How do you feel about people getting all into your business? Let's try that again. How do you feel about letting one or two people get all into your business?
It's a little uncomfortable for most of us, we'd surely have to admit. We may like to think we're transparent...what you see is what you get...the real McCoy...transparent through and through. But honestly, most of us hold our cards pretty close to our chests. Wouldn't you agree?
I think that's why many of us gals have such a fascination with the likes of Beth Moore. Not only is she a perceptive Bible teacher and masterful communicator, but she professes, quite believably, to welcome the tough questions and answer them with complete candor.
Just the other day I visited her blog and watched a recent video she had live-streamed to her readers. She greeted everyone, gave updates on all of her family members and offered a simple devotional thought to encourage her viewers. But in the midst of all that, she also welcomed her blog readers/viewers to ask her the tough questions, to keep her accountable.
Now I doubt Beth would take too kindly to me, a stranger from Arizona, pushing her too far on the personal questions she had in mind. But I know for a fact that she does indeed keep herself personally accountable to a number of women whom she counts as close friends and colleagues. She allows them to ask her the deeply personal, the embarrassing (if necessary), the challenging and the provocative.
And, I do believe, she answers them truthfully, forthrightly, holding nothing back.
And I like that.
Here's why.
The Bible teaches us in 1 John 1:6-7
If we say that we have fellowship with Him
and yet walk in the darkness,
we lie and do not practice the truth;
but if we walk in the light
as He Himself is in the light,
we have fellowship with one another,
and the blood of Jesus His Son
cleanses us from all sin.
1 John 1:6-7
I think human nature is to meander toward the darkness. Like bugs in the pantry afraid of being found out, we naturally scurry toward the shadows, the corners of darkness, the isolated. There we can hide that which we do not wish to be exposed.
And nothing flips the light switch faster than a straightforward question from a trusted friend, one to whom you cannot lie without a twitch in your lip or a hesitation in your answer or a fumble of your words.
We think there is safety in the dark. Wrong. Evil lurks in the darkness. We think there is freedom in that which is not known to all. Wrong. That which is a secret only holds us captive; it never sets us free.
I've spent some time in the dark. My bet is, you have, too. And I'll admit that when someone first tried to crack a little light into the room which held my secrets, I hunkered down in the darkness all the more, like a petulant child not wanting to welcome the morning, but drawing the blankets of protection up over the eyes instead.
But with a little prying, I finally allowed the covers to be pulled down, sat up and acknowledged the light, and got up and walked out into the daylight, as exposing as it was. And while I may have squinted in discomfort for a little longer, I eventually adjusted to the radiance of full light and saw all that I had been missing. I had become so used to the dark, that I didn't realize just how dark it was!
Jesus, dear friend, is in the light. He is the light. You can't live in darkness - the darkness of secrecy, unaccountability, limited disclosure, and double identity - and live in the full presence of Jesus, the Messiah. If you're living in the darkness you are, in essence, turning your back on Him.
Tomorrow I'd like to talk a little about how to live in the light. How to stay there, so that your life is a radiant reflection of the Source of that light. How to be a beacon of light to your friends who are currently hunkered down in the shadows of darkness.
What do you think it means to "walk in the light as He is in the light?" I'd love to know.
Labels: accountability, transparency, What's in Your Pack
