Be Real

Eastford Baptist Church
January 18, 2007

“Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.”
(Psalm 139:23-24)

A couple of months ago I was walking through a furniture store. My wife and I were out shopping for a couple of stools which we wanted for the counter-island in the middle of our kitchen. As we worked our way through the massive store we got separated from one another. She had continued to work her way towards the breakfast furniture area while I stopped to test drive a couple of lazy-boy recliners. (Who can resist the enticement of a stuffed black leather recliner?) After I had warmed up a couple of them, like the prodigal son, I finally came to my senses. My first thought was that my wife was walking around with a checkbook which was cocked and ready to fire, in a furniture store filled with salesmen as ravenous as starving wolves. Talk about a dangerous situation! Now I have complete confidence in my wife’s ability to spend wisely. But at the same time I realized that like any brave responsible husband, I might need to rescue her (and my checkbook) from the predatorial salesmen roaming around on the sales floor. I frantically started looking for her, but alas, the store was designed in such a way as to make it impossible to easily locate someone. Searching from one kiosk to the next, I found myself in an area filled with desks and office furniture. At one point, a couple of people tried to squeeze past me and I bumped into a desk that had a computer sitting on it. Thinking it was in danger of falling, I reached out to catch it. Boy was I surprised! I had anticipated the normal weight of a computer monitor, but this thing hardly weighed anything at all. Upon closer inspection, it became evident that the computer pieces sitting on top of the desk were simply cardboard imitations made to look like the real things. From a distance they looked fairly real, but up close it was clear they were only synthetic replications of the real thing.
Now we all understand why furniture stores use cardboard imitations instead of real computer equipment. It’s a cost saving device. They need to protect themselves from clumsy husbands who would potentially damage expensive computer equipment. They simply want to give us an idea of what the furniture will look like after we place it in our home. In the case of furniture and cardboard computers, authenticity is not that big of a deal. In that situation, it’s ok just to project an image of the real thing.
But the Christian life isn’t like that. Authenticity in our faith is a major issue for the Lord. In fact, any attempt to project an image that isn’t real always gets our Lord’s attention – but not in a good way. There are many people who think they’ve perfected the fine art of faking it in their spiritual lives. But in reality there is no way to pretend with God. Psalm 139 starts out by saying, “O Lord, You have searched me and You know me.” That’s what we forget, isn’t it? God has already searched our hearts. He already knows everything there is to know about us. He knows that which is real as well as that which is a cheap imitation of the real thing. So in the verses above, as David comes to end of the Psalm, he simply recognizes that any attempt to pretend would be fruitless. So he invites God, “Search me – test me – know my anxious thoughts. I don’t want to pretend to be something I am not.” It’s David’s way of saying, “Lord, I want to be authentic with You.”
David is inviting God to search his heart – but it’s not so God will discover something He has previously overlooked. It’s so that David will discover the areas in his own life where he has been nothing more than a cardboard cut-out of what God called him to be. Sometimes after we have pretended for so long to be someone we are not, we actually begin to believe the man-made projected image we’ve created. He’d had enough of that. David came to his senses and said he was through being a cheap imitation of the real thing. So he says, “Lord, search me, test me, I want to be real.”
How about you? Are there areas in your life where you’ve set up cardboard imitations of what God is calling you to be? Are you willing to say, “Lord, search me, test me, and see if there is any offensive way in me?” More importantly, as the Lord speaks to your heart, are you willing to respond and dismantle that which is not real? Are you ready to commit to a deeper level of authenticity in your walk of faith? Maybe it’s time to throw away the cardboard. Maybe it’s time to get real.

ALL because of His Grace,
PT