changing stripes

(I wonder if anyone will notice I'm really a dog)

Wendy and I were sitting in McDonalds last night, letting the 3 younger kids terrorize the playplace, while we were waiting for the two older ones who were at the dance studio. They had CNN on the TV and Pierce was interviewing Chaz Bono. For those of you who don't know, Chaz Bono is Sonny and Cher's daughter, who recently came out with a new book called "Transition - How I became a man". Yep, she was a woman and went through a sex change procedure and is now a man. The one thing that really stuck out to me was after spending all that time and money changing her body, she said, "this is who God made me".

Chaz Bono's mentality seems so unusual, but think about it, is it really? How often do we try to be something we are not? "In America, you can be anything you want to be." There is always a trade off though, it will cost you something.

We try to be skinny and work really hard at it, but, the truth is, if we stop working at it, we will not be skinny. We trade time and leisure for a work out schedule and a diet plan.

We try to be rich, so we work 60 to 70 hours a week to be the career person we know God wants us to be. We trade our family, our friends and our lives for financial freedom.

As followers of Jesus, we try to be perfect. When we fail at perfection (which is always) we plaster on a smile and we're always "doing good" when asked, trying to hide the imperfect lives we live. The further we hide the imperfections the harder it is to be honest about them. We trade living free for living a lie that makes us look like we are living free.

BUT-  God loves us for who we are. Nothing we do will cause him to love us any more than he loves us right now. Nothing we do will cause him to love us any less. When we try to transition into what we are not, we take control away from God. When we try to live a lie it only causes pain in our lives and the lives around us. Living honest, open and authentic with God and people gets us out of the way of what God really wants us to be.

When we move to Miami, to start a church for people that don't like church, we're going to be gracefully honest with where we are in life. Allowing others to be honest with where they are without fear of rejection or condemnation. Then with us out of the way, God can do awesome things!