I am definitely dating myself LOL. How many remember the advertisement for Memorex™ recording cassette tapes? The ad challenged the consumer to be able to distinguish between a live performance or a recording on their product. With glee, that company would ask of those who couldn’t distinguish between the performance and the tape: “Is it live or is it Memorex™?”
Have you ever been there before in your daily life? Have you ever had a situation or experience where you couldn’t tell if something or someone is real and authentic or unreal and deceptive? Discernment is not your strong suit?
You live life, open to new experiences, taking the chance to share your heart with someone you don’t know. Going to places no one thought you could visit, doing things you never expected to do. It may start out refreshing. And exciting. Without guile and without hesitation you are completely sold. It (He/She) may look, sound and feel good to you. So you fall, hook, line and sinker. Hard. You think this is it, It is all the way LIVE!
Then the other shoe falls. You find out. It was only Memorex™, not the real thing. You wonder to yourself, “Did I see that correctly?” “Why did I overlook the signs?” Come to find out the house that looked so perfect has a crack in the foundation and needs completely new wiring. The car that was so shiny and new looking has a serious internal combustion problem and a nasty oil leak. That one you opened your heart to stomped on it because you said the wrong thing, did the wrong thing, are the wrong thing. Then s/he hands your heart back in a brown paper bag, twisted and crumpled, without so much as a good riddance backwards glance. How does it happen? When do we stop falling for the same old imitations?
The bible says for us to “try the spirit by THE SPIRIT”. You think “I did try it!” and “it” says and does and feels all the right things. Yet it was not right. You say to yourself, like I have said to myself, “I have fallen so many times for the same old trick. I try really hard not to do it, but I get sidetracked, hoodwinked, bamboozled by the same thing over and over again.” The basic definition of insanity is this: doing the same thing over and over again expecting a different result. Am I insane? Sometimes I wonder. How many times do I have to put my heart on the line to be trampled on, lied to and deceived before I become hardened and callous? I want to be open, caring and unassuming. Hoping and praying and hoping against hope that the seed I plant is the fruit I reap. I’m looking for the live performance and end up falling for the imitation. Again.
Yet God did not call us to act or discern spirits according to our feelings. OUCH. Rather He desires us to try things and people by the righteousness, holiness and Spirit of Jesus Christ. I don’t care how much we try to talk it away, explain it away, feel it away, if it doesn’t pass the “Jesus is the Son of God, come in the flesh, died and resurrected, with all power in His hands” test, then it (they) are not the real deal. Let me put it like this: If a person says they are an apple tree but all you see is oranges all over the place, then there may be a discernment problem. If we continue to operate in our feelings and not in the Spirit, then it may a ego, pride and reality problem in US.
As a Christian woman living in a corrupt world, sometimes it’s not easy to be real. I want to hide under the shadow of the Almighty and not come out until He comes back again or calls me home. It would be so easy to isolate myself and never expose myself to the mean and malicious behavior of people. But that is not what God would have me or you to do. God has asked me and all the saints to present ourselves as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to Him. Part of the sacrifice is being open and transparent enough to allow Jesus to shine through our lives. Yes, I will have my feelings hurt at times and I will definitely not like the way it feels. I thank God Jesus did not let how He felt determine if He accepted the call on His life. He died on the cross for us, despite the fact that everyone hurt Him by being imitations instead of the real thing. He died and rose again with all power in His hands. Amazingly, He’s willing to share that power with the very ones that hurt Him to the core. Even though mankind did not and does not deserve it, He chooses everyday to give the gift of eternal life to each one that receives it. Freely. Openly. Transparently. Truly real. Truly LIVE.
For the times I didn’t trust God’s discernment and fell for the imitation, Lord forgive me and thank you for rescuing me from myself. For those things and people in my life that have chosen to give me the imitation, the Memorex™ of love and reality: Thank you! It’s okay. My heart is renewed. My feelings are soothed. I have the ultimate balm, and I found it in Gilead. I have the real deal. The real LIVE Jesus.
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