"My life is a mess." That is the opening sentence of Mike Yanconelli's book, Messy Spirituality (if you haven't read it, go pick up a copy today!). Mike goes on to ask the question: "What if genuine faith begins with admitting we will never have our act completely together?" I must admit that, at times, I am guilty of putting up a happy and perfect front in order to hide hurt and sin. And honestly, I think a lot of people, both teens and adults, in the church do the same thing. We have this fear of showing our true selves because... well... what everyone think of me? What will God think of me? I'm not alone in this struggle and neither are you. In fact, great heroes of faith have felt the same way. The apostle Paul wrote, "I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do, I do not do, but what I hate I do... I know that nothing good lives in me... For I have this desire to do what is good, but cannot carry it out. For what I do is not the good I want to do" (Romans 7:15-19). Basically, Paul is admitting that he's an imperfect mess without God. And he's right! The Bible is clear that "all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God (Romans 3:23). We all hurt. We all sin. And like Paul, we hate some of the things we do and we don't know why we keep on doing them.So what's the easiest way to deal with these faults, these imperfections? We hide them. We cover them up. We dress up and go to church and smile. People ask how we are and we pull out the Christian "F" word... fine. We say "fine" even though sometimes we're anything but fine. Why do we do this? Because we don't want to admit we're not perfect. We don't want to spill our messiness on others. If we do, we think people will judge... or even worse, reject us.
But church is the one place we should be able to be real and messy. We all know we're flawed. We all know we're carrying around burdens and sin. So let's stop hiding behind the masks and be who we really are. Many people, myself included, think that you have to have it all together to come to church, to come before God. But, in fact, it's just the opposite. In the words of Rob Bell, pastor of Mars Hill, "God says to us, 'When you come to Me, come to Me with all your junk, with all your problems, come to Me all screwed up, all messed up. Let Me take care of it.'" We should come to God, just as we are, broken and needing to be made right, to be put back together. After all, "sacrifice God wants is a broken spirit. God, you will not reject a heart that is broken and sorry for sin" (Psalm 51:17, NCV).
I'll be the first to admit that being honest with who we really are is not easy. It's hard to be open and real, especially when we live in a world with fake people and unrealistic expectations. But there is hope... you're not alone. My advice to you is to find at least one other person you can be real with and who will accept you for who you are (a messy and imperfect sinner, saved by grace through faith in Christ Jesus). Meet with this person regularly, pray with each other, keep one another accountable. In doing so, I believe you'll begin to overcome the fear of being yourself and see that it's okay to say "My life is a mess." Jesus came into a messed up world, to get messy and to save messy people. Without him, what a mess we'd be in!
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