean,
and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags;
we all shrivel up like a leaf,
and like the wind our sins sweep us away.

We must fall on the Lord’s righteousness if we are to fully live the life God has intended for us. Jesus said it best when he said “But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.” Matthew 6:33. We must seek first the Lord and His righteousness if we are to live a life fully alive. God’s desire is for us to be fully alive. In the end Saul fell on his own righteousness, which ultimately was the end of his own sword. Saul took his own life and so ended the reign of Saul. What had begun with such potential ended in somewhat of a mess. God’s desire for us is to pursue Him with reckless abandon. When we pursue him like this we are made fully alive and the Lord is glorified. St. Irenaeus said it this way: "The glory of God is man fully alive." I too believe this to be true, but the only way to fully be alive is to embrace the fact that we are not righteous, our righteousness is found in the Lord, and that Jesus Christ died and rose from the dead for us. Death’s sting has been removed and we can now be made fully alive. Lean on God’s righteousness and live the life He’s created for you.