I’m not sure what it is that makes us feel like we need to be all neat and tidy when we come to God. As if there’s even a way to “get our ducks in a row” before we come to Him. We fool ourselves into thinking He doesn’t already know all our mess in the the first place.
But what I love about David and his relationship with God was that it was fully honest. Psalm 142 and the transparency he shows challenges me and my level of authenticity with God. It’s a release from playing fake with God. It’s a release from having to be ashamed of our honest reality.
David “pours out his complaint” and “declares his troubles” while begging God to listen to his situation. He acknowledges that God already “knows his path and the way where he walks.” It’s full-on, unabashed transparency.
There’s a felt pressure in America today for Christians to have it all together. Not in the 90’s baptist kind of way of “dos and don’ts” (though that still exists). Rather it’s in the “don’t mess up / say the wrong thing / be the hypocrite” because everyone’s watching and waiting for another reason to criticize and dismiss Christianity. The pressure is understandable. The world is salivating, ready to rip into the next broken Christian leader.
We cannot forget, Christians are broken, fallible people. I don’t say this in a “license to sin” kind of way. I say it the same way that David was both “a man after God’s own heart” and a murderer and adulterer. Christian reality is messy.
But when we’re transparent in front of God, we allow Him the space to actually transform us. When we play the game and deny our broken reality, we set ourselves up to be a people that walk with a form of godliness but without any power.
If we want to see God work in us and through us, we've got to let Him work ON us. We'll have to accept that "dying to self" isn't something that happens once but something that happens over & over again. We have to realize there's no walk of shame if you're walking towards Jesus.
It’s okay. You can drop the act in front of Jesus. He already knows. The good stuff starts to happen when you cry out, from an honest place and allow God to begin to work.