Transparent

I was reading my Bible this morning, in the book of Acts; I stumbled upon the story of Ananias and Sapphira. Do you know their story? After Jesus was crucified, raised from the dead, and ascended into heaven, the apostles began to boldly proclaim Jesus as the Son of God. The numbers of believers were radically growing, as the people began to listen to the apostles and saw the miracles they were able to do through the power of God. The believers became one in thought and mind and shared everything they possessed. When believers were in need, other believers would sell their homes and possessions to take care of each other. This is where Ananias and Sapphira's story begins...

Ananias and Sapphira decided to sell a piece of their property and bring the money of sale to the apostles to distribute among the needy believers. However, before they brought the money, they kept a portion for themselves.  This would not have been a problem at all, but Ananias and Sapphira lied to Peter (an apostle) and told him that they brought the full portion of the money to the apostle instead of telling the truth that they had kept a portion.

They were trying to portray themselves as more generous and giving than they really were.

Woah, that hit hard.... Shame on them for trying to portray themselves as better than who they really were, right? Shame on me for doing that all of the time!!

Creating this blog, it's easy for me to post pretty pictures, recipes, projects that create the image of a perfect life. It's very easy to not post pictures of me or my children with our hair all slept in, no makeup, no cute clothes, house a mess...but I don't do that.

Let me start today telling you that I am far from perfect and while I LOVE my less than perfect life-- It is NOT perfect.

That is what is so beautiful, I believe... As Christ followers, we should hope that are lives are constantly being shaped by the Lord through hard times, testing situations, temptations, etc.

And let this be a testament that the Bible is the LIVING Word-- I read this story this morning, felt the Holy Spirit telling me to take this lesson to heart, prayed that the Lord would teach me transparency and then hopped onto my usual blogs only to find this post staring at me; The first post I read this morning... The Holy Spirit is at work and the Word is living.

I'm praying today that the Lord teaches me transparency, teaches me to be real, through all of my flaws, because He is the one and only perfect Being.