Living by Grace
What does it really mean to live by grace?
In our social media world, it's easy to put on a false front that our lives are manageable, doing okay, and we are just fine. Pictures of our perfect life are posted proudly with witty banters and taglines. We wait anxiously to see how many people will 'like' or comment on our update and get disappointed when people don't, and we feel we have to redeem ourselves by posting another update or picture that is better, wittier, more popular. It's easy to pretend life is perfect when you're only revealing yourself in a two inch square on Instagram or 140 characters on Twitter. You don't have to look people face to face.
What this results in is a lack of vulnerability, honesty, and true fellowship. We start to believe that we can gain our self-worth by how many 'likes' or comments we get on our status updates. Or which Instagram filter we use. Instead of living humbly, we begin to live proudly of our wonderful kingdom of 'followers' we've racked up for ourselves.
Have we forgotten where are true worth comes from? Have we forgotten that our lives are so much more than what you see on your iPhone screen? If we were to stop proving ourselves in our status updates, what would become of our worth? Where would we find it then?
Living by grace means putting away our false fronts and facing ourselves. It means letting it all hang out, knowing that we are perfected by His redeeming love. It doesn't matter what our lives look like on a screen; what matters is how our hearts look. God sees behind the Instagram filters. He sees the Truth, and there's no running away from Him. But the wonderful thing is, He doesn't care how "perfect" our lives look. He wants us to be real, authentic, genuine, and to share that authenticity with others so that they may heal too. No one ever got saved by showing how perfect their lives appear. It's when we reveal our imperfect lives in the light of God's saving grace that we are healed.
In our social media world, it's easy to put on a false front that our lives are manageable, doing okay, and we are just fine. Pictures of our perfect life are posted proudly with witty banters and taglines. We wait anxiously to see how many people will 'like' or comment on our update and get disappointed when people don't, and we feel we have to redeem ourselves by posting another update or picture that is better, wittier, more popular. It's easy to pretend life is perfect when you're only revealing yourself in a two inch square on Instagram or 140 characters on Twitter. You don't have to look people face to face.
What this results in is a lack of vulnerability, honesty, and true fellowship. We start to believe that we can gain our self-worth by how many 'likes' or comments we get on our status updates. Or which Instagram filter we use. Instead of living humbly, we begin to live proudly of our wonderful kingdom of 'followers' we've racked up for ourselves.
Have we forgotten where are true worth comes from? Have we forgotten that our lives are so much more than what you see on your iPhone screen? If we were to stop proving ourselves in our status updates, what would become of our worth? Where would we find it then?
Living by grace means putting away our false fronts and facing ourselves. It means letting it all hang out, knowing that we are perfected by His redeeming love. It doesn't matter what our lives look like on a screen; what matters is how our hearts look. God sees behind the Instagram filters. He sees the Truth, and there's no running away from Him. But the wonderful thing is, He doesn't care how "perfect" our lives look. He wants us to be real, authentic, genuine, and to share that authenticity with others so that they may heal too. No one ever got saved by showing how perfect their lives appear. It's when we reveal our imperfect lives in the light of God's saving grace that we are healed.
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