The Real Me

Every morning, I have a tradition of opening up the book of Psalms and reading a chapter. I love this book because it’s a book of prayers and songs to God. It’s filled with emotion and raw descriptions of the challenges people face. This morning, I opened the book to Psalms 32 and as I read it, I began to get a little emotional.

The writer, David, begins to describe how blessed it is for a man to confess his sins before God. In one part, David describes his turmoil of keeping his sin a secret. He writes, “When I kept silent, my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long.” As I read that, I remembered all the times I’ve kept secrets and all the times I put on different faces and tried to keep up certain pseudos to co-workers, family members and friends.

I thought of all the times I was filled with anxiety because of the lies I was juggling, about the times I couldn’t look my friend in the face because I wasn’t living how I knew I should, and all the times I felt insecure because no one knew the real me. Just like David I know the agony of not being an open book. I know how it feels to pretend, be a liar, and to hate myself.

It’s heavy to keep up pseudos and I was emotional this morning because I was thankful- thankful that I don’t live like that anymore. Just like David, I realized that to be fully awake and to be fully loved, I must open up and show people the real me, warts and all.

Jesus thought this was important, too. In Luke chapter 18, Jesus tells a story about two men. One is a tax collector and the other is a religious leader. Jesus says both of these men approached the temple to pray. The religious leader went first and said, “God, I thank you that I am not like other people—robbers, evildoers, adulterers—or even like this tax collector.” Even if that wasn’t a lie, how arrogant.

Here is this “holy man”, filled with religious pride, thanking God for something that was not true. This man was blinded by the appearances he was trying to keep up. And this isn’t just speculation. Jesus often rebuked the religious leaders in His day and for doing the very thing this guy prayed he didn’t do.

This religious leader was not open before God. He was not truthful about who he was and the sins he committed. Isn’t that what happens to us? We keep up appearances so much that we actually don’t know how to have a healthy relationship? We can’t even have a conversation without lying or exaggerating the truth. We don’t know how to put our walls down, even before God?

Next up was the tax collector. These guys were known for swindling and lying to people to get what they wanted. They were known for ripping people off and getting away with it. But this man’s prayer was much different than the religious man. Jesus goes on to say this about the tax collector, “But the tax collector stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his chest and said, ‘God, have mercy on me, a sinner.’

Jesus finishes His teaching by saying, “which man do you think was accepted by God?”

He was teaching people about being open before God. Jesus continues to teach that God does not look at the outside of man, but at the heart of man. If a man would humble himself before God and confess, God would accept him.

Isn’t this true with people, too? Aren’t people more inclined to accept someone who is open and truthful rather than someone who is fake? Without this quality, it’s impossible to experience true love.

Doesn’t true love see the good, the bad and the ugly and still say, ‘I accept you’? I’m glad I have relationships like this. That I’m not hiding who I am, but I’m loved, quirks and all. I’m fully me and I’m glad I’m fully known.

I often ask myself why I used to live life like this. Why did I pretend that I had money when I didn’t? Why didn’t I tell the truth when I was hurting? Why did I lie about my shirt size? Or about how much I weighed? So many things I’ve lied about or hidden from people that was unnecessary.

I realized that this tactic wasn’t protecting me the way I thought it would. I was fooled by my insecurities that if I opened up and shared with people how I truly felt, what I truly thought, or how I truly lived, no one would love me. But all it did was bury my sense of worth.

In the book of James, it says, confess to your brothers so that you may be healed. Today, stop hiding behind the fear of what people think. Stop hiding behind the idea that God doesn't want anything to do with you. Let people see who you really are.

Chad Fagundes
Outreach and Men’s Pastor