Emotional Rescue - How Being Two Faced Can Really Work For You!
Being true to who you are is both a huge asset and a huge liability to all of us who attempt to give it a go! It's not all it's cracked up to be! Dave Gilpin, Senior Pastor of Hope City Church, finds the cracks and explains how to both be true to you and be true to truth!
The two faces that people often see when they have an investigative look at the church are a ‘long face’ and a ‘face like thunder’! And it’s all in the name of honesty and sincerity! People often think that in being real and authentic they have permission to be super grumpy, super irritable and generally very unattractive!
I’m definitely not one for Plastic Fantastics where everyone flashes their permanent smiles and hides the ‘real them’, but I’m also worried about what we allow ourselves to be in the name of sincerity! People are starting to give sincerity a bad name! In the words of Simon MacIntyre from Christian City Church in Sydney, ‘sincerity has become an overrated sentiment’. He’s not challenging the tenures of honesty and openness, but challenging the liberty we give ourselves to be ‘horrible’ by claiming that we’re just 'being ourselves'! If that’s the case, there’s a strong case, both socially and spiritually, for being ‘two faced’!
The real truth is that if you’ve had the privilege and honour of become a Christian through putting Jesus on the centre stage of your life and loving Him with all your heart, a very real thing happens – you get ‘born again’. Your heart becomes new and the Holy Spirit makes His home within you. 2 Corinthians 5:17 says ... ‘Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come.’. Our old self or heart has been crucified with Christ and our new self has been risen with Christ. (Romans 6)
OK – that’s the technical bit over! Here’s the practical bit! When someone comes to me and says, ‘Can I be honest with you?’ I dread the worst! I figure that I’m about to have a truck load of disappointment, discontentment and general disarray tipped all over my lap! It may be honest to how the person feels, yet it’s not often honest with the real state of their new hearts and the transforming and active work of the Holy Spirit. To be really, really honest, they would at least need to start with ‘Jesus reigns and all things are working for our good!’ (Romans 8:28) and they’d at least need to conclude with ‘We’re going to make it and I think God’s brilliant!’ A big YES for real sincerity!
Sincerity to emotion is OK; sincerity to circumstances is OK – yet it is not the basis of a powerful life of an overcomer who draws strength down from heaven and breaks through to new levels of success and victory. That comes from sincerity to faith and the Word of God. Emotional sincerity must be tempered by real truth. Otherwise, says Simon MacIntyre, ‘it stands relying on self orientation, and that is a weak and tottering edifice’.
There is a time for a healthy disclosure of pent up emotion but it should be kept in the private place of either your personal devotion or on rare occasions, your inner circle of loved ones who aren’t offended by your rattiness. Usually your emotions never carry with them the whole truth or the right truth and that’s why, when flaunted under the guise of sincerity, they become detrimental and often destructive. It only takes a few seconds of vindictive honesty to cut someone’s head off. It takes a lot longer, however, to sew it back on and even then, it doesn’t quite swivel the way it used to!
Put it on
Colossians 3:12 says, ‘Therefore as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience.’
It encourages us to ‘put it on’. Putting it on is often not seen as an attribute, yet it’s encouraged by the Word of God! Taking off the spirit of heaviness and putting on the garments of praise is a pretty biblical thing to do. Taking off the old self and putting on the new is also quite biblical!
It’s true that more often than not, I’m actually putting it on! People often say about themselves ‘I’m a shy person’. Well, why not become a people person by ‘putting on’ courage and an overwhelming interest in other people – that’s what I attempt to do, especially on Sundays! People say that they don’t feel that they’re an ‘up’ kind of person. Well, be ‘up’ by putting on joy and peace in the Holy Spirit! You can do it with Christ’s strength!
The Bible never encourages us to put on misery, grumpiness, faithlessness, cruelty, unkindness, sulkiness or bitterness. It does tell us to be true to who we are – if you’ve been set free in your heart from the pain and guilt of sin, it’s time to be true to who you really are! You may feel down in the dumps, yet your real state of play is ‘blessed with every spiritual blessing’. (Ephesians 1:3) I don’t want to sound triumphalistic, but I do feel like we have slightly misinterpreted the mantra of today – ‘I just want to be myself’.
Stick a BUT in it
The greatest word I’ve found in my Bible that actually unites feelings with faith and helps us to be genuinely two faced – the face of our soul united with the face of our heart – is the word, ‘BUT’. There is no sharper use of the word than in Psalm 31. The Psalmist David writes;
‘I am forgotten by them as though I were dead; I have become like broken pottery. For I hear the slander of many; there is terror on every side; they conspire against me and plot to take my life. BUT, I trust in you, O Lord; I say, “You are my God” my times are in your hands ...’
His emotions are real and yet they are superseded by a higher reality, God is his refuge, strength and support. The word ‘BUT’ is a word that has been invented to usher in information that had previously been blocked out! It puts sincerity with emotions in perspective with sincerity to the deeper truth of the Word of God!
Try it today! After putting your feelings through the filter of ‘Is this really helpful for those around me to know this?’ and ‘Is airing my feelings just an excuse to be self centred and self pitying?’, you can positively attach them to the powerful word of truth that promises never to return empty but to accomplish all it was sent and purposed to achieve. (Isaiah 55:11)
Can you ‘just be yourself’ and ‘be true to who you are’? Sure you can but get used to being better, speaking better and looking better than how you feel! It’s time to grab your ‘BUT’ and get moving!
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