He wants us to be real!!!

Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me, your rod and your staff, they comfort me.
Psalm 23:4

What a beautiful Monday morning! The last few days have really been a blessing from God. No, nothing out of the ordinary has happened. In fact, people around me may think that i just had a "routine" weekend. But, i have enjoyed every second of the last few days because of the understanding of what God is doing in my heart.

Every morning I start my day by reading Psalm 23: 4 and it gives me strength to get through the struggles i may encounter during the day, sometimes i read it more than once. But in the last few days i have asked myself how real i am with God, how honest are my words as i speak to him!

Friday morning i had an opportunity to share my heart with the students at the upper school and my focus was how God wants us to be real with everything we offer to him. I brought up how the love for Jesus in your heart makes you act in a wonderful and amazing way. As christians we seem to have a lot of "checklists" in our lives, we have the "do not's", we have the "you should's" etc. And we have them handy, in our pocket, wallet, ready to come out when we need them. As I prepared my notes for friday morning i realized how close i was to being that christian with a checklist and it just felt like a cold bucket of water being poured on me!.

I decided to take charge and change it, but how? I prayed and spent some quiet time with God and he spoke to me, and before i knew it, the only words that were coming out of my mouth were "He wants me to be real". I decided to throw away those checklists and focus on the main thing which is love God with all your heart! Have God as #1 in your life and everything else will just fall into place, every item written on that checklist will be covered.

As I left the school on Friday morning i felt pretty good about my message thinking that a few of the students may go out there and be real for God. I also felt very excited about living for Christ in a real way from that point on. The whole weekend I lived it being real and forgetting whatever checklist i might have had, I decided to be myself and walk with Jesus in every activity!

On Sunday night as i was driving home with my wife, tired and ready to get some rest before the start of the new week i turned to her and shared with her how amazing i thought all the activities with the youth group had been, she then asked me why i thought such thing, she asked me if there was a specific reason why, and i gave her some explanations and situations but the real reason why is because with every activity, every prayer, every conversation, I was being real. We do not need any checklists, if we have God in our hearts and we do everything in his name all the items will be covered. He wants us to be real!!