Appearance and Reality: Part 1 — A ‘Time With God’ Audio Devotion

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Transcript

Good morning.

Welcome to a new week. And as we get started with this week, we want to start it the best way possible by spending some time with God.

You know, your life is guided by something, right?

And that something is guided by what you put into your heart and mind day by day. It shapes you. It shapes what matters to you. It informs your values. It sets your direction in life.

The Bible talks about setting your mind on things above. Well one of the most important things you can do is build into your day a daily time with God, listening to Him, reading the Bible, asking Him to shape your mind and life the way he designed you to be.

That’s why every weekday morning at this time, we open the Bible and hear from God a little bit and talk about what it means for our lives.

Let’s read Matthew chapter 6 verse 1.

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Jesus is talking and he says, be careful not to practice your righteousness in front of others to be seen by them. If you do, you will have no reward from your father in heaven.

You know, my wife met someone this week, and as she came back and talked to me about it, she said that person was really nice, but I didn’t feel like they were authentic.

I wonder if you’ve had that feeling sometimes when you spend time with people. On the surface, everything seems to be right. They’re saying the right things, they’re doing the right things, but you just get a sense that they’re not really being authentic with you about how they really are.

And so many of us who are Christians can easily slip into this as well. That’s why Jesus gives this warning. It’s in the middle of his sermon on the Mount. He says, Be careful – that is, this is something that could easily happen, and you need to be careful not to practice your righteousness in front of others to be seen by them. If you do, you will have no reward from your father in heaven.

Certainly He wants us to live a righteous life in front of people, but he doesn’t want us to try to act spiritual and religious and good in front of people simply to be recognized by them as a good person or as a good Christian, a person who is spiritual.

No, that’s not the point of the Christian life. Our Christian life is not a performance. But it’s a life lived out of love for God. That’s what makes it authentic.

And that’s why it’s so important in your Christian life not to just try to do the Christian things, not to just try to be a good person in front of other people, but rather to nurture your relationship with God.

That’s the core of what it means to be a Christian.

You have a living relationship with God, and that relationship comes because of what Jesus did for us on the cross, taking away the judgment that we deserve from God for so often doing what we knew was wrong and enabling us then to have this beautiful relationship with God because that has already been dealt with when Jesus went to the cross and took our place.

So we can have this amazing relationship with God and how wrong it is to ignore that relationship and just try to live out the performance in front of other people thinking, I hope they think I’m good enough, I hope, you know, they think I’m spiritual. I don’t want them to think that, you know, I’m worldly or too selfish or anything like that, I have to put on the good appearance.

No, that’s not what it’s about. It’s about living from an authentic love for God that overflows into your life and actions and the way you talk to others and deal with others all just flowing from your living relationship with God.

So today, why don’t you just take a few minutes now and in your heart, talk to God about your relationship with Him and ask Him how you can make it better.

I’m John North.

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