Keep it real
Feb 22
Romans 12:12Be joyful in hope
There is a series of ads on the TV which advertise Windhoek lager, and the adverts have really caught the attention of the public as they have such a funny them but something that people can relate to. The pay off line at the end is “keep it real”. The message there is that we should not appear to be what we are not. We need to live and be seen in the way that we really are. We cannot fool God because he looks at the heart, while man looks at the outside. It is easy to be a hypocrite as a Christian, because we feel we need to act right and holy in front of others, or at least we need to act holier than we really are on the inside. I believe everyone is in the same boat.
When we go to church we don’t want people to see we had an argument in the car on the way in. Or that we squabbled with the kids the night before, or that we said something nasty that should not have been said. Or that we are really far from God, while we raise our hands and worship God. That would be a bad testimony of course and so we try to put on a brave face or a good face or a holy face or whatever face it is, but we do not keep it real. And so the picture we paint for the world is that we pretend one thing at church but in reality we are something else. We need to keep it real.
Romans 12:12 says “be joyful in hope”. Hope is in the future. If it has already happened there is no need to hope. So hope is closely related to faith. But in that faith and hope we need to act like we believe it. Even better if we act like it we may start to speak like we believe it and then it may just come to pass.
We have to learn the laws of how God works and we would spend less time pretending and more time keeping it real.