Truth Be Told: A Six-Day Devotional by Matthew Westনমুনা

Day 2

Lie #2: Everybody’s life is perfect except yours. 

Truth: Nobody's perfect. Everybody's flawed. We're all messed up, but we're all deeply loved.

I know a guy who bought his wife what she thought were beautiful diamond earrings for their anniversary. We're talking two carats in each ear. But the husband didn't tell his wife that while diamonds may be a girl's best friend, hers weren't exactly real. They were made from the much less expensive, imposter cubic zirconia. Nevertheless, the wife couldn't tell the difference and she showed off her new earrings wherever she went. Years later, when the couple was switching insurance companies, she was asked to get an appraisal on all of her expensive jewelry. That's when she discovered the truth. Her priceless diamonds were not so priceless after all. I'm pretty sure that guy is still sleeping on the pullout couch in their living room.

There are good kinds of pressure like the pressure that produces real diamonds deep within the earth about 100 miles below the surface. Extreme heat and pressure push carbon atoms together to form these beautiful stones that hold great value. I Googled that so you can trust me. Studies have shown that a diamond with no flaws is about as scarce as a unicorn. In other words, they don't exist. Wouldn't it be awesome if the pressures we face every day produced diamonds in our lives? We face pressure to be perfect, and the pressure comes from all different directions, right? Church, society, social media… Thanks to social media, everybody can pick and choose which parts of our lives, our thoughts, and our experiences that we want to share with the world and then we just hide the rest away. Every day, we're creating our own highlight reels. No need to expose a weakness when you've got the power to create the perfect image, right? We look at everyone else's profile and they all look like they're living the perfect life. It becomes less and less of an option to let anyone see that our lives may not be as perfect as theirs. We become the creators of our cubic zirconia public persona - an inauthentic portrayal that masks who we really are or what we're really going through. 

When you realize perfection is impossible to attain, you're left with the choice of two paths. There's the path that leads to coming clean and accepting the fact that you're messed up, you're flawed, you're broken, or the other path that leads to spending all of your time and energy working to keep up the appearance of spiritual perfection. Unfortunately, far too often, I find my feet wandering down that second path. Did you know that it's possible to look and talk and act like a good Christian but be living with a heart in critical condition? Trust me, I know because I’ve gotten really good at that.  The Bible describes this type of lifestyle by saying, “These people come near me with their mouth and honor me with their lips but their hearts are far from me.” The discovery of who we are is an equal discovery of who we're not, and this is not easy for me to admit but you probably already knew it. Guess what? I am not perfect. No one is, but Jesus.

Hebrews 4:15 says this, “This High Priest of ours understands our weaknesses, for he faced all the same testings as we do, yet he did not sin.” This scripture is more than just information. This verse is an invitation to take a deep breath and rest in this truth: your perfect Savior knows that you're anything but perfect. Guess what? He still loves you. There's no more need to pretend. When you acknowledge this, you've reached the starting line of an authentic Christian life - the life of a flawed diamond. God has a long history of shining through flawed diamonds like you so stop comparing yourself to everybody else. You don't need to compare yourself to the highlight reel that somebody else is putting on social media. Just be the flawed diamond that you are and God's going to shine bright through you. He's gonna use you in a powerful way just like He's done through the flawed diamonds all throughout history. 

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I don't know why it's so hard to admit it 

When being honest is

The only way to fix it 

There's no failure, no fault,

There's no sin you don't already know

So, let the truth be told