Imposter
An imposter is someone who assumes a false identity for the purpose of deception.
Somewhere on our journey, we believed the lie that God would only love us if we were all shiny and sin-free like little clones of Jesus.
Good luck with that.
Jesus is the Son of Man, perfection in human form.
Us?
We are beautiful specimens of imperfection, desperate for God's unconditional love, grace, and mercy.
We are the ones Jesus came to save.
The Bible contains oodles of stories where God used imperfect, broken, and sinful people to make the world a better place.
In the stories, Jesus doesn't say, "Jeez, lady, you are a mess. You can follow me once you get yourself presentable. And for the love of Me, please don't tell anyone about your past or what you are struggling with now. I can't have you hanging out with me with all that junk; what will people think?"
That's what we tell ourselves, but it's not what Jesus says.
Jesus just says, "Follow me."
Jesus knows our past, every wild and crazy part of it.
He's onto our trickery as we attempt to hide all that stuff and cover it up with performance and promotional posts that tell of our perfect lives.
Others may believe the show we put on is the real deal, but Jesus isn't falling for our imposter act.
Knowing this, why do we spend so much time faking it and wearing the heavy costumes of false identities?
Who are we trying to fool?
God saw it all - He sees it all - every single second of our lives.
He sees our youth gone wild, our habits, our sinister and selfish ways.
He knows our thoughts and our actions.
He's been there for it all.
He's also been there for the redemption and the healing as we've made our journey from the ashes and scraped our knees, crawling through some tough stuff to get this far.
It's not like Jesus is sitting on a lawn chair far ahead of us, waving in the distance, waiting for us to come to Him only after we got cleaned up while He sits there sipping on a latte and shaking His head in disappointment.
Nope.
Not true.
Jesus was with us in the mucky truth of who we were, and He still stands in our actual (not the fake one) reality today.
The truth is God sees you as you, your true self - complete with all the dirty and dark sins, all the wild and crazy parts of you that make you shiver with shame when you remember them.
Jesus loves you with all of it.
I almost said He loves you despite all of it.
But that just shows my misunderstanding of God's unconditional love.
Jesus loves us with all of it.
There's nothing we've done that He doesn't know about it.
God isn't wishing for a different version of you.
He isn't asking you to clean yourself up before He can love you.
He isn't saying you can only follow Him if you are perfect.
God loves you just as you are.
And He says, "Follow Me."
Here we are, a bunch of vulnerable, authentic, performance-free peeps following God.
The first scripture below says, "Deny themselves and take up their crosses."
I'm not a theologian, but I interpret that as a combination of releasing the power you gave to your sins and still taking the wisdom learned with you as you follow God forward.
When we accept Jesus into our lives, our memories and the realities of our sins are not erased (bummer, I know).
Jesus did take on the burden of our sin and the goodness of God has reframed the bad and the ugly of our past into beautiful stories of healing and redemption.
Denying ourselves may mean that who we were and who we are (fake or real) is irrelevant - our attention need only be on how God will use all of it for good to show His mighty love, forgiveness, and power.
It's not about the followers; it's about the One we follow.
So go forth, my fellow follower - just as you are.
Without those heavy imposter costumes, we sure can move faster.
God will take us to amazing places as we follow Him forward as our true selves.
Keep your eyes on Him - just you watch.
Matthew 16:24
Then Jesus said to his disciples, "Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me."
John 10:27-28
My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; no one will snatch them out of my hand.
John 12:26
Whoever serves me must follow me; and where I am, my servant also will be. My Father will honor the one who serves me.